Jidmah wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
The whole point is that the people working in the book printing part of GW don't care about how many models you buy or what your opinion of the company is. That's other people's problems.

They don't care how the company is doing overall? That sounds pretty dumb.

This is how all bigger companies work. GW isn't just a room full of guys who know each other anymore.

As for the people wanting to buy more codices - would you actually buy more than twice as many codices if you get the current codex content and content quality (including the amount of errata, update pdfs and lifetime) in a black&white softcover for $25?
Do you also think the majority of buyers would do that?

Edit: Just do clarify, before one of the usual suspects swoops in to spill their vitriol everywhere - I'm not defending GW or even a fan of this practice. I want fairly priced access to rules as much as everyone.
I'm just trying to explain that GW isn't a singular malicious being that operates with a genius masterplan, but a bunch of humans driven by different and often contradicting agendas, just like in any other company that has been around long enough. I have experienced this during my work for multiple companies of similar size and age as GW.

How many codex were 3-4ed? That's how many i got back then(with 1 own army). Albeit # of codexes has come up.

 Jidmah wrote:
As for the people wanting to buy more codices - would you actually buy more than twice as many codices if you get the current codex content and content quality (including the amount of errata, update pdfs and lifetime) in a black&white softcover for $25?
Do you also think the majority of buyers would do that?

Make the books a spiral-bound soft-cover for $30 (or equivalent in proper monies), and yeah, I'm probably buying at least twice as many books. There's a lot of books for 8th/9th I'd pick up on a quiet month at that price range that I haven't so far in hardback.

Apply a similar level of discount (and formatting change) to the campaign books, and I might even consider them.

BAO top 8. Blood Angels list makes use of Assault Cents finally instead of spamming only SG ( though he still has 21 ).

Rumored point leaks.

If true they took the lazy way out on Warriors.

Maleceptor - +50pts (220pts)
Pyrovores - +10pts (40ppm)
Harpy - +10pts (170pts)
Warriors - +5ppm (30ppm)
Raveners - +5ppm (35ppm)
Hive Tyrant - +20pts (180pts)
Flyrant - +20pts (210pts)
Heavy Venom Cannons +5pts each (different prices for different units)

So Harpy goes up to 190pts with HVCs.

Yikes, +50 pts is too much on the Maleceptor while +20pts is too little on the HVC Harpy.

hi all... sorry but what are the points leak, one of those adjustment updates?

i hope its ok but im just getting interested in nids and wanted to ask what is the best commander option, is there one?

im going to start with a combat patrol but was wondering what to add after the hive tyrant.

thanks!

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Rumored point leaks.

If true they took the lazy way out on Warriors.

Maleceptor - +50pts (220pts)
Pyrovores - +10pts (40ppm)
Harpy - +10pts (170pts)
Warriors - +5ppm (30ppm)
Raveners - +5ppm (35ppm)
Hive Tyrant - +20pts (180pts)
Flyrant - +20pts (210pts)
Heavy Venom Cannons +5pts each (different prices for different units)

So Harpy goes up to 190pts with HVCs.

Where are these leaks coming from? And are there any for other factions?

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Rumored point leaks.

If true they took the lazy way out on Warriors.

Maleceptor - +50pts (220pts)
Pyrovores - +10pts (40ppm)
Harpy - +10pts (170pts)
Warriors - +5ppm (30ppm)
Raveners - +5ppm (35ppm)
Hive Tyrant - +20pts (180pts)
Flyrant - +20pts (210pts)
Heavy Venom Cannons +5pts each (different prices for different units)

So Harpy goes up to 190pts with HVCs.

Oof, that's a big Maleceptor nerf. And yeah, lazy in general. If you can adjust HVCs, why can't you adjust Boneswords and Deathspitters?

 Tyran wrote:
Yikes, +50 pts is too much on the Maleceptor while +20pts is too little on the HVC Harpy.

Possibly. I think the core workhorse of Nids ( Warriors / Raveners ) going up makes it harder for Harpies to exist. Maleceptor was still pretty popular and on top tables after the FAQ and it is T8 W15, which is gd beefy.

It could all be bs though.

If it happens Tyranids will just pivot over to something like the Hydra list that got 2nd at BAO.

I think you could do more detail - but its the sort of cut that's probably necessary at this point. Nids are clearly too good.
Then put 2 points per model on Troupes and remove Hail of Doom.
Then maybe look at Tau (+5 points per crisis suit?) and you should be more or less there. Well, aside from buffing Ad Mech & DG.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
Where are these leaks coming from? And are there any for other factions?

Rando Reddit - nothing else at the moment.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tyel wrote:
If it happens Tyranids will just pivot over to something like the Hydra list that got 2nd at BAO.

I think you could do more detail - but its the sort of cut that's probably necessary at this point. Nids are clearly too good.
Then put 2 points per model on Troupes and remove Hail of Doom.
Then maybe look at Tau (+5 points per crisis suit?) and you should be more or less there. Well, aside from buffing Ad Mech & DG.

Some people think Eldar need a solid whack and that the only thing holding them down is Nids. I'm not sure the data agrees with that though after poking around on fight club for a bit.

 Jidmah wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
The whole point is that the people working in the book printing part of GW don't care about how many models you buy or what your opinion of the company is. That's other people's problems.

They don't care how the company is doing overall? That sounds pretty dumb.

This is how all bigger companies work. GW isn't just a room full of guys who know each other anymore.

Having worked at a big creative company, we still wanted the company to be doing well because it meant more stability for our project/departments.

 Jidmah wrote:

As for the people wanting to buy more codices - would you actually buy more than twice as many codices if you get the current codex content and content quality (including the amount of errata, update pdfs and lifetime) in a black&white softcover for $25?
Do you also think the majority of buyers would do that?

But that's a vast oversimplification of the formula too. There's also ease-of-entry for new players, and the fact that cheaper codexes can influence people to begin collecting more armies, as a good codex will also be an advert for models and their faction. There's also promoting good will of the community for the GW ecosystem overall.

 Jidmah wrote:

Edit: Just do clarify, before one of the usual suspects swoops in to spill their vitriol everywhere - I'm not defending GW or even a fan of this practice. I want fairly priced access to rules as much as everyone.
I'm just trying to explain that GW isn't a singular malicious being that operates with a genius masterplan, but a bunch of humans driven by different and often contradicting agendas, just like in any other company that has been around long enough. I have experienced this during my work for multiple companies of similar size and age as GW.

A bunch of humans with contradicting agendas can make stupid decisions, obviously.

Well one could look at the win rates eldar have when they play vs a faction other then tyranids.

At least the squats are getting full blast leaked everywhere. So there is that to be happy about.
Wonder how many people are going to call judgment tokens, marker lights lol

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Possibly. I think the core workhorse of Nids ( Warriors / Raveners ) going up makes it harder for Harpies to exist. Maleceptor was still pretty popular and on top tables after the FAQ and it is T8 W15, which is gd beefy.

It could all be bs though.

The Maleceptor needed a nerf, but +50 pts is too much.

If true, I wouldn't expect to see Maleceptors anymore on the top tables, but I would still expect double Harpy to be popular because +20pts is not enough on them.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
Where are these leaks coming from? And are there any for other factions?

From where the nids codex was leaked a month in advance.
Only these points so far, nothing about the other factions.

 Aenar wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
Where are these leaks coming from? And are there any for other factions?

From where the nids codex was leaked a month in advance.
Only these points so far, nothing about the other factions.

For clarification, the leaks are from the Tyranid discord, and thus likely true as the discord has a good share of reliable sources.

And reading through it, the reception is mostly that those are fair changes, except the Maleceptor.

Karol wrote:
Well one could look at the win rates eldar have when they play vs a faction other then tyranids.

At least the squats are getting full blast leaked everywhere. So there is that to be happy about.
Wonder how many people are going to call judgment tokens, marker lights lol

Nids and Tau are the only factions keeping Eldar down. Nids are also the only thing keeping Harlies from jumping back up into the 70%+ winrate range. 40k fight club backs up those stats pretty well.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Aenar wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
Where are these leaks coming from? And are there any for other factions?

From where the nids codex was leaked a month in advance.
Only these points so far, nothing about the other factions.

There is a rumor about 'every 50-55%+ winrate army getting bumps' but A) That one doesn't even HAVE a source and B) That's the only context. It's barely even a rumor but I thought I'd mention it for completeness sake.

 Gene St. Ealer wrote:

Oof, that's a big Maleceptor nerf. And yeah, lazy in general. If you can adjust HVCs, why can't you adjust Boneswords and Deathspitters?

I legit don't know. Maybe they have some edict about having to make troops choices be assembled however and be the same points? IDFK.

What is better to nerf. A single box with a monster, or 3-4 boxes of warriors?

Karol wrote:
What is better to nerf. A single box with a monster, or 3-4 boxes of warriors?

I'm not sure I get it. I'm fine with Warriors getting a nerf overall. This just wasn't the right way to do it. And I do think the Harpy should have been hit harder by the nerf bat.

 Dysartes wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
As for the people wanting to buy more codices - would you actually buy more than twice as many codices if you get the current codex content and content quality (including the amount of errata, update pdfs and lifetime) in a black&white softcover for $25?
Do you also think the majority of buyers would do that?

Make the books a spiral-bound soft-cover for $30 (or equivalent in proper monies), and yeah, I'm probably buying at least twice as many books. There's a lot of books for 8th/9th I'd pick up on a quiet month at that price range that I haven't so far in hardback.

Apply a similar level of discount (and formatting change) to the campaign books, and I might even consider them.

If they made the rulebooks and codices spiral bound and sold them at a lower price I would be way more inclined to actually buy them.

They could release their erratas online alongside a printable updated version of the corresponding book page. Print out the new page and replace the one in your book. Suddenly the physical books are as updateable as the digital ones.

Maleceptor - +50pts (220pts)
Hive Tyrant - +20pts (180pts)
Flyrant - +20pts (210pts)

50 points on top of the other nerfs it got? What the fething feth, GW?

GW continues to impress with their inability to balance rules, and instead just swing that pendulum with all their slow strength.

And cool, Hive Tyrants continue to pay for being effective units.

I knew buying that Codex was a stupid fething idea. Both it and the cards are invalid already...

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Maleceptor - +50pts (220pts)
Hive Tyrant - +20pts (180pts)
Flyrant - +20pts (210pts)

50 points on top of the other nerfs it got? What the fething feth, GW?

GW continues to impress with their inability to balance rules, and instead just swing that pendulum with all their slow strength.

And cool, Hive Tyrants continue to pay for being effective units.

I knew buying that Codex was a stupid fething idea. Both it and the cards are invalid already...

Yea...as much as I love books...not a great product right now.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Maleceptor - +50pts (220pts)
Hive Tyrant - +20pts (180pts)
Flyrant - +20pts (210pts)

50 points on top of the other nerfs it got? What the fething feth, GW?

GW continues to impress with their inability to balance rules, and instead just swing that pendulum with all their slow strength.

And cool, Hive Tyrants continue to pay for being effective units.

I knew buying that Codex was a stupid fething idea. Both it and the cards are invalid already...

Yea...as much as I love books...not a great product right now.

Yet people want better faster balance, it's a catch 22 for printed mediums

Dudeface wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Maleceptor - +50pts (220pts)
Hive Tyrant - +20pts (180pts)
Flyrant - +20pts (210pts)

50 points on top of the other nerfs it got? What the fething feth, GW?

GW continues to impress with their inability to balance rules, and instead just swing that pendulum with all their slow strength.

And cool, Hive Tyrants continue to pay for being effective units.

I knew buying that Codex was a stupid fething idea. Both it and the cards are invalid already...

Yea...as much as I love books...not a great product right now.

Yet people want better faster balance, it's a catch 22 for printed mediums

Its not catch 22.

Better balance involves GW giving crap about the product it releases.

Exactly.

For all the "wait and see"'s out there, there are things in these books that are obvious from the moment they arrive.

Obvious to us, that is. For some reason GW can't ever see the woods for the trees, and is either incapable or just unwilling to do proper testing. And it shows. It always shows. Book after book after book.

If not for Hanlon and his mighty razor, I would honestly think it's intentional.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Exactly.

For all the "wait and see"'s out there, there are things in these books that are obvious from the moment they arrive.

Obvious to us, that is. For some reason GW can't ever see the woods for the trees, and is either incapable or just unwilling to do proper testing. And it shows. It always shows. Book after book after book.

If not for Hanlon and his mighty razor, I would honestly think it's intentional.

Yeah this all true but there will always be some point or rule tweaks and an errata for typos or whatever, it might even only ever be for 1 line in the book but it still renders the book incorrect.

I'm not really sure people what or expect to happen, have a codex that it utterly immutable and never gets faqd or rebalanced? I know people whined about that enough back in the day. Even if it was "closer" to "balanced" at release, it'll still change and everyone buying the book knows that, you read these forums knowing the book was coming out the gates too good and still bought it. Why are you now angry that the balance pass you knew was coming is going to happen and render the printed material (well, 2 pages) obsolete like you knew it would?

Dudeface wrote:
Yeah this all true but there will always be some point or rule tweaks and an errata for typos or whatever, it might even only ever be for 1 line in the book but it still renders the book incorrect.

I'm not talking about the odd error or typo. I'm talking about massive power imbalance that's there from the word go.

How did the Eldar book make it to print with the Harlis in the state they were? The Custodes? The AdMech and Dark Eldar before them. These weren't simply "tweaks" or a point here and there that needed adjusting.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
Yeah this all true but there will always be some point or rule tweaks and an errata for typos or whatever, it might even only ever be for 1 line in the book but it still renders the book incorrect.

I'm not talking about the odd error or typo. I'm talking about massive power imbalance that's there from the word go.

How did the Eldar book make it to print with the Harlis in the state they were? The Custodes? The AdMech and Dark Eldar before them. These weren't simply "tweaks" or a point here and there that needed adjusting.

That's not relevant, you were complaining your printed material was invalidated, by points tweaks. I understand you're trying to say balance it better before release, but it would still need errata and points changes even then.

Yet again, you frequent the forums here enough to have seen that everyone was saying nids were going to be too strong, you knew they'd need to amend the points and or rules to balance them, then bought it anyway just to complain the expected changes happen.

Ideally...

First, the points (and power levels) should not be in the codexes or a chapter approved book. Instead all the points (and power levels) are in PDFs on the website.

Second, the codexes are written in a somewhat reasonable fashion so that they require as few errata to rules as possible, and just slight points changes to tweak the balance between codexes.

But, that second point is a long long way from possible for the current rules writing team. How many times are they going to write a strategem that breaks the game before they learn not to?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Exactly.

For all the "wait and see"'s out there, there are things in these books that are obvious from the moment they arrive.

Obvious to us, that is. For some reason GW can't ever see the woods for the trees, and is either incapable or just unwilling to do proper testing. And it shows. It always shows. Book after book after book.

If not for Hanlon and his mighty razor, I would honestly think it's intentional.

We never guessed that someone would use a Salamanders Stratagem that improves rate of fire at the same time as a Salamanders Stratagem that improves the effectiveness of each hit. - professional GW game designer.

Designing codex balance to be sturdy by eliminating combos would also be a decent idea, even if combos can be very fun they are also very likely to be unbalanced. This can be done by making buffs mutually exclusive, like having one flamer Stratagem only work against Infantry and the other only work against Vehicles or have both Stratagems add to the number of hits such that the bonus is additive instead of multiplicative. Same thing goes for bonuses like Captain and Lieutenant auras, they could both offer +1 to hit under various exclusive circumstances (like in melee or for shooting).

Dudeface wrote:
I'm not really sure people what or expect to happen, have a codex that it utterly immutable and never gets faqd or rebalanced?

Pretty much yes. The only thing that should need to be changed is points costs. I am pretty happy Necron Destroyers got Core, but I am also very happy I didn't buy a codex and just borrow one. Stratagems that deal 5 MW for 1CP or something on that level should not even be in an alpha version of a codex. Strong Stratagems are okay and don't need to be erratad, like the 8th edition Necrons Destroyer Stratagem, it was undercosted, but it was not game-breaking and the points cost of Destroyers could be adjusted to reflect their output when factoring in the damage boost they often got from the underpriced Stratagem.

Moving Stratagems, Chapter Tactics, Combat Doctrines, Super Doctrines, Relics and WL traits from codexes to an annual chapter approved would mean that things can be updated once a year while making it clear how long a book's lifespan is. 0 days is not okay, like the Space Wolves codex which got a day 1 patch to its WL traits because there was something cool they wanted to add but didn't make it in time. Just put it on the noticeboard and add it to the codex next edition. Balance still hasn't been fixed despite all the changes GW is putting out, I can neither play competitive nor casual 40k without investing a huge amount of time into figuring out where the meta is at unless I accept that sometimes I will just crush someone or be crushed based on the tier our lists are at.

Having printed material be occasionally errata'd is inconvenient but understandable, and perfectly tolerable for improving the state of the game.

Having printed material that is so badly designed it needs eratta within weeks of release to fix things that are obvious even without testing is a different matter.

As for intent, it is obvious there's no sinister scheme behind GWs terrible balance, but the powers that be within the company are definitely making a choice not to get better. There is no way they don't know it is such a common source of customer dissatisfaction. My assumption is that they know shifting imbalance drives sales short term and long term consequences be dammed. It fits with the extremely common mentality among corporations for disregarding a net loss in the long term in favor of short term gain.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Having printed material be occasionally errata'd is inconvenient but understandable, and perfectly tolerable for improving the state of the game.

Having printed material that is so badly designed it needs eratta within weeks of release to fix things that are obvious even without testing is a different matter.

As for intent, it is obvious there's no sinister scheme behind GWs terrible balance, but the powers that be within the company are definitely making a choice not to get better. There is no way they don't know it is such a common source of customer dissatisfaction. My assumption is that they know shifting imbalance drives sales short term and long term consequences be dammed. It fits with the extremely common mentality among corporations for disregarding a net loss in the long term in favor of short term gain.

GW have primed the pump with the new regular patches and updates.

10th ed could well be season 1 of 40k ...and the balance will still end up being horrendous. Its just the business mindset of GW.

Dudeface wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
Yeah this all true but there will always be some point or rule tweaks and an errata for typos or whatever, it might even only ever be for 1 line in the book but it still renders the book incorrect.

I'm not talking about the odd error or typo. I'm talking about massive power imbalance that's there from the word go.

How did the Eldar book make it to print with the Harlis in the state they were? The Custodes? The AdMech and Dark Eldar before them. These weren't simply "tweaks" or a point here and there that needed adjusting.

That's not relevant, you were complaining your printed material was invalidated, by points tweaks. I understand you're trying to say balance it better before release, but it would still need errata and points changes even then.

Yet again, you frequent the forums here enough to have seen that everyone was saying nids were going to be too strong, you knew they'd need to amend the points and or rules to balance them, then bought it anyway just to complain the expected changes happen.

It's very relevant. GW should do a better job.

Hecaton wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
Yeah this all true but there will always be some point or rule tweaks and an errata for typos or whatever, it might even only ever be for 1 line in the book but it still renders the book incorrect.

I'm not talking about the odd error or typo. I'm talking about massive power imbalance that's there from the word go.

How did the Eldar book make it to print with the Harlis in the state they were? The Custodes? The AdMech and Dark Eldar before them. These weren't simply "tweaks" or a point here and there that needed adjusting.

That's not relevant, you were complaining your printed material was invalidated, by points tweaks. I understand you're trying to say balance it better before release, but it would still need errata and points changes even then.

Yet again, you frequent the forums here enough to have seen that everyone was saying nids were going to be too strong, you knew they'd need to amend the points and or rules to balance them, then bought it anyway just to complain the expected changes happen.

It's very relevant. GW should do a better job.

No, it really isn't. In this instance it's buying a knowingly faulty product and complaining when they amend it. Every single book gets points changes and always will, because the game isn't static and things need to be rebalanced.

The only way your printed medium will not be obsolete (again, 2 pages of it on average), is if they either don't errata or balance patch things, or don't print the points in the first place.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Unrelated, I note that sisters won BAO, I take it that "AoC is a nerf for sisters" thread was a way off the mark?

Dudeface wrote:

Unrelated, I note that sisters won BAO, I take it that "AoC is a nerf for sisters" thread was a way off the mark?

Yes, Sisters have been rising steadily since AoC dropped, and topping BAO shows the significance of the buff to their faction.

Dudeface wrote:

No, it really isn't. In this instance it's buying a knowingly faulty product and complaining when they amend it. Every single book gets points changes and always will, because the game isn't static and things need to be rebalanced.

The only way your printed medium will not be obsolete (again, 2 pages of it on average), is if they either don't errata or balance patch things, or don't print the points in the first place.

The degree to which it needs to be rebalanced is still too high, however.

Dudeface wrote:
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Unrelated, I note that sisters won BAO, I take it that "AoC is a nerf for sisters" thread was a way off the mark?

 CommunistNapkin wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

Unrelated, I note that sisters won BAO, I take it that "AoC is a nerf for sisters" thread was a way off the mark?

Yes, Sisters have been rising steadily since AoC dropped, and topping BAO shows the significance of the buff to their faction.

Too bloody rose, and most people had their armies as Argent Shroud. That is like saying that marines are doing great when WS win an event to a person who plays IF.

Dudeface wrote:
... then bought it anyway just to complain...

You think I spent money on the book just so I could complain about it later?

You are absolutely mental if you think this.

I bought the Tyranid Codex - going against my personal "Don't by GW printed material!" rule - because I was excited that, I thought, we finally had a Codex after literal fething decades that was fun, dynamic, had a good breadth of options, and also didn't screw over what came before it too much (Hive Guard got munted, I'm not a personal fan of the changes made to 'Stealers, and Tyrants continue to suffer for their past sins, but really everything else came through largely intact). I bought it because I thought that I'd finally get to use a Tyranid book where I wasn't always running up hill, where I could make use of just about any Tyranid model I owned (and I own a lot...) without, in essence, throwing the game away.

The book got delayed in Australia - it came out yesterday - but because I am who I am, that didn't deter me, I got a copy (for cheap) elsewhere and was ready to go. Due to circumstances beyond my control, I haven't had a chance to use it yet, and the book has already changed. It and the cards are already invalid thanks to the FAQs. For people in Oz who aren't me, the book was out of date before they could even get their hands on it.

Do you get how fething annoying that is?

But no, according to you, any complains on the rules are "irrelevant" (because you say so, apparently) and I just bought it to "complain".

Dudeface wrote:
No, it really isn't.

Yes. It really is. And no I wasn't just complaining about points tweaks. It's really fething obvious to anyone with half a God-damned braincell what we're talking about here.

GW books are not fit for purpose upon printing.

It doesn't matter whether it's a tweak to some points, or a wholesale change in an FAQ that dramatically alters a unit or the function of equipment/strats/etc; these things should not be seeing the light of day in the state that they are in.

Your continued attempts to minimise and trivialise the very valid and OBVIOUS issues with the rules in this thread are, to be frank, un-fething-believably insulting.

Karol wrote:

 CommunistNapkin wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

Unrelated, I note that sisters won BAO, I take it that "AoC is a nerf for sisters" thread was a way off the mark?

Yes, Sisters have been rising steadily since AoC dropped, and topping BAO shows the significance of the buff to their faction.

Too bloody rose, and most people had their armies as Argent Shroud. That is like saying that marines are doing great when WS win an event to a person who plays IF.

No, actually. Its exactly the opposite. The complaint about AoC was specifically that it made one Sisters sub-faction worse (or more specifically one unit from one sub-faction didn't get better) and that made the whole faction worse.

Dudeface wrote:

Unrelated, I note that sisters won BAO, I take it that "AoC is a nerf for sisters" thread was a way off the mark?

Absolutely, as expected.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
... then bought it anyway just to complain...

You think I spent money on the book just so I could complain about it later?

You are absolutely mental if you think this.

I bought the Tyranid Codex - going against my personal "Don't by GW printed material!" rule - because I was excited that, I thought, we finally had a Codex after literal fething decades that was fun, dynamic, had a good breadth of options, and also didn't screw over what came before it too much (Hive Guard got munted, I'm not a personal fan of the changes made to 'Stealers, and Tyrants continue to suffer for their past sins, but really everything else came through largely intact). I bought it because I thought that I'd finally get to use a Tyranid book where I wasn't always running up hill, where I could make use of just about any Tyranid model I owned (and I own a lot...) without, in essence, throwing the game away.

The book got delayed in Australia - it came out yesterday - but because I am who I am, that didn't deter me, I got a copy (for cheap) elsewhere and was ready to go. Due to circumstances beyond my control, I haven't had a chance to use it yet, and the book has already changed. It and the cards are already invalid thanks to the FAQs. For people in Oz who aren't me, the book was out of date before they could even get their hands on it.

Do you get how fething annoying that is?

But no, according to you, any complains on the rules are "irrelevant" (because you say so, apparently) and I just bought it to "complain".

Dudeface wrote:
No, it really isn't.

Yes. It really is. And no I wasn't just complaining about points tweaks. It's really fething obvious to anyone with half a God-damned braincell what we're talking about here.

GW books are not fit for purpose upon printing.

It doesn't matter whether it's a tweak to some points, or a wholesale change in an FAQ that dramatically alters a unit or the function of equipment/strats/etc; these things should not be seeing the light of day in the state that they are in.

Your continued attempts to minimise and trivialise the very valid and OBVIOUS issues with the rules in this thread are, to be frank, un-fething-believably insulting.

Edited to a shorter response:

That wasn't what I meant, it was clear that I wasn't insinuating you bought a book with the sole intent of complaining.

We all know GW balance out the gate sucks, you admit as much.

We all know their books need amending as do points etc. Even in a balanced book.

There is a separate topic that isn't rage bashing GW rules writing about the longevity of the printed material you seem to be ignoring in place of simple anger.

The point was, you admit you know the initial printed quality isn't great, you knew it'd need amending, you knew that book would have "obsolete" pages pretty quickly, so don't moan about it was one angle.

The other is, should GW be printing them at all, should the delivery be different etc?

For the millionth time.

Errata are to expected (probably). No one is arguing against this.

You need to codex to play your faction (arguable to some I know but go with it) or a facsimile of it.

It certainly is a problem when said codex is out of date from point of concept even.

Further to this major changes are wrought to the structure of the codex by on going playtesting in the form of tourney results.

A consumer of such product has a right to be angry.

 Mr. Burning wrote:
For the millionth time.

Errata are to expected (probably). No one is arguing against this.

You need to codex to play your faction (arguable to some I know but go with it) or a facsimile of it.

It certainly is a problem when said codex is out of date from point of concept even.

Further to this major changes are wrought to the structure of the codex by on going playtesting in the form of tourney results.

A consumer of such product has a right to be angry.

They're out of date at conception because of the lead time with printers in part. So should they move away from printed books altogether?

I disagree on the anger, it's very well advertised by GW themselves that no book in this game will remain as printed forever. Part of buying a book with the knowledge it'll be amended is understanding it won't remain as printed forever. The quality of the rules writing aside, it's better they fix a wonky book earlier than later.

I would add they should maybe consider a reprint occasionally to roll in the updates.

Although this is getting very far from the topic of nids winning tournaments in May.

GW clearly could do a better job balancing the game. Its unclear why they don't. I feel the playtesting clearly isn't working. (And while we had the much quoted "but we didn't test D3+3 damage dark lances" - that wasn't even the main reason DE were top faction for 9~ months.)

A simple consideration of what Tyranids *get* for their points compared to everything else in the game should have easily demonstrated the problems. Just as with Harlequins, to some extent Eldar, Custodes and indeed Tau before them.

Equally however I feel the window has grown too short for it to really be about encouraging sales. If Maleceptors are say nerfed hard in a few weeks time, you've had... what, a month or two to buy, assemble and play with them? That might suffice for the Esports-esque scene that tries to hit a tournament every week or two - but those guys are a miniscule fraction of the customer base. I feel few people are dropping $1000 to buy a new army... that may be pushed back to being decidedly mid-tier before the glue dries.

Dudeface wrote:

 Mr. Burning wrote:
For the millionth time.

Errata are to expected (probably). No one is arguing against this.

You need to codex to play your faction (arguable to some I know but go with it) or a facsimile of it.

It certainly is a problem when said codex is out of date from point of concept even.

Further to this major changes are wrought to the structure of the codex by on going playtesting in the form of tourney results.

A consumer of such product has a right to be angry.

They're out of date at conception because of the lead time with printers in part. So should they move away from printed books altogether?

Yes.

Tyel wrote:
GW clearly could do a better job balancing the game. Its unclear why they don't. I feel the playtesting clearly isn't working. (And while we had the much quoted "but we didn't test D3+3 damage dark lances" - that wasn't even the main reason DE were top faction for 9~ months.)

We also have some evidence that some of the pros are giving biased feedback to help factions they prefer and hurt factions they can't play well/don't like playing against.
On top of that, GW is keeping secrets from the playtesters - none of the beast snaggas were playtested.

 Jidmah wrote:

Tyel wrote:
GW clearly could do a better job balancing the game. Its unclear why they don't. I feel the playtesting clearly isn't working. (And while we had the much quoted "but we didn't test D3+3 damage dark lances" - that wasn't even the main reason DE were top faction for 9~ months.)

We also have some evidence that some of the pros are giving biased feedback to help factions they prefer and hurt factions they can't play well/don't like playing against.
On top of that, GW is keeping secrets from the playtesters - none of the beast snaggas were playtested.

The first one ugg...

The model thing could be GW not having the models done or rules constructed them in time for play test. Or they don't care to give guidance on base and model size for proxy. I doubt it's them trying to keep things quiet, because there's so much else that could leak.

If your models and rules aren't ready for playtesting prior to printing, then they aren't ready for printing.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
If your models and rules aren't ready for playtesting prior to printing, then they aren't ready for printing.

Sure, but they have sales targets and they "need" something in that release slot. Otherwise you get a sales slump, then the stock will drop, and everyone will run to the forum to declare that GW is dying.

Dudeface wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
... then bought it anyway just to complain...

You think I spent money on the book just so I could complain about it later?

You are absolutely mental if you think this.

I bought the Tyranid Codex - going against my personal "Don't by GW printed material!" rule - because I was excited that, I thought, we finally had a Codex after literal fething decades that was fun, dynamic, had a good breadth of options, and also didn't screw over what came before it too much (Hive Guard got munted, I'm not a personal fan of the changes made to 'Stealers, and Tyrants continue to suffer for their past sins, but really everything else came through largely intact). I bought it because I thought that I'd finally get to use a Tyranid book where I wasn't always running up hill, where I could make use of just about any Tyranid model I owned (and I own a lot...) without, in essence, throwing the game away.

The book got delayed in Australia - it came out yesterday - but because I am who I am, that didn't deter me, I got a copy (for cheap) elsewhere and was ready to go. Due to circumstances beyond my control, I haven't had a chance to use it yet, and the book has already changed. It and the cards are already invalid thanks to the FAQs. For people in Oz who aren't me, the book was out of date before they could even get their hands on it.

Do you get how fething annoying that is?

But no, according to you, any complains on the rules are "irrelevant" (because you say so, apparently) and I just bought it to "complain".

Dudeface wrote:
No, it really isn't.

Yes. It really is. And no I wasn't just complaining about points tweaks. It's really fething obvious to anyone with half a God-damned braincell what we're talking about here.

GW books are not fit for purpose upon printing.

It doesn't matter whether it's a tweak to some points, or a wholesale change in an FAQ that dramatically alters a unit or the function of equipment/strats/etc; these things should not be seeing the light of day in the state that they are in.

Your continued attempts to minimise and trivialise the very valid and OBVIOUS issues with the rules in this thread are, to be frank, un-fething-believably insulting.

Edited to a shorter response:

That wasn't what I meant, it was clear that I wasn't insinuating you bought a book with the sole intent of complaining.

We all know GW balance out the gate sucks, you admit as much.

We all know their books need amending as do points etc. Even in a balanced book.

There is a separate topic that isn't rage bashing GW rules writing about the longevity of the printed material you seem to be ignoring in place of simple anger.

The point was, you admit you know the initial printed quality isn't great, you knew it'd need amending, you knew that book would have "obsolete" pages pretty quickly, so don't moan about it was one angle.

The other is, should GW be printing them at all, should the delivery be different etc?

Can you kindly explain why you feel it okay to say they're selling a finished product then handing over a best test copy when we buy it?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tyel wrote:
GW clearly could do a better job balancing the game. Its unclear why they don't. I feel the playtesting clearly isn't working. (And while we had the much quoted "but we didn't test D3+3 damage dark lances" - that wasn't even the main reason DE were top faction for 9~ months.)

A simple consideration of what Tyranids *get* for their points compared to everything else in the game should have easily demonstrated the problems. Just as with Harlequins, to some extent Eldar, Custodes and indeed Tau before them.

Equally however I feel the window has grown too short for it to really be about encouraging sales. If Maleceptors are say nerfed hard in a few weeks time, you've had... what, a month or two to buy, assemble and play with them? That might suffice for the Esports-esque scene that tries to hit a tournament every week or two - but those guys are a miniscule fraction of the customer base. I feel few people are dropping $1000 to buy a new army... that may be pushed back to being decidedly mid-tier before the glue dries.

It's because a constantly shifting mate leads to more sales as people change their armies to fit the new meta.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
If your models and rules aren't ready for playtesting prior to printing, then they aren't ready for printing.

The models aren't required for playtesting really, as long as a description and relative size is included it's enough to go off.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tresson wrote:

Can you kindly explain why you feel it okay to say they're selling a finished product then handing over a best test copy when we buy it?

I never said it was OK, nor did I ever mention them being a finished product nor does GW. They openly tell you they will change them, they advertise the points changes with a regular rota.

Are you OK with them potentially selling a finished product and never balancing it out or fixing issues with it in the future?

The truth is somewhere in the middle. The books aren't contemporary at launch as we know, but even if they were and have good balance future releases will facilitate some change in all probability.

Dudeface wrote:

 Mr. Burning wrote:
For the millionth time.

Errata are to expected (probably). No one is arguing against this.

You need to codex to play your faction (arguable to some I know but go with it) or a facsimile of it.

It certainly is a problem when said codex is out of date from point of concept even.

Further to this major changes are wrought to the structure of the codex by on going playtesting in the form of tourney results.

A consumer of such product has a right to be angry.

They're out of date at conception because of the lead time with printers in part. So should they move away from printed books altogether?

YES THEY SHOULD MOVE AWAY FROM PRINTED BOOKS. If they can't do a good job the first time, they shouldn't do it at all.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
If your models and rules aren't ready for playtesting prior to printing, then they aren't ready for printing.

Sure, but they have sales targets and they "need" something in that release slot. Otherwise you get a sales slump, then the stock will drop, and everyone will run to the forum to declare that GW is dying.

Not my problem. Bad rules, however, are.

Tresson wrote:
It's because a constantly shifting mate leads to more sales as people change their armies to fit the new meta.

But it doesn't though. Unless you mean on a unit by unit basis?

I mean GW might think it does. But you aren't compelling people to change their armies when you have a new hotness every 6 weeks.

Yet you see try　hards playing different army constantly chasing new op all the time.

You might not think it works. Gw's profits disagree with you.

 Jidmah wrote:

We also have some evidence that some of the pros are giving biased feedback to help factions they prefer and hurt factions they can't play well/don't like playing against.

What specific evidence is that? I'd be interested to read it.

GK write up for 8th ed codex. That Nanavati guy throws in a blurb how GK MW generations and psychic powers had to be reigned in because otherwise GK would be too powerful, but this way they will be just powerful. What followed was GK being one of the worse or the worse faction with a codex in 8th ed. And the same time other "magic" heavy faction did not get any such limitations.

Later on when confronted on the state of GK, Nanavati claimed that GK players just don't know how to play and build a good GK army. And posted the same type of army everyone else playing as an example.

Karol wrote:
GK write up for 8th ed codex. That Nanavati guy throws in a blurb how GK MW generations and psychic powers had to be reigned in because otherwise GK would be too powerful, but this way they will be just powerful. What followed was GK being one of the worse or the worse faction with a codex in 8th ed. And the same time other "magic" heavy faction did not get any such limitations.

Later on when confronted on the state of GK, Nanavati claimed that GK players just don't know how to play and build a good GK army. And posted the same type of army everyone else playing as an example.

GK have been a solid army since their release.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

tneva82 wrote:
Yet you see try　hards playing different army constantly chasing new op all the time.

You might not think it works. Gw's profits disagree with you.

Again, those people already own or borrow whatever they need. I regularly see FB posts of people selling their pile of shame and some post literally tens of thousands of dollars in models.

Karol wrote:
GK write up for 8th ed codex. That Nanavati guy throws in a blurb how GK MW generations and psychic powers had to be reigned in because otherwise GK would be too powerful, but this way they will be just powerful. What followed was GK being one of the worse or the worse faction with a codex in 8th ed. And the same time other "magic" heavy faction did not get any such limitations.

Later on when confronted on the state of GK, Nanavati claimed that GK players just don't know how to play and build a good GK army. And posted the same type of army everyone else playing as an example.

about the bolded part:

What are you referring to? Thousand sons? You mean the army that specialises in OFFENSIVE psychic could do more damage than the one specialised in buffing psychic? (and your smites could be ridiculously stronger when facing anything with the demon keyword)

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Karol wrote:
GK write up for 8th ed codex. That Nanavati guy throws in a blurb how GK MW generations and psychic powers had to be reigned in because otherwise GK would be too powerful, but this way they will be just powerful. What followed was GK being one of the worse or the worse faction with a codex in 8th ed. And the same time other "magic" heavy faction did not get any such limitations.

Later on when confronted on the state of GK, Nanavati claimed that GK players just don't know how to play and build a good GK army. And posted the same type of army everyone else playing as an example.

GK have been a solid army since their release.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

tneva82 wrote:
Yet you see try　hards playing different army constantly chasing new op all the time.

You might not think it works. Gw's profits disagree with you.

Again, those people already own or borrow whatever they need. I regularly see FB posts of people selling their pile of shame and some post literally tens of thousands of dollars in models.

The bolded is an objective lie. They were the worst faction in 8th edition for the majority of the edition. Even after their codex came out, they were still terrible. It took their Campaign book right before 9th to make them decently playable.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mr. Burning wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Having printed material be occasionally errata'd is inconvenient but understandable, and perfectly tolerable for improving the state of the game.

Having printed material that is so badly designed it needs eratta within weeks of release to fix things that are obvious even without testing is a different matter.

As for intent, it is obvious there's no sinister scheme behind GWs terrible balance, but the powers that be within the company are definitely making a choice not to get better. There is no way they don't know it is such a common source of customer dissatisfaction. My assumption is that they know shifting imbalance drives sales short term and long term consequences be dammed. It fits with the extremely common mentality among corporations for disregarding a net loss in the long term in favor of short term gain.

GW have primed the pump with the new regular patches and updates.

10th ed could well be season 1 of 40k ...and the balance will still end up being horrendous. Its just the business mindset of GW.

The thing is, some amount of imbalance, even deliberate imbalance is fine. Just about any competitive game that isn't a traditional sport has some level of imbalance. Games like league of legends have a constantly rotating door of OP champions and that game's been around for over a decade now.

The thing is: Other games generally don't have THIS level of imbalance. A lol champion having a 60% winrate is unheard of, even if you adjust for champions that are unpopular enough to only be played by extremely skilled one-tricks. In the cases where a champion DOES breach that mark, it gets emergency hotfixed within a couple of days. The idea that LoL would release an 80% winrate champion is INSANE.

In fact, the only non-gw game I can think of that's AS poorly balanced as 40k is YUGIOH and YUGIOH is NOT a game you should be basing any sort of design philosophies around.

Having a degree of imbalance that lets small adjustment patches change things up and create new gameplay patterns or make new options viable is a good thing. It keeps the game fresh. Dropping a book that wins 80% of games for free, does not.

You are comparing orange to apples.

In LoL a champion is only one out of five players, in 40K a faction is your whole set up.

It is obvious that a champion in LoL cannot reach 80% win rates, since it would have to be so OP that he can win the game alone irrespective of the other 4 players in the team. LoL has also a ban system, and it isn't uncommon for OP champions to reach the 100% pick/ban, which means that the other team will allow you to pick it only when it has a plan.

To make a real comparison of LoL win rates vs 40K win rates, you should take in consideration only team tournaments and see which is the win% of those with a player of that faction. Unfortunately the number of those games being played are not enough to run any real analysis.

But even without actual data, if you consider that the other members of the team (let's say another 4 to keep a good comparison with LoL) have a 50% chance of winning their match, let's take the most edge case. One player has a faction so strong that he has a 100% win rate. This means that the rest of them to win needs to only win 2 out of the remaining 4 games. This translates to a 68.75% win rate for the team (not counting for mirrors). This is the absolute top result that you can get in a 5 player system.

Now let's apply a win percentage of 75% for the OP faction, which is an impossibly brokenly OP in 40k terms, probably never reached in the history of 40K (you have to take the numbers not accounting for mirrors in this analysis). After you run a bit of math, the win rate for the team is 59.37%.

So as you can see it isn't a really fair comparison. As soon as you consider a system with 5 players, the win% are artifically deflated.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Karol wrote:
GK write up for 8th ed codex. That Nanavati guy throws in a blurb how GK MW generations and psychic powers had to be reigned in because otherwise GK would be too powerful, but this way they will be just powerful. What followed was GK being one of the worse or the worse faction with a codex in 8th ed. And the same time other "magic" heavy faction did not get any such limitations.

Later on when confronted on the state of GK, Nanavati claimed that GK players just don't know how to play and build a good GK army. And posted the same type of army everyone else playing as an example.

GK have been a solid army since their release.

I know you like to defend GW for the sake of defending them, but you don't have to lie when doing it.

ERJAK wrote:


Having a degree of imbalance that lets small adjustment patches change things up and create new gameplay patterns or make new options viable is a good thing. It keeps the game fresh. Dropping a book that wins 80% of games for free, does not.

I don't think it's true. It's not the book that wins X% of games for "free", it's specific lists from that book. And a lot of players can't field those lists or even don't want to. In an era of frequent updates many players are discouraged to chase that flavour of the month and don't do it. That's why I don't think things are that imbalanced. For a simulator probably, for the actual miniature game definitely not.

 Daedalus81 wrote:


GK have been a solid army since their release.

In 8th ed with its chaos FW psyker spam , Inari and eldar soups from day one and later loyal 32+castellan etc? GK got okey, it was 2.0 marine time by then, when the PA book came out at very end of the edition. The fact that GK were getting nerfed every FAQ, CA etc become a meme.

 Jidmah wrote:

Tyel wrote:
GW clearly could do a better job balancing the game. Its unclear why they don't. I feel the playtesting clearly isn't working. (And while we had the much quoted "but we didn't test D3+3 damage dark lances" - that wasn't even the main reason DE were top faction for 9~ months.)

We also have some evidence that some of the pros are giving biased feedback to help factions they prefer and hurt factions they can't play well/don't like playing against.

I'm going to have to [Citation required] that claim - might just be that I've missed it, but even with the low regard I hold the groups that are doing the playtesting, I've not heard anything about this sort of malicious action.

And I mean a proper citation, Jid, not a conspiracy theory.

 Jidmah wrote:
On top of that, GW is keeping secrets from the playtesters - none of the beast snaggas were playtested.

This, on the other hand - like the Dark Lance change post-"playtesting" - is just plain stupid of them. You can't playtest a book properly if you don't have the full breadth of units to test.

Dudeface wrote:
The other is, should GW be printing them at all, should the delivery be different etc?

Different? No.

I could see doing the ebook (or whatever the format was in the past) versions of the books as a release alongside the physical ones, but not instead of.

The player base could grow up a bit, though, and stop complaining that their whole book is "invalid" every time there is a FAQ/errata/CA points release, especially when - as of the next MFM release - those updates won't cost them anything.

These things not getting changed was a problem in earlier editions - getting a set of fixes at a regular pace is something a lot of the people whining now wanted back then, if they were playing at that time.

 Blackie wrote:

I don't think it's true. It's not the book that wins X% of games for "free", it's specific lists from that book. And a lot of players can't field those lists or even don't want to. In an era of frequent updates many players are discouraged to chase that flavour of the month and don't do it. That's why I don't think things are that imbalanced. For a simulator probably, for the actual miniature game definitely not.

Yeah right. Go tell the IG players that it is not their codex being bad, but everyone else playing specific builds, that is the foult for them being bottom tier. Or when knights were build in a such a way that they would auto lose objectives, get shot from behind buildings, but couldn't fire back AND gave up free secondaries. Same with GK before their codex. As long as the opponent didn't have a psyker, which was most armies, a GK opponent was double or triple dipping on secondaries, while at the same time stopping the GK player from doing his. And to make it even more fun, it was still better then 8th ed.

Also the don't play or don't want play argument is all nice and good to hear. Until the "broken" thing in an army is the basic stuff or the stuff that makes people want to play a faction. If suits happen to be "OP" then expecting tau players to bring a full kroot force or an army of no suits is wishful thinking. Same with eldar and their gunboats. GK and their NDKs and interceptors etc. The only way to not see those units is for some hard nerf to them. Even the argument that people don't have the models is an odd one. Top way to play GK in 8th was spam NDKs, spam interceptors and strikes. In 9th the way to play GK , pre AoC change, was spam NDKs, spam interceptors and strikes. Same goes for armies like custodes, knights, harlequins unless someone soups them etc.

Spoletta wrote:
You are comparing orange to apples.

In LoL a champion is only one out of five players, in 40K a faction is your whole set up.

It is obvious that a champion in LoL cannot reach 80% win rates, since it would have to be so OP that he can win the game alone irrespective of the other 4 players in the team. LoL has also a ban system, and it isn't uncommon for OP champions to reach the 100% pick/ban, which means that the other team will allow you to pick it only when it has a plan.

To make a real comparison of LoL win rates vs 40K win rates, you should take in consideration only team tournaments and see which is the win% of those with a player of that faction. Unfortunately the number of those games being played are not enough to run any real analysis.

But even without actual data, if you consider that the other members of the team (let's say another 4 to keep a good comparison with LoL) have a 50% chance of winning their match, let's take the most edge case. One player has a faction so strong that he has a 100% win rate. This means that the rest of them to win needs to only win 2 out of the remaining 4 games. This translates to a 68.75% win rate for the team (not counting for mirrors). This is the absolute top result that you can get in a 5 player system.

Now let's apply a win percentage of 75% for the OP faction, which is an impossibly brokenly OP in 40k terms, probably never reached in the history of 40K (you have to take the numbers not accounting for mirrors in this analysis). After you run a bit of math, the win rate for the team is 59.37%.

So as you can see it isn't a really fair comparison. As soon as you consider a system with 5 players, the win% are artifically deflated.

Really nice post, interesting math you brought up. You cannot make a 1-1 comparison but I also think you are underselling the success LOL is seeing in terms of balance, because unlike 40k team events which are a series of 1v1 battles, LOL is a team game with snowballing, a strong champion can gain an advantage against their opponent and suppress the entire enemy team, not just their lane opponent.

The average first loss for Tyranids on release was round 3, I don't remember the win rate in the first round but it was probably around 80%. Custodes, when their FW units were first released in 8th with beta rules, had an 80% win rate. Bans and counterpicks are a part of LOL strategy, getting matched against a competitive Tyranids list while playing 80% of factions was just a death sentence and you couldn't try to play even and hope to get carried by your team. This is why the balance in 40k needs to be tight. 40k also has the randomness factor which should pull every faction towards a 50% win rate. I still think the people that are saying that 60% win rate is fine should be forced to eat a bag of flour and the wait and see crowd makes me gag, they are wrong every time.

 Dysartes wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

Tyel wrote:
GW clearly could do a better job balancing the game. Its unclear why they don't. I feel the playtesting clearly isn't working. (And while we had the much quoted "but we didn't test D3+3 damage dark lances" - that wasn't even the main reason DE were top faction for 9~ months.)

We also have some evidence that some of the pros are giving biased feedback to help factions they prefer and hurt factions they can't play well/don't like playing against.

I'm going to have to [Citation required] that claim - might just be that I've missed it, but even with the low regard I hold the groups that are doing the playtesting, I've not heard anything about this sort of malicious action.

Someone on Reddit claimed it and attributed the original claim to a judge (head LVO judge I think) and the poster was shouted down for lack of evidence.

These things not getting changed was a problem in earlier editions - getting a set of fixes at a regular pace is something a lot of the people whining now wanted back then, if they were playing at that time.

I think the problem is it seems like GW is using this new policy as an excuse for their lack of quality, instead of a way to enhance the quality beyond that of previous editions. If I told a 5th edition player they could 150% issues out the gate but that they would go down to 100% issues after 1 month and 50% issues after 18 months but the cost would be having to constantly keep up with news and pay money for extra rules to play the game, I think it'd be a lot less interesting instead of the imagined 100% issues on release, 50% issues after 12 months with a single patch.

Printing books works just fine when the design process behind it is solid. Going to digital will not help when the design process is deeply flawed.

Once again, I recall that the best year for GW stock -ever- was a year with an unprecedented amount of balance improvement, community outreach, and price cuts. It goes in a cycle; they do that and meet success, it goes to their head and they get cocky, they make the same mistakes and go into the same rut, then they get out with the same solution. Could the whole process easily be restructured to benefit literally everyone involved? Of course, but humans are bad at doing society large scale and GW is no exception.

I'd settle for them not putting point costs in printed books and instead use the lead time to playtest, then release a free download the day of release.

 vict0988 wrote:
I think the problem is it seems like GW is using this new policy as an excuse for their lack of quality, instead of a way to enhance the quality beyond that of previous editions. If I told a 5th edition player they could 150% issues out the gate but that they would go down to 100% issues after 1 month and 50% issues after 18 months but the cost would be having to constantly keep up with news and pay money for extra rules to play the game, I think it'd be a lot less interesting instead of the imagined 100% issues on release, 50% issues after 12 months with a single patch.

While we have seen from gaming, that since the prevalence of the internet and online updates a 'we'll fix it later' attitude to bugs is much more prevalent I think there is another massive factor that has a much bigger impact on the quality of codices being released between 5th edition and now.

5th was a codex every ~4-5 months. 9th is a codex every 1-2 months.

Give every codex in 9th another 3 months of testing time instead of dragging the writer off to the next project would probably have a very significant impact on the overall balance of the game.

The issue for comparisons with League, Dota etc is just the number of games and sources of information.

So to go with Dota, if I'm reading it right, in the last week there were 876k games with a Pudge - out of 3.2 million games in total. By contrast - there were... what? A few thousand 40k tournament games where the results are recorded? Of which low hundreds were Tyranids. If you start talking about individual Space Marine chapters its about 50 - or less.

You only have recorded information from a tiny pool of players. Which is why I think you get big swings. Because things can be "secretly good" - but if no one is playing them, no one finds out. Especially when you see factions buffed/nerfed, the big swing in win% is when the pro/esport scene ditch or join that faction. (This isn't to ignore the fact top players have made claims that have not been verified - but others have been, for example most recently with Sisters.)

So tl/dr, 40k balance should probably be less data driven and instead done on first principles.

There's always a battle over what should go up - and what should go down, where the "par" value for points is etc. But it should have been obvious, in a world where say a Heavy Intercessor is 28 points, where a Skorpekh Destroyer is 30 points (and that's only having been cut from 35), that a Tyranid Warrior, now with B3+ S5, T5, so effectively a 3 shot S5 AP-2 gun, and 4 S7 AP-2 2 damage attacks... shouldn't be 25 points. Even before you consider that Tyranids get better buffs. And this logic carries on through all the other problematic things.

If they want to go "new par, its fine" - that's okay too. But then we need "new season, new points" for every faction in the game.

ERJAK wrote:
The bolded is an objective lie. They were the worst faction in 8th edition for the majority of the edition. Even after their codex came out, they were still terrible. It took their Campaign book right before 9th to make them decently playable.

Wait - I thought we were talking about 9th?




Automatically Appended Next Post:

EviscerationPlague wrote:
I know you like to defend GW for the sake of defending them, but you don't have to lie when doing it.

Yea, so apparently I didn't read that he mentioned 8th. My bad. I'm guessing he was insinuating that Nanavanti helped to nerf GK?

Tyel wrote:
The issue for comparisons with League, Dota etc is just the number of games and sources of information.

So to go with Dota, if I'm reading it right, in the last week there were 876k games with a Pudge - out of 3.2 million games in total. By contrast - there were... what? A few thousand 40k tournament games where the results are recorded? Of which low hundreds were Tyranids. If you start talking about individual Space Marine chapters its about 50 - or less.

You only have recorded information from a tiny pool of players. Which is why I think you get big swings. Because things can be "secretly good" - but if no one is playing them, no one finds out. Especially when you see factions buffed/nerfed, the big swing in win% is when the pro/esport scene ditch or join that faction. (This isn't to ignore the fact top players have made claims that have not been verified - but others have been, for example most recently with Sisters.)

So tl/dr, 40k balance should probably be less data driven and instead done on first principles.

There's always a battle over what should go up - and what should go down, where the "par" value for points is etc. But it should have been obvious, in a world where say a Heavy Intercessor is 28 points, where a Skorpekh Destroyer is 30 points (and that's only having been cut from 35), that a Tyranid Warrior, now with B3+ S5, T5, so effectively a 3 shot S5 AP-2 gun, and 4 S7 AP-2 2 damage attacks... shouldn't be 25 points. Even before you consider that Tyranids get better buffs. And this logic carries on through all the other problematic things.

If they want to go "new par, its fine" - that's okay too. But then we need "new season, new points" for every faction in the game.

This would make sense if gw games were complicated that need data to fix balance.

Problem being the balance issues are found on first cursory reading. If imbalance wasn''t gw's goal they could fix problems by giving any school kid who can read english and kid would point them out.

Problem being balance hurts gw's profits as try hards wouldnt be buying new models to stay up with what's broken.

Imbalance is feature. Not a bug.

tneva82 wrote:
This would make sense if gw games were complicated that need data to fix balance.

Problem being the balance issues are found on first cursory reading. If imbalance wasn''t gw's goal they could fix problems by giving any school kid who can read english and kid would point them out.

Problem being balance hurts gw's profits as try hards wouldnt be buying new models to stay up with what's broken.

Imbalance is feature. Not a bug.

I challenge you not to read anything online prior to your next codex purchase or talk to anyone about the codex and then make a list of adjustments you think would fix the codex without using any spreadsheets or playing any games beforehand. Veteran 40k tournament players could not tell that Canoptek Reanimators were garbage or that Harlequins were OP in 9th on release. The truth is somewhere in the middle between "it's impossible to figure out how an army will do before thousands of competitive games have been played and tens of thousands of people have read the codex" and "a middle-schooler could fix this in a couple of hours".

 vict0988 wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
This would make sense if gw games were complicated that need data to fix balance.

Problem being the balance issues are found on first cursory reading. If imbalance wasn''t gw's goal they could fix problems by giving any school kid who can read english and kid would point them out.

Problem being balance hurts gw's profits as try hards wouldnt be buying new models to stay up with what's broken.

Imbalance is feature. Not a bug.

I challenge you not to read anything online prior to your next codex purchase or talk to anyone about the codex and then make a list of adjustments you think would fix the codex without using any spreadsheets or playing any games beforehand. Veteran 40k tournament players could not tell that Canoptek Reanimators were garbage or that Harlequins were OP in 9th on release. The truth is somewhere in the middle between "it's impossible to figure out how an army will do before thousands of competitive games have been played and tens of thousands of people have read the codex" and "a middle-schooler could fix this in a couple of hours".

Why no spreadsheets/playing games? These are tools that are available to the official designers themselves.

tneva82 wrote:

This would make sense if gw games were complicated that need data to fix balance.

Problem being the balance issues are found on first cursory reading. If imbalance wasn''t gw's goal they could fix problems by giving any school kid who can read english and kid would point them out.

Problem being balance hurts gw's profits as try hards wouldnt be buying new models to stay up with what's broken.

Imbalance is feature. Not a bug.

Right so over in Horus Heresy land...

Got my orders in, 1 copy of the box from one store, 2 copies of the box from another plus 2 kratos, 1 deimos, 1 liber hereticus, 1 liber astartes, 1 special weapon upgrade, 1 heavy weapon upgrade.

1x big box, 1x loyalists book, 1x kratos, 1x heavy weapons for me

I must be blessed by the Omnissiah today - got in early and just ordered!

Well, the queue was actually fine for me, got in at 09.55am and managed to order the boxed set, 2 x liber books and the bookmark.

I went for

1x boxset
1x Kratos
1x Deimos
1x Special Weapons box
1x heavy weapons box

...people are commenting on all the stuff they are buying. They don't know if the units in the box set will be bad or not. People will do the same thing with Squats or any large splash release. Because people will buy models despite rules. On eBay in the US they have sold over 500 boxed sets and counting.

 vict0988 wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
This would make sense if gw games were complicated that need data to fix balance.

Problem being the balance issues are found on first cursory reading. If imbalance wasn''t gw's goal they could fix problems by giving any school kid who can read english and kid would point them out.

Problem being balance hurts gw's profits as try hards wouldnt be buying new models to stay up with what's broken.

Imbalance is feature. Not a bug.

I challenge you not to read anything online prior to your next codex purchase or talk to anyone about the codex and then make a list of adjustments you think would fix the codex without using any spreadsheets or playing any games beforehand.

What kind of challenge is that? Walking is more difficult that spotting the crap in a GW book & coming up with a fix.

 vict0988 wrote:
Veteran 40k tournament players could not tell that Canoptek Reanimators were garbage or that Harlequins were OP in 9th on release.

Suuure they didn't. Next you'll try & convince us that GW makes perfectly balanced games.
I'm sorry, but anyone telling you they didn't think Voidweavers were under-costed & would soon be a problem at best simply didn't read the materiel & is now making excuses

ccs wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
This would make sense if gw games were complicated that need data to fix balance.

Problem being the balance issues are found on first cursory reading. If imbalance wasn''t gw's goal they could fix problems by giving any school kid who can read english and kid would point them out.

Problem being balance hurts gw's profits as try hards wouldnt be buying new models to stay up with what's broken.

Imbalance is feature. Not a bug.

I challenge you not to read anything online prior to your next codex purchase or talk to anyone about the codex and then make a list of adjustments you think would fix the codex without using any spreadsheets or playing any games beforehand.

What kind of challenge is that? Walking is more difficult that spotting the crap in a GW book & coming up with a fix.

 vict0988 wrote:
Veteran 40k tournament players could not tell that Canoptek Reanimators were garbage or that Harlequins were OP in 9th on release.

Suuure they didn't. Next you'll try & convince us that GW makes perfectly balanced games.
I'm sorry, but anyone telling you they didn't think Voidweavers were under-costed & would soon be a problem at best simply didn't read the materiel & is now making excuses

40k has awful balance.

But, if it's so easy, fix Guard, Tyranids, and... Let's say Daemons. Right now. Easier than walking, right?

I thought we were talking about seeing stuff is obviously broken at a single glance.

That is not the same as fixing it. QA don't propose fixes, they identify problems. Fixing it is the designers responsibility. It is literally part of what they are paid to do.

ccs wrote:
What kind of challenge is that? Walking is more difficult that spotting the crap in a GW book & coming up with a fix.

According to ccs, coming up with a fix is easy too.

 vict0988 wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
This would make sense if gw games were complicated that need data to fix balance.

Problem being the balance issues are found on first cursory reading. If imbalance wasn''t gw's goal they could fix problems by giving any school kid who can read english and kid would point them out.

Problem being balance hurts gw's profits as try hards wouldnt be buying new models to stay up with what's broken.

Imbalance is feature. Not a bug.

I challenge you not to read anything online prior to your next codex purchase or talk to anyone about the codex and then make a list of adjustments you think would fix the codex without using any spreadsheets or playing any games beforehand. Veteran 40k tournament players could not tell that Canoptek Reanimators were garbage or that Harlequins were OP in 9th on release. The truth is somewhere in the middle between "it's impossible to figure out how an army will do before thousands of competitive games have been played and tens of thousands of people have read the codex" and "a middle-schooler could fix this in a couple of hours".

Are you really claiming that we wouldn't be able to tell that the Reanimator, an overly expensive model with minimal benefit, would be bad without internet chatter?

Man the GW defense is killing me.

EviscerationPlague wrote:

Are you really claiming that we wouldn't be able to tell that the Reanimator, an overly expensive model with minimal benefit, would be bad without internet chatter?

Man the GW defense is killing me.

Thats litterally what happened tho. People thought the reanimator would be OP and that Quinns were just fine

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

Are you really claiming that we wouldn't be able to tell that the Reanimator, an overly expensive model with minimal benefit, would be bad without internet chatter?

Man the GW defense is killing me.

Thats litterally what happened tho. People thought the reanimator would be OP and that Quinns were just fine

I did not see anyone claim the Reanimator would be OP. I want a source on that.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
This would make sense if gw games were complicated that need data to fix balance.

Problem being the balance issues are found on first cursory reading. If imbalance wasn''t gw's goal they could fix problems by giving any school kid who can read english and kid would point them out.

Problem being balance hurts gw's profits as try hards wouldnt be buying new models to stay up with what's broken.

Imbalance is feature. Not a bug.

I challenge you not to read anything online prior to your next codex purchase or talk to anyone about the codex and then make a list of adjustments you think would fix the codex without using any spreadsheets or playing any games beforehand. Veteran 40k tournament players could not tell that Canoptek Reanimators were garbage or that Harlequins were OP in 9th on release. The truth is somewhere in the middle between "it's impossible to figure out how an army will do before thousands of competitive games have been played and tens of thousands of people have read the codex" and "a middle-schooler could fix this in a couple of hours".

Why no spreadsheets/playing games? These are tools that are available to the official designers themselves.

Because playtesting and using spreadsheets is not "a cursory reading", which tneva claimed would be enough. First GW should design the rules to be fun to play with and have them playtested by casual players. Then GW should invest in a spreadsheet that covers every unit's effectiveness when attacking a small variety of enemies (5 or so different profiles) and when being attacked by a small variety of enemies (again around 5 different weapon profiles). This should be the first principles stage of assigning points, units that are more mobile, durable or killy should cost more points. Units with broad effectiveness should not be as effective as units with a more narrow focus, being able to kill tanks is good, being able to kill hordes and tanks is better. Then each unit needs to get spammed and each Strat, Relic, etc. needs to be used at least once to better understand their in a tactical situation outside of a spreadsheet where the player is trying to break the game with combos and stuff like that. Each unit will be assigned to one competitive playtester who combines the thoughts and experiences all the competitive playtesters who used that unit had and deliver it to the developers to fine-tune the points and iron out any issues with bad RAW issues that can cause things like infinite attacks or just stupid combos like liquifiers with that one Drukhari sub-faction.

I think it would be good to try to allow the competitive playtesters to make videos on their experiences and the rules that will be coming out for one codex so they can spend earn some money doing the work and thus have an incentive to spend more time playtesting instead of making regular content. See whether more testing gets done and whether sales go down because people know about the rules far in advance instead the week before launch.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

Are you really claiming that we wouldn't be able to tell that the Reanimator, an overly expensive model with minimal benefit, would be bad without internet chatter?

Man the GW defense is killing me.

Thats litterally what happened tho. People thought the reanimator would be OP and that Quinns were just fine

I remember the opposite. People saw the points cost on the Reanimator and were quick to dismiss it as useless.

For example, here's Goonhammer breaking down the then-new RP rules and saying the Reanimator isn't worth it.

That sure doesn't seem like 'Veteran 40k tournament players could not tell that Canoptek Reanimators were garbage (...) on release'.

Edit: In fact, in their main Necron codex review, they stated:

Finally, the Canoptek Reanimator. I do not “get” the Canoptek Reanimator. The Reanimation Beam is clearly very good to have on a big unit that is under fire, but with the effect being so short ranged and requiring visiblity, it’s frequently going to be impossible to set it up without this being visible, and it’s so squishy for the cost that it’s a tough sell. The Reanimation Prioritisation strat makes this just that bit closer to worthwhile as alpha strike prevention, as you can hide it behind terrain (but still able to see the unit you want to protect at an angle or something) and turn the beam on when your more precious stuff is shot. You could also theoretically bring this on from strategic reserves to do the same later in the game. With that option open I guess you can maybe make this work (and it’s obviously considerably better against pure melee matchups) but the use remains so clunky that I’m yet to be convinced this is something I want in my armies.

Was Goonhammer somehow the only site that got it right? You tell me.

I do recall that DakkaDakka had the opinion that the Tau were going to be broken in the early 9th edition (and instead they became one of the weakest factions until their 9th ed codex).

Or that the Hammerfall Bunker was going to be OP (has anyone even played that thing?).

Admittedly sometimes it is very easy to tell what is going to be broken or worthless, but sometimes is not always.

 catbarf wrote:
[

I remember the opposite. People saw the points cost on the Reanimator and were quick to dismiss it as useless.

For example, here's Goonhammer breaking down the then-new RP rules and saying the Reanimator isn't worth it.

That sure doesn't seem like 'Veteran 40k tournament players could not tell that Canoptek Reanimators were garbage (...) on release'.

seems like i misremembered that, sorry.

But weren't the harlequins thought as "fair" on release?

 VladimirHerzog wrote:


seems like i misremembered that, sorry.

But weren't the harlequins thought as "fair" on release?

How about you tell us? It's your argument, you should be supplying us with the evidence to back it up.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:


seems like i misremembered that, sorry.

But weren't the harlequins thought as "fair" on release?

How about you tell us? It's your argument, you should be supplying us with the evidence to back it up.

so i found this article which seems to put them at 7-9/10, and nothing in there seemed to call for heavy nerfs

we even get this from Nick

I think they would be a 7 out of 10. Maybe an 8 if someone really mastered them. Capable of winning a Major, but it would be hard, and a super major is probably out of reach.

even in the goonhammer codex review, they weren't considering bringing 9x voidweavers in every lists and seemed to favor bikes over them

ccs wrote:
Walking is more difficult that spotting the crap in a GW book & coming up with a fix.

The biggest challenge is probably avoiding rumours, if you can do that for your next codex purchase I look forward to your post explaining every issue.

 vict0988 wrote:
Veteran 40k tournament players could not tell that Canoptek Reanimators were garbage or that Harlequins were OP in 9th on release.

Suuure they didn't. Next you'll try & convince us that GW makes perfectly balanced games.
I'm sorry, but anyone telling you they didn't think Voidweavers were under-costed & would soon be a problem at best simply didn't read the materiel & is now making excuses

https://www.goonhammer.com/the-codex-aeldari-competitive-roundtable/

EviscerationPlague wrote:
Are you really claiming that we wouldn't be able to tell that the Reanimator, an overly expensive model with minimal benefit, would be bad without internet chatter?

Man the GW defense is killing me.

I called it right. Tabletop Titans, Sup3rSaiy3n and Werner Born did not. All you have to do is find a thread discussing something previewed or leaked is OP and you will find an equal number of people saying that thing is underpowered. I got Ork Boyz wrong at the beginning of 9th and for the 9th edition codex. I was kind of right about Hammerhead, I predicted they would be OP, which they are and that they might still not see much use because other units could end up being more OP, which ended up being the case. I was right about Deathwing not being a big deal. That does not leave me with the flawless record it would take to say that a cursory reading will catch every flaw in a codex. I'll probably catch a couple of flaws with a cursory reading and I'll assume there are a couple of flaws which end up not being a big deal and any changes I would suggest would end up producing a bigger flaw. I also have experience writing a lot of codexes which most posters probably don't, that has also humbled me a few times.

Saying GW has a terrible playtesting system is the opposite of defending GW. Telling people not to buy codexes where possible, is the opposite of defending GW. I barely play anymore because I am pissed at Armour of Contempt and Hammer of the Emperor.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:


seems like i misremembered that, sorry.

But weren't the harlequins thought as "fair" on release?

How about you tell us? It's your argument, you should be supplying us with the evidence to back it up.

so i found this article which seems to put them at 7-9/10, and nothing in there seemed to call for heavy nerfs

we even get this from Nick

I think they would be a 7 out of 10. Maybe an 8 if someone really mastered them. Capable of winning a Major, but it would be hard, and a super major is probably out of reach.

even in the goonhammer codex review, they weren't considering bringing 9x voidweavers in every lists and seemed to favor bikes over them

It did take about a week looking at the book for people to figure out how bonkers Harlequins were.

IMO it took second for people to notice how much voids can do and what points costs they have. I would say 1-2 min max, depending if someone worked of leaks or an actual pdf of the book.

Karol wrote:
IMO it took second for people to notice how much voids can do and what points costs they have. I would say 1-2 min max, depending if someone worked of leaks or an actual pdf of the book.

And yet, it was still at least a week for people to figure out Harlequins as a whole were busted.

ERJAK wrote:

Karol wrote:
IMO it took second for people to notice how much voids can do and what points costs they have. I would say 1-2 min max, depending if someone worked of leaks or an actual pdf of the book.

And yet, it was still at least a week for people to figure out Harlequins as a whole were busted.

Is that really your argument when the "rules writers" have how much time to write these rules?

EviscerationPlague wrote:

ERJAK wrote:

Karol wrote:
IMO it took second for people to notice how much voids can do and what points costs they have. I would say 1-2 min max, depending if someone worked of leaks or an actual pdf of the book.

And yet, it was still at least a week for people to figure out Harlequins as a whole were busted.

Is that really your argument when the "rules writers" have how much time to write these rules?

Who is making excuses for GW or their designers? They have low talent and they are mismanaged. I'm just being realistic about what level of effort and management would be required to produce good content. GW can get playtesting done for free but they are completely wasting the playtesters' time because of their production schedule and a seeming lack of making basic preparations for playtesting by considering available combos and doing a couple of spreadsheets to ensure that units need to be adjusted 10% during final playtesting instead of 30% 4 weeks after release.

EviscerationPlague wrote:

ERJAK wrote:

Karol wrote:
IMO it took second for people to notice how much voids can do and what points costs they have. I would say 1-2 min max, depending if someone worked of leaks or an actual pdf of the book.

And yet, it was still at least a week for people to figure out Harlequins as a whole were busted.

Is that really your argument when the "rules writers" have how much time to write these rules?

We dont know how much time they have to write them, we don't know how many playtesters get the rules, we don't know what rules the playtesters get, we don't know what the lead time is, we don't know anything really. So you're angrily defending a position with 0 knowledge of their operating process. Nobody is saying they do a good job, but you can't in honestly say the writers do a bad job either, or the play testers, as there is no context.

Dudeface wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

ERJAK wrote:

Karol wrote:
IMO it took second for people to notice how much voids can do and what points costs they have. I would say 1-2 min max, depending if someone worked of leaks or an actual pdf of the book.

And yet, it was still at least a week for people to figure out Harlequins as a whole were busted.

Is that really your argument when the "rules writers" have how much time to write these rules?

We dont know how much time they have to write them, we don't know how many playtesters get the rules, we don't know what rules the playtesters get, we don't know what the lead time is, we don't know anything really. So you're angrily defending a position with 0 knowledge of their operating process. Nobody is saying they do a good job, but you can't in honestly say the writers do a bad job either, or the play testers, as there is no context.

If you have 3 hours to update a codex you still have no reason to put in a bunch of stupid gak like the Custodes Chapter Tactics and Combat Doctrines, it was a completely functional faction and the designer(s) made it way more complicated and completely OP.

 Dysartes wrote:
I'm going to have to [Citation required] that claim - might just be that I've missed it, but even with the low regard I hold the groups that are doing the playtesting, I've not heard anything about this sort of malicious action.

What kind of citation are you expecting? A shaky cellphone video secretly taken of them talking at a tournament? A link to a paywalled podcast taken down regularly a few months after its release? Someone time traveling back in time to retrospectively record what was slipped in a twitch livestream?
It's not like there any public blog articles about how they are manipulating GW while twirling their moustaches, they aren't dumb enough to jeopardize their livelihood by putting that in writing.

There are more of a few coincidences of professional players saying as much, and seeing how their actual blog posts from months earlier align with what ends in GW's rules updates there is sufficient circumstantial evidence to make it way more than just a conspiracy theory.
And just for the record, I wasn't even aware of that LVO reddit thing, but it seems to fit the bill.

It's also important to not blame playtest groups in general, but certain professional players whose opinions seem to weigh more than other's. But a few rotten apples are enough to spoil the bunch.

 vict0988 wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

ERJAK wrote:

Karol wrote:
IMO it took second for people to notice how much voids can do and what points costs they have. I would say 1-2 min max, depending if someone worked of leaks or an actual pdf of the book.

And yet, it was still at least a week for people to figure out Harlequins as a whole were busted.

Is that really your argument when the "rules writers" have how much time to write these rules?

We dont know how much time they have to write them, we don't know how many playtesters get the rules, we don't know what rules the playtesters get, we don't know what the lead time is, we don't know anything really. So you're angrily defending a position with 0 knowledge of their operating process. Nobody is saying they do a good job, but you can't in honestly say the writers do a bad job either, or the play testers, as there is no context.

If you have 3 hours to update a codex you still have no reason to put in a bunch of stupid gak like the Custodes Chapter Tactics and Combat Doctrines, it was a completely functional faction and the designer(s) made it way more complicated and completely OP.

Interesting take, you have 30 minutes to propose an alternative to doctrines and by extension super doctrines for space marines and all relevant chapters. It must leave them perfectly functional I.e. able to compete but not OP. Go.

FWIW. I think everyone thought the reanimator sucked at 110 points.

I think the issue with Harlequins is that they were in the Eldar Codex. If this had been a separate release, I think everyone would have concluded it was broken immediately. Instead however (if you are anything like me) you only reached those datasheets after an hour or something of Eldar, and so didn't really give it suitable attention. (I spent far more time for instance trying to work out why Ynnari rules seemed designed not to work like the fluff than looking at the Voidweaver). Which isn't a good excuse for rules writers - but may explain some commentary at the time.

I think my issue is that basic mathhammer analysis is not difficult. Someone at GW - given say a day (an hour or two probably but lets be generous) - should be able to set up in a spreadsheet to math out every codex. This would pick out obvious "mathhammer" imbalances. If a unit is incredibly lethal/pillowfisted, tough/fragile for the points, it should be obvious incredibly quickly. There is more to 40k than this (mostly movement abilities, Obsec etc - things relating to scoring whose impact is harder to model in a speadsheet) - but basic comparisons are still not that difficult. If my 100 points is faster, does more damage and takes less damage than your 100 points its going to be a problem.

 Jidmah wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:
I'm going to have to [Citation required] that claim - might just be that I've missed it, but even with the low regard I hold the groups that are doing the playtesting, I've not heard anything about this sort of malicious action.

What kind of citation are you expecting? A shaky cellphone video secretly taken of them talking at a tournament? A link to a paywalled podcast taken down regularly a few months after its release? Someone time traveling back in time to retrospectively record what was slipped in a twitch livestream?
It's not like there any public blog articles about how they are manipulating GW while twirling their moustaches, they aren't dumb enough to jeopardize their livelihood by putting that in writing.

There are more of a few coincidences of professional players saying as much, and seeing how their actual blog posts from months earlier align with what ends in GW's rules updates there is sufficient circumstantial evidence to make it way more than just a conspiracy theory.

So, post that evidence then, even if it is circumstantial? Which professional players? What did they say? What blog posts? What evidence is there that elevates that pretty big claim above a baseless conspiracy theory?

I really don't understand this response.

 catbarf wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:
I'm going to have to [Citation required] that claim - might just be that I've missed it, but even with the low regard I hold the groups that are doing the playtesting, I've not heard anything about this sort of malicious action.

What kind of citation are you expecting? A shaky cellphone video secretly taken of them talking at a tournament? A link to a paywalled podcast taken down regularly a few months after its release? Someone time traveling back in time to retrospectively record what was slipped in a twitch livestream?
It's not like there any public blog articles about how they are manipulating GW while twirling their moustaches, they aren't dumb enough to jeopardize their livelihood by putting that in writing.

There are more of a few coincidences of professional players saying as much, and seeing how their actual blog posts from months earlier align with what ends in GW's rules updates there is sufficient circumstantial evidence to make it way more than just a conspiracy theory.

So, post that evidence then, even if it is circumstantial? Which professional players? What did they say? What blog posts? What evidence is there that elevates that pretty big claim above a baseless conspiracy theory?

I really don't understand this response.

I can help with a translation of the response: "I have no evidence and am just throwing out baseless claims".

It's an especially odd claim, as we already know from playtesters that they have absolutely no idea whether GW will take their feedback on board. Even if feedback is acted upon, there's no guarantee it'll be in the way the playtesters recommend. Tabletop Tactics have previously mentioned the Dark Lance as an example, where they playtested it at Damage D6 and were surprised to see it appear in the Codex at D3+3, since they were never given that version to test.

I don't know about hard evidence of "haha, I'm rigging this cos I love faction X and hate faction Y" - but I think there is definitely some sense of "for this faction to be playable, it must be capable of reliably winning a major. To reliably win a major it must have a huge advantage versus 90% of the field. And therefore...."

Whereas to my mind a faction where a good player might expect to go 3-2 is in a perfectly reasonable spot. Survivor bias can kick in here - but if everyone got such a result that would be sort of what you'd expect to see in a balanced game. Are for instance post-nerf Custodes now "unplayable?" Well the win% would suggest no. But equally, I don't expect to see them winning majors.

As said, I think we do have evidence where people reporting back to GW think something is too good or too bad - and yet their reasoning would seem to be wrong. Hence we get the results we do.

I mean I can't believe every playtester said "these Tyranids are crazy, literally everything but the gaunts could go up 10%" and GW went "nah, what do they know". Mainly because apparently someone did say 6 point Termagants would be broken hence pushing them up to 7.

Tyel wrote:
I don't know about hard evidence of "haha, I'm rigging this cos I love faction X and hate faction Y" - but I think there is definitely some sense of "for this faction to be playable, it must be capable of reliably winning a major. To reliably win a major it must have a huge advantage versus 90% of the field. And therefore...."

Whereas to my mind a faction where a good player might expect to go 3-2 is in a perfectly reasonable spot. Survivor bias can kick in here - but if everyone got such a result that would be sort of what you'd expect to see in a balanced game. Are for instance post-nerf Custodes now "unplayable?" Well the win% would suggest no. But equally, I don't expect to see them winning majors.

As said, I think we do have evidence where people reporting back to GW think something is too good or too bad - and yet their reasoning would seem to be wrong. Hence we get the results we do.

I mean I can't believe every playtester said "these Tyranids are crazy, literally everything but the gaunts could go up 10%" and GW went "nah, what do they know". Mainly because apparently someone did say 6 point Termagants would be broken hence pushing them up to 7.

your assuming an awful lot here with absolutely nothing to show for it.

We have no evidence to show that GW listens to playtesters. Infact its more like the opposite, we know they push things that were never tested to begin with.

Do you have something that paints to Termagants being increased in cost as a result of playtester feedback?
And that playtesters pushed Nids, Tau, Custodes, Eldar, Quins, Dark Eldar and Orks into broken OP? That the last 5 out of 6 books released were OP because of testers? And no one playing GSC so they get fethed, but somehow end up with perhaps the 'best' internally balanced codex that mostly just suffers from everyone else being in a different league?

It certainly reads like you have nothing and are just trying to divert blame, that these unknown playtesters are the real reason for GW constantly pushing out more and more broken crap.
Because no one has ever heard of stubborn developers that refuse to listen to feedback because they think they know best, or don't have time to test at all because there is another codex due next tuesday already and they still need to come up with 2 'chapter tactics' traits.

n/m.

I typed up a long post about this topic, but in the end I'll just be getting more rude responses of who can't even parse posts longer than six words properly, are quick to throw about insults just to write the exact same thing as I did afterwards.

Feel free to use google and the dakka search function to find out yourself if you care. I see no reason to help this poor excuse for a community anymore.

edit: One last thing though, though it should be absolutely clear to anyone with more than two braincells - I absolutely was not referring to tabletop titans. I'm like 99% sure they do the best job playtesting they can.

 Jidmah wrote:
n/m.

I typed up a long post about this topic, but in the end I'll just be getting more rude responses of who can't even parse posts longer than six words properly, are quick to throw about insults just to write the exact same thing as I did afterwards.

Feel free to use google and the dakka search function to find out yourself if you care. I see no reason to help this poor excuse for a community anymore.

Putting people on ignore makes it feel like they never existed at all.
Super satisfying.

 Ordana wrote:
your assuming an awful lot here with absolutely nothing to show for it.

We have no evidence to show that GW listens to playtesters. Infact its more like the opposite, we know they push things that were never tested to begin with.

Do you have something that paints to Termagants being increased in cost as a result of playtester feedback?

You sort of come at this obliquely.

I'm not blaming anyone but GW. Its their game. They make the final decisions. The end.

But that doesn't mean you can't comment on the playtestering - which is happening, and is seemingly resulting in these books. Yes you can conclude that GW just writes something, and then ignores all feedback - or releases something completely different. But I'm not sure the evidence for that is there.

So we have the TTT guys saying they tested D6 damage lances rather than D3+3. Okay, sure. Makes sense.
But did they test 10 point wyches? Cheap bloodbrides? 16 point Incubi? DT liquifier Wracks & Cronos? Were Raiders somehow "fine" at 85 points with D6 damage Lances, even though they still facilitated all of the above? Drazhar & Succubi? Because I'd argue these elements were a much greater impact than the 5-6 D3+3 damage lances you saw in a typical early DE era list.

I mean I can do the whole "people get it wrong thing". I remember the doom and gloom in DE circles (which I shared) when the codex was being previewed - because there seemed a real lack of power compared to say Marines. And then you played it and went "oh look, hang on, with all these upgrades and stacked rules everything I touch just dies - and I can reliably touch things 20" away."

Now I'm sure the TTT guys just want what's best for the game. I mean name dropping sounds weird - but I even met them once at an event. And as a DE player I can tell you "assault DE" has kind of been an awful experience for the best part of 10 years. (I mean it kept going into 6th with the 5th codex - but the legs increasingly gave out on it.) So its not surprising you might think - in a world of pure theory - that all these buffs would be fine. But as said, a few games of "I move my transports up and maybe corner to shoot a thing. Okay now I disembark and... delete half your army" should have provoked a question mark.

I'm afraid for Termagants going to 7 points I have "people chatting on the internet". So yeah, they may have just been making it up.

Dudeface wrote:
...you have 30 minutes to propose an alternative to doctrines and by extension super doctrines for space marines and all relevant chapters. It must leave them perfectly functional I.e. able to compete but not OP. Go.

Relics that have rules that are tied into the faction/chapter identity instead of being a +1 chainsword. Points have to be rebalanced when Chapter Tactics, Armour of Contempt and Angels of Death is removed anyway so it's not a lot of extra work for playtesters.

 vict0988 wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
...you have 30 minutes to propose an alternative to doctrines and by extension super doctrines for space marines and all relevant chapters. It must leave them perfectly functional I.e. able to compete but not OP. Go.

Relics that have rules that are tied into the faction/chapter identity instead of being a +1 chainsword. Points have to be rebalanced when Chapter Tactics, Armour of Contempt and Angels of Death is removed anyway so it's not a lot of extra work for playtesters.

No, you said with 30 minutes you could manage better than combat doctrines, all you did here was shrug and delegate.

Tyel wrote:

I think my issue is that basic mathhammer analysis is not difficult. Someone at GW - given say a day (an hour or two probably but lets be generous) - should be able to set up in a spreadsheet to math out every codex. This would pick out obvious "mathhammer" imbalances. If a unit is incredibly lethal/pillowfisted, tough/fragile for the points, it should be obvious incredibly quickly. There is more to 40k than this (mostly movement abilities, Obsec etc - things relating to scoring whose impact is harder to model in a speadsheet) - but basic comparisons are still not that difficult. If my 100 points is faster, does more damage and takes less damage than your 100 points its going to be a problem.

It's a LOT harder than you think. You can do the basic math on a unit pretty quickly (and I agree that GW doesn't do this). But between the many factions, many options, and strats, even seemingly innocuous buffs quickly go off the rails once things start stacking. Many units are not OP out of the gate, but give them a combo of strats and they go nuts, which is REALLY hard to model in the context of the larger whole.

Now, that doesn't excuse a bunch of stuff, like voidweavers, pyrovores, etc, which are broken just with baseline capability. But as a baseline, AdMech rangers are (or used to be) pretty good out of the gate, but nowhere near broken for a 5-man unit. Once you buff that to 20, then re-rolls, then strats, and you get a unit that isn't broken for it's points, but could remove almost any unit in the game. So it wasn't any 1 ability, it was a combination of abilities at the extremes (we software developers call this 'testing the edge cases').

Dudeface wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
...you have 30 minutes to propose an alternative to doctrines and by extension super doctrines for space marines and all relevant chapters. It must leave them perfectly functional I.e. able to compete but not OP. Go.

Relics that have rules that are tied into the faction/chapter identity instead of being a +1 chainsword. Points have to be rebalanced when Chapter Tactics, Armour of Contempt and Angels of Death is removed anyway so it's not a lot of extra work for playtesters.

No, you said with 30 minutes you could manage better than combat doctrines, all you did here was shrug and delegate.

Yeah, it was actually easy to fix and many people did. Forced moving so nobody is perpetually in the Heavy doctrine for more than two turns. Bam, done.

Dudeface wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
...you have 30 minutes to propose an alternative to doctrines and by extension super doctrines for space marines and all relevant chapters. It must leave them perfectly functional I.e. able to compete but not OP. Go.

Relics that have rules that are tied into the faction/chapter identity instead of being a +1 chainsword. Points have to be rebalanced when Chapter Tactics, Armour of Contempt and Angels of Death is removed anyway so it's not a lot of extra work for playtesters.

No, you said with 30 minutes you could manage better than combat doctrines, all you did here was shrug and delegate.

Are you talking about the post you quoted earlier where I said that with 3 hours (not 30 minutes) to update Custodes (not SM) the designer (not me) shouldn't add Martial Katahs and Shield Host Fighting Styles? Some rules just shouldn't be in the game, Gretchin should not have Armour of Contempt, asking someone to come up with an alternative for Armour of Contempt for Gretchin is silly because the right answer is that if Gretchin ever got Armour of Contempt it should be removed as fast as possible with no replacement.

So AoS is my main game and the one where I have expertise. I can read a new release and sort things into 'obviously OP/UP' 'maybe OP/UP' and 'somewhere in the middle' with a high degree of reliability. This is not a particularly noteworthy achievement; many others can do the same. But I often cringe when I am reading previews done by people who clearly are not experienced with the army they are reviewing, or even AoS as a whole.

Later on, when people say that these balance issues are hard to predict, they point to those reviews and to other opinions of people who were clearly not qualified to make such calls. But that doesn't negate that for people who are experienced many issues become obvious just from the reading. People understand that balance will really never be good and that sometimes obscure exploits slip through, but there is a difference between that and what GW releases.

I know that for people with 40k expertise it is the same thing. The people who didn't see the obvious OP/UP thing are people who were never qualified to make that call. 'Easier than walking' is obvious hyperbole and treating such a claim seriously IMO gives it more legitimacy than it deserves, but at the same time there is no justification for balance being as bad as it is when qualified experts would literally line up to volunteer re-balance point costs before release.

 vict0988 wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
...you have 30 minutes to propose an alternative to doctrines and by extension super doctrines for space marines and all relevant chapters. It must leave them perfectly functional I.e. able to compete but not OP. Go.

Relics that have rules that are tied into the faction/chapter identity instead of being a +1 chainsword. Points have to be rebalanced when Chapter Tactics, Armour of Contempt and Angels of Death is removed anyway so it's not a lot of extra work for playtesters.

No, you said with 30 minutes you could manage better than combat doctrines, all you did here was shrug and delegate.

Are you talking about the post you quoted earlier where I said that with 3 hours (not 30 minutes) to update Custodes (not SM) the designer (not me) shouldn't add Martial Katahs and Shield Host Fighting Styles? Some rules just shouldn't be in the game, Gretchin should not have Armour of Contempt, asking someone to come up with an alternative for Armour of Contempt for Gretchin is silly because the right answer is that if Gretchin ever got Armour of Contempt it should be removed as fast as possible with no replacement.

I misread 3 hours my bad, the use of the term combat doctrines also threw me off. I'm not bothered either way on the banana rules but I do agree some of them seem to exist for the sakes of it.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
So AoS is my main game and the one where I have expertise. I can read a new release and sort things into 'obviously OP/UP' 'maybe OP/UP' and 'somewhere in the middle' with a high degree of reliability. This is not a particularly noteworthy achievement; many others can do the same. But I often cringe when I am reading previews done by people who clearly are not experienced with the army they are reviewing, or even AoS as a whole.

Later on, when people say that these balance issues are hard to predict, they point to those reviews and to other opinions of people who were clearly not qualified to make such calls. But that doesn't negate that for people who are experienced many issues become obvious just from the reading. People understand that balance will really never be good and that sometimes obscure exploits slip through, but there is a difference between that and what GW releases.

I know that for people with 40k expertise it is the same thing. The people who didn't see the obvious OP/UP thing are people who were never qualified to make that call. 'Easier than walking' is obvious hyperbole and treating such a claim seriously IMO gives it more legitimacy than it deserves, but at the same time there is no justification for balance being as bad as it is when qualified experts would literally line up to volunteer re-balance point costs before release.

Even people who DO know the army and DO call how OP/UP something is are: A. Often wrong and B. Almost never correct about the degree to which something is OP/UP.

Example: I play Daughters of Khaine. When the 2nd DoK battletome came out, it was immediately obvious to me that Witch Aelf based armies had been SIGNIFICANTLY nerfed and that, in fact, most of the army's melee ability had been paired down. In my mind, this left Morathi 15 Bow Snakes as the only viable build in the book.

No one in DoK spaces agreed. The consensus was that the book was actually somewhat better for melee (though I don't understand to this day how they believed that) and while Morathi builds were likely the strongest, there would be room for plenty of other options.

They were wrong. Morathi 15 Bowsnakes was SO MUCH BETTER than anything else the army could do that you could play 1500pts vs 2000pts and still win.

But I was ALSO wrong. I thought that the nerfs Morathi and Bowsnakes took would be enough to make it just barely viable and not really a contender. It ended up being about 55% winrate.

Identifying good and bad is easy, identifying HOW good and HOW bad is very hard.

ERJAK wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
So AoS is my main game and the one where I have expertise. I can read a new release and sort things into 'obviously OP/UP' 'maybe OP/UP' and 'somewhere in the middle' with a high degree of reliability. This is not a particularly noteworthy achievement; many others can do the same. But I often cringe when I am reading previews done by people who clearly are not experienced with the army they are reviewing, or even AoS as a whole.

Later on, when people say that these balance issues are hard to predict, they point to those reviews and to other opinions of people who were clearly not qualified to make such calls. But that doesn't negate that for people who are experienced many issues become obvious just from the reading. People understand that balance will really never be good and that sometimes obscure exploits slip through, but there is a difference between that and what GW releases.

I know that for people with 40k expertise it is the same thing. The people who didn't see the obvious OP/UP thing are people who were never qualified to make that call. 'Easier than walking' is obvious hyperbole and treating such a claim seriously IMO gives it more legitimacy than it deserves, but at the same time there is no justification for balance being as bad as it is when qualified experts would literally line up to volunteer re-balance point costs before release.

Even people who DO know the army and DO call how OP/UP something is are: A. Often wrong and B. Almost never correct about the degree to which something is OP/UP.

Example: I play Daughters of Khaine. When the 2nd DoK battletome came out, it was immediately obvious to me that Witch Aelf based armies had been SIGNIFICANTLY nerfed and that, in fact, most of the army's melee ability had been paired down. In my mind, this left Morathi 15 Bow Snakes as the only viable build in the book.

No one in DoK spaces agreed. The consensus was that the book was actually somewhat better for melee (though I don't understand to this day how they believed that) and while Morathi builds were likely the strongest, there would be room for plenty of other options.

They were wrong. Morathi 15 Bowsnakes was SO MUCH BETTER than anything else the army could do that you could play 1500pts vs 2000pts and still win.

But I was ALSO wrong. I thought that the nerfs Morathi and Bowsnakes took would be enough to make it just barely viable and not really a contender. It ended up being about 55% winrate.

Identifying good and bad is easy, identifying HOW good and HOW bad is very hard.

Yet what you didn't mention proves my point; it went entirely without saying which subfaction is getting used. It's so obvious it wasn't even worth noting. At any rate, I'll ask for citation on 'no one in DoK spaces agreed' because that seems a pretty suspect claim to me. And tbh? Anyone who did not see that immediately did NOT know AoS or the army, period. It isn't even a prediction to say that a mechanic which has always been OP will continue to be OP.

Edit: I actually went back to the old DoK thread on TGA; people were calling out Morathi + Sisters while the tome was on preorder.

Also to translate this into 40k terms; imagine a 12 wound flying monstrous creature with a very solid melee profile, casts 3 psychic powers at +1, can't take more than 3 wounds per turn, and it unlocks a stratagem to let a friendly unit shoot or fight in the command phase, 600 points.

I think this discussion is maybe missing the bigger picture- whether it's true or not that any halfway competent player could spot imbalances, we have the luxury of a completed codex to look at without time pressure.

In an ideal world GW would draft a set of rules, playtest it internally, revise it, send it out to playtesters, get feedback, incorporate revisions into a new set of rules, and repeat the process. This would continue until they're happy with it and everything is thumbs up from playtesters, and then it is ready for typesetting and goes off to print.

In the real world, while I don't know exactly what GW's process looks like, I can say with absolute certainty that there isn't enough time for that ideal process at the current rate of codex releases. I've never seen a company- regardless of industry or product- that is doing such discrete user-testing revisions while under time pressure. More likely they draft a set of rules, send it out to playtesters while also playtesting internally, incorporate feedback from playtesters as well as their own thoughts, do another round or two, and when they get it 'good enough' then final changes are made and it's turned over for printing. Along the way there are dozens of moving parts and it may be easy to undercorrect or overcorrect, and there may be things that are recognized to be problems through further testing before the print product even hits the shelves. Not to mention since this is being done many months before release, the game is actively changing while they are testing how the new codex fits into it, and the game will assuredly change further in the time between when development is locked down and when the new book hits shelves.

Can someone with a good knowledge of the game spot overpowered or underpowered options after it goes to print with a bit of math analysis? Sure. Can you do the same during testing, juggling twenty different simultaneous changes from the latest round of feedback, targeting a state of balance that is constantly changing, predicting what things will be like in a couple of months? That's a bit tougher. Comparatively, videogames have it easy with the sheer ease of distribution, quantitative metric reporting, and relatively discrete additions (eg a single new character for League).

So I mean, GW's print media schedule constraining development is certainly part of the problem, but it's not the only factor. And how easy it is to spot balance issues with a complete codex isn't particularly relevant to the development process. The best way to improve balance on release wouldn't be to appoint a Dakkanaut to review, it'd be to ease up the release schedule, and design (and test) the game in bigger chunks than a single codex at a time releasing to an ever-changing game state. GW's shown that when they design a system from scratch- index 8th, Apocalypse, many of the specialist games- they can do a pretty decent job of balancing it. It's this constant codex churn that screws everything up; likely all that having someone with more game knowledge or understanding of probability would add is more day 1 patches.

As someone who has spent countless hours play-testing far more detailed rule sets, I can say that, yeah, you can spot these things during the testing process.

IMO, it comes down to the process of testing, that being whether GW is really doing it in a comprehensive fashion.

Results seem to say that they're not.

 catbarf wrote:
In the real world, while I don't know exactly what GW's process looks like, I can say with absolute certainty that there isn't enough time for that ideal process at the current rate of codex releases.

How would adding a 4-week final competitive revision change the update schedule? Not several rounds of tests, just one big test involving all the competitive playtesting groups working together to provide feedback. It should slow down the first codex being released by 4 weeks, but after that as it becomes part of the schedule it shouldn't slow down production of the next codex because the final changes should be done in a day while the rest of the time the team can be working on another codex. I just want one round of casual testing for which new mechanics to implement and which old ones to get rid of, an Indian from Fiverr to do some spreadsheet analysis to make a good points draft for the codex and one round of competitive testing to balance mechanics and points costs. This is not an insane ask. GW does not use spreadsheets and they don't have a final competitive test with all the rules they want to have in the codex (like D3+3 dark lances).

Not to mention since this is being done many months before release, the game is actively changing while they are testing how the new codex fits into it, and the game will assuredly change further in the time between when development is locked down and when the new book hits shelves.

GW needs a balance anchor unit A is worth X points and that should never change and the game should be balanced around that unit, balancing around an unstable foundation is a big problem. GW should only release beta rules like giving Necron Destroyers CORE once a year and should playtest it as part of a points update along with the playtesting of codexes currently in development such that everything has been tested together.

...how easy it is to spot balance issues with a complete codex isn't particularly relevant to the development process.

It is relevant because if it really was a question of one guy sitting down and reading the rules once and fixing everything then codexes would all be perfect unless that person had nefarious purposes, this all plays into the conspiracy theories prevalent in the community.

The best way to improve balance on release wouldn't be to appoint a Dakkanaut to review, it'd be to ease up the release schedule, and design (and test) the game in bigger chunks than a single codex at a time releasing to an ever-changing game state. GW's shown that when they design a system from scratch- index 8th, Apocalypse, many of the specialist games- they can do a pretty decent job of balancing it. It's this constant codex churn that screws everything up; likely all that having someone with more game knowledge or understanding of probability would add is more day 1 patches.

Index 8th wasn't balanced. Did anybody try to spam Brimstone Horrors during testing? Certainly, nobody did the math on (Lokhust) Heavy Destroyers or Gauss Pylons. The beginning of 9th wasn't balanced despite GW releasing a new set of points for every faction at the same time, which should be all that is needed since even if a WL trait/Relic combo on a Succubus is OP relative to a base Succubus or any other combo if the price of a Succubus is 200 then it is (mostly) fine. But GW's 9th edition points was a massive half-assed flop and ruined the edition despite some really stellar changes to the core rules. Bundling things together only matters if someone does the math and competitive players try to break the game before release using the final rules. 9th should have been released a year later with every single unit going through 2 rounds of being spam-tested 3+ times and the game balance should be locked around Gretchin being worth 5 points and every future faction should be as strong overall as Orks.

 vict0988 wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
In the real world, while I don't know exactly what GW's process looks like, I can say with absolute certainty that there isn't enough time for that ideal process at the current rate of codex releases.

How would adding a 4-week final competitive revision change the update schedule? Not several rounds of tests, just one big test involving all the competitive playtesting groups working together to provide feedback. It should slow down the first codex being released by 4 weeks, ...

That's why.
They want to sell models and post good financial results at the end of the quarter or fiscal year.
Not only those 4 extra weeks would need to be filled by something else in the pipeline, but un-balance sells. Check how frequently OP stuff is sold out for weeks after a book drops.
Maybe it's not done on purpose, but when it happens that they missed something and a unit turns out to be OP, it sells. So why change it? They know they can fix it a few weeks or months down the line.

 vict0988 wrote:
How would adding a 4-week final competitive revision change the update schedule? Not several rounds of tests, just one big test involving all the competitive playtesting groups working together to provide feedback. It should slow down the first codex being released by 4 weeks, but after that as it becomes part of the schedule it shouldn't slow down production of the next codex because the final changes should be done in a day while the rest of the time the team can be working on another codex. I just want one round of casual testing for which new mechanics to implement and which old ones to get rid of, an Indian from Fiverr to do some spreadsheet analysis to make a good points draft for the codex and one round of competitive testing to balance mechanics and points costs. This is not an insane ask. GW does not use spreadsheets and they don't have a final competitive test with all the rules they want to have in the codex (like D3+3 dark lances).

Not even 4 weeks needed. One day would be enough.

But of course that would mean game would be more balanced and that hurts GW's profit margin. And GW's goal is money. That's it. No other goal. GW isn't in this to make good games. It's here to make MONEY and that requires models be sold. Rules are there for one reason only. Sell models. Money, money money.

Imbalance isn't bug. It's deliberate feature to exploit the try hards. They chase current OP, rules changed, OP change, try hards get new models and armies. Repeat. Make profit.

GW knows how to exploit the tournament try hards.

LOL did someone try to defend Indexhammer as balanced again?

EviscerationPlague wrote:
LOL did someone try to defend Indexhammer as balanced again?

Apparently yes, unbelievable .

tneva82 wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:
How would adding a 4-week final competitive revision change the update schedule? Not several rounds of tests, just one big test involving all the competitive playtesting groups working together to provide feedback. It should slow down the first codex being released by 4 weeks, but after that as it becomes part of the schedule it shouldn't slow down production of the next codex because the final changes should be done in a day while the rest of the time the team can be working on another codex. I just want one round of casual testing for which new mechanics to implement and which old ones to get rid of, an Indian from Fiverr to do some spreadsheet analysis to make a good points draft for the codex and one round of competitive testing to balance mechanics and points costs. This is not an insane ask. GW does not use spreadsheets and they don't have a final competitive test with all the rules they want to have in the codex (like D3+3 dark lances).

Not even 4 weeks needed. One day would be enough.

No, it wouldn't. Even if that were the case, you're only talking about identifying the broken stuff. The real problem is finding a solution that doesn't break anything else. So you need way more than a day. I'd say you need a couple of weeks to identify the main issues, a few days to put together possible solutions, and another week or two to test those. Assuming you get it right fairly quickly, 4 weeks doesn't seem too unlikely.

Increasing the development time of a codex does not only effect the first book.

If a codex takes 3 months to develop, test and write then 3 writers working staggered can release a codex every month.
If a codex takes 4 months you need an extra writer to work on an extra codex or you get a months gap every 3e codex.

And?

Would decreasing the speed of these books be a bad thing?

 Ordana wrote:
Increasing the development time of a codex does not only effect the first book.

If a codex takes 3 months to develop, test and write then 3 writers working staggered can release a codex every month.
If a codex takes 4 months you need an extra writer to work on an extra codex or you get a months gap every 3e codex.

So take out 1 day out of current "playtesting" and have the 1 day spent on actually useful read through codex and spot all the balance problems.

But of course...GW doesn't want to get rid of balance "problems". It's feature. It's not balance problem because it's doing exactly what GW wants it to do. Exploit tournament players by making them replace units and armies at constant rate to chase up the OP stuff.

brainpsyk wrote:
It's a LOT harder than you think. You can do the basic math on a unit pretty quickly (and I agree that GW doesn't do this). But between the many factions, many options, and strats, even seemingly innocuous buffs quickly go off the rails once things start stacking. Many units are not OP out of the gate, but give them a combo of strats and they go nuts, which is REALLY hard to model in the context of the larger whole.

Now, that doesn't excuse a bunch of stuff, like voidweavers, pyrovores, etc, which are broken just with baseline capability. But as a baseline, AdMech rangers are (or used to be) pretty good out of the gate, but nowhere near broken for a 5-man unit. Once you buff that to 20, then re-rolls, then strats, and you get a unit that isn't broken for it's points, but could remove almost any unit in the game. So it wasn't any 1 ability, it was a combination of abilities at the extremes (we software developers call this 'testing the edge cases').

I kind of feel that would only apply if you assume the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is putting in the book.

Assuming that Codex design is done by a vaguely cohesive team, the rules designer should know
A) Datasheets
B) Buffs from other Datasheets (and psychic powers etc)
C) Army Special Rules
D) Army Purity Bonuses
E) Chapter Tactics
F) Warlord Traits & Relics
G) Stratagems.
H) Any further bonuses via Army of Renown etc.

Holding your hands up to say "but I never assumed people would stack A, B, C, D etc together" (which I feel GW have tried on occasion) is a failure of imagination. Obviously they would.

All this does really is add another layer to our spreadsheet. Does unit A - with this or that buff architecture - have disproportionate "power for its points" compared to 40k as a whole? If yes, its probably going to be a problem. It might not be - because win% is determined by getting objectives, not just lethality and toughness - but that's what playtesting should reveal.

The TL/DR is that the designer shouldn't be surprised that someone stacks loads of buffs on Ad Mech Rangers. Because they are the one who put those buffs in there for players to find.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
And?

Would decreasing the speed of these books be a bad thing?

No, but good luck convincing the people in charge to make less money.

 Ordana wrote:
Increasing the development time of a codex does not only effect the first book.

If a codex takes 3 months to develop, test and write then 3 writers working staggered can release a codex every month.
If a codex takes 4 months you need an extra writer to work on an extra codex or you get a months gap every 3e codex.

The problem here is that you're assuming that all the codexes HAVE to be developed one at a time, when it would be much better for the game and codexes if they were written and developed simultaneously. They don't have to be released as such, but they should be this way.

 Ordana wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
And?

Would decreasing the speed of these books be a bad thing?

No, but good luck convincing the people in charge to make less money.

It's insane that the buck always stops with this argument.

vict0988 wrote:How would adding a 4-week final competitive revision change the update schedule? Not several rounds of tests, just one big test involving all the competitive playtesting groups working together to provide feedback.

If this is done before the rules go to the printers, it would delay the release schedule by one month for every codex, which gets to be quite a lot- the pace at which they're releasing codices shows that either there really isn't all that much time spent on each one, or they're being developed in parallel by different sets of designers, which adds yet another wrinkle to trying to coordinate development. And if that's one big round of tests and then incorporating feedback without testing those changes, that's almost certainly going to create problems too- again, because it almost certainly means making multiple changes in parallel. Look at all the times GW has tried to tone down an OP unit, so they've slapped it with nerfs from three or four different directions and overcorrected, or take a more conservative approach and failed to fix it.

Again, I'm not saying that GW couldn't be doing it better or that they have no choice but to release crap rules, especially when part of the problem is, again, the reliance on print media. I'm just saying, having to iterate on a product while beholden to a fixed release schedule makes everything harder, and even skilled designers (which, again, I'm not saying GW's developers are, because that's not who you get when you hire for enthusiasm) are going to release suboptimal products under such conditions. It's a big enough problem that there are product design schools of thought that throw out release timelines and feature schedules entirely to ensure that they're building the right thing.

EviscerationPlague wrote:LOL did someone try to defend Indexhammer as balanced again?

Nope, but I'd rather play Indexhammer than against on-release SM2.0 Iron Hands any day of the week.

Sim-Life wrote:The problem here is that you're assuming that all the codexes HAVE to be developed one at a time, when it would be much better for the game and codexes if they were written and developed simultaneously. They don't have to be released as such, but they should be this way.

Absolutely, 100%. There was a rumor going around early in 9th that all the 9th Ed codices had been developed in parallel, so we would see consistent design philosophies and power level rather than GW's hallmark power creep and changing design mid-edition. Well, THAT certainly turned out to be nonsense, but if they actually were to develop the entire game in parallel, I fully believe it would be in a better state than it is.

 Just_Breathe wrote:

 Ordana wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
And?

Would decreasing the speed of these books be a bad thing?

No, but good luck convincing the people in charge to make less money.

It's insane that the buck always stops with this argument.

why? Its the truth, companies exist to make money and they tend to not do things that reduce the amount of money they make unless not doing the thing would cost them even more.

We can jump up and down about how this is not how the world should work but proposing and discussion utopian fantasies gets boring quickly and accomplishes nothing.

Yes in an ideal world GW would take however long it takes to develop all codexes, balance them against eachother and then release everything at once, produce a balanced meta and then make a campaign book every 6 months that shakes up the meta in a healthy way without creating imbalances and this would continue until the end of time.

But we don't live in that world and that world is not going to happen.

You want the buck to not stop with that argument? Convince the GW board that taking longer between codexes and improving balance will increase revenue.

 catbarf wrote:


Nope, but I'd rather play Indexhammer than against on-release SM2.0 Iron Hands any day of the week.

I'd play 3rd, 4th or 5th editions if I had to play pre 8th codexes 40k instead. Index times were the only period ever since 3rd in which I contemplated quitting/pausing from 40k due to the state of the game, and I played orks in 7th.

 Ordana wrote:

 Just_Breathe wrote:

 Ordana wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
And?

Would decreasing the speed of these books be a bad thing?

No, but good luck convincing the people in charge to make less money.

It's insane that the buck always stops with this argument.

why? Its the truth, companies exist to make money and they tend to not do things that reduce the amount of money they make unless not doing the thing would cost them even more.

We can jump up and down about how this is not how the world should work but proposing and discussion utopian fantasies gets boring quickly and accomplishes nothing.

Yes in an ideal world GW would take however long it takes to develop all codexes, balance them against eachother and then release everything at once, produce a balanced meta and then make a campaign book every 6 months that shakes up the meta in a healthy way without creating imbalances and this would continue until the end of time.

But we don't live in that world and that world is not going to happen.

You want the buck to not stop with that argument? Convince the GW board that taking longer between codexes and improving balance will increase revenue.

I'm agreeing with you my guy.

Just to inject a bit from my perspective as I had been involved in writing for an ongoing magazine publication before (It wasn't warhammer related). And I was also involved in the production of said magazine as well.

Its a lot of work. And the lead times are crazy. Everything needs to be final, edited, laid out, pictures inserted, and sent to printers weeks before print.

I wasn't even writing stuff like rules. Yet, I can say confidently there wasn't much time to review either. We finish one issue, and a short time later, we are already sitting down for meetings to plan and write for the next issue.

Consider the number of books that GW churns out and sells every other month. Then combine it with minatures and marketing that all has to be coordinated to go together with a codex release ...

All I can say is... unless they have a vast number of people, otherwise, they are basically racing from one publication to the next.

Is there a better way to do this? Especially when it comes to a codex release which involves so many rules? Maybe there is. I don't know. But I have been on the other side of a print magazine production before, and I will say for sure, its not so easy.

Tyel wrote:

I kind of feel that would only apply if you assume the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is putting in the book.

Assuming that Codex design is done by a vaguely cohesive team, the rules designer should know
A) Datasheets
B) Buffs from other Datasheets (and psychic powers etc)
C) Army Special Rules
D) Army Purity Bonuses
E) Chapter Tactics
F) Warlord Traits & Relics
G) Stratagems.
H) Any further bonuses via Army of Renown etc.

Holding your hands up to say "but I never assumed people would stack A, B, C, D etc together" (which I feel GW have tried on occasion) is a failure of imagination. Obviously they would.

All this does really is add another layer to our spreadsheet. Does unit A - with this or that buff architecture - have disproportionate "power for its points" compared to 40k as a whole? If yes, its probably going to be a problem. It might not be - because win% is determined by getting objectives, not just lethality and toughness - but that's what playtesting should reveal.

The TL/DR is that the designer shouldn't be surprised that someone stacks loads of buffs on Ad Mech Rangers. Because they are the one who put those buffs in there for players to find.

Think of it this way. The community is still finding combos months and months after a codex is released, with tens of thousands of players. You're expecting a couple a designers to mystically know all of the possible combinations of A-thru-H, which is quite unrealistic. (Again, I give GW no quarter/excuses for units like Voidweavers/Pyrovores/etc., things where the core datasheet is busted from the get-go).

I agree with your sentiment that there is a good chunk of "the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing" at GW. Just look at Guard and AoC. HotE was a great buff for the Guard. AoC just nerfed the crap out of everybody, so the buff the Guard just got nerfed them right back where they were before. It's seriously a WTF moment.

I also think theres quite the internal conflict in GW, where you have the "good 'ole boys" club vs. people trying to move the game (and company forward). The GOBs are used to not caring about the game, just pump out broken stuff for people to buy, as that's what they've always done, and those folks are in middle management (I've seen this time and time again where I work). On the other hand you have the progressives trying to make a balanced game, and they probably have somebody in middle-upper management in a different org on their side, so they're able to shake things up, but no authority to fix the crap at the source. I wouldn't be surprised if this is why we're still seeing the busted codexes (the GOB) and the move to online points & quick(ish) Dataslates from the Progressives.

brainpsyk wrote:

Tyel wrote:

I kind of feel that would only apply if you assume the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is putting in the book.

Assuming that Codex design is done by a vaguely cohesive team, the rules designer should know
A) Datasheets
B) Buffs from other Datasheets (and psychic powers etc)
C) Army Special Rules
D) Army Purity Bonuses
E) Chapter Tactics
F) Warlord Traits & Relics
G) Stratagems.
H) Any further bonuses via Army of Renown etc.

Holding your hands up to say "but I never assumed people would stack A, B, C, D etc together" (which I feel GW have tried on occasion) is a failure of imagination. Obviously they would.

All this does really is add another layer to our spreadsheet. Does unit A - with this or that buff architecture - have disproportionate "power for its points" compared to 40k as a whole? If yes, its probably going to be a problem. It might not be - because win% is determined by getting objectives, not just lethality and toughness - but that's what playtesting should reveal.

The TL/DR is that the designer shouldn't be surprised that someone stacks loads of buffs on Ad Mech Rangers. Because they are the one who put those buffs in there for players to find.

Think of it this way. The community is still finding combos months and months after a codex is released, with tens of thousands of players. You're expecting a couple a designers to mystically know all of the possible combinations of A-thru-H, which is quite unrealistic. (Again, I give GW no quarter/excuses for units like Voidweavers/Pyrovores/etc., things where the core datasheet is busted from the get-go).

I agree with your sentiment that there is a good chunk of "the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing" at GW. Just look at Guard and AoC. HotE was a great buff for the Guard. AoC just nerfed the crap out of everybody, so the buff the Guard just got nerfed them right back where they were before. It's seriously a WTF moment.

I also think theres quite the internal conflict in GW, where you have the "good 'ole boys" club vs. people trying to move the game (and company forward). The GOBs are used to not caring about the game, just pump out broken stuff for people to buy, as that's what they've always done, and those folks are in middle management (I've seen this time and time again where I work). On the other hand you have the progressives trying to make a balanced game, and they probably have somebody in middle-upper management in a different org on their side, so they're able to shake things up, but no authority to fix the crap at the source. I wouldn't be surprised if this is why we're still seeing the busted codexes (the GOB) and the move to online points & quick(ish) Dataslates from the Progressives.

I'm interested, what combo's is the community still finding months and months after the codex released?

 Ordana wrote:

 Just_Breathe wrote:

 Ordana wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
And?

Would decreasing the speed of these books be a bad thing?

No, but good luck convincing the people in charge to make less money.

It's insane that the buck always stops with this argument.

why? Its the truth, companies exist to make money and they tend to not do things that reduce the amount of money they make unless not doing the thing would cost them even more.

We can jump up and down about how this is not how the world should work but proposing and discussion utopian fantasies gets boring quickly and accomplishes nothing.

Yes in an ideal world GW would take however long it takes to develop all codexes, balance them against eachother and then release everything at once, produce a balanced meta and then make a campaign book every 6 months that shakes up the meta in a healthy way without creating imbalances and this would continue until the end of time.

But we don't live in that world and that world is not going to happen.

You want the buck to not stop with that argument? Convince the GW board that taking longer between codexes and improving balance will increase revenue.

Because all it does is make a little bit of money right now at expense of a lot of money over time. It's short term gain, long-term cost that GW only gets away with because 40k has no meaningful competition. What GW forgets is that if balance is so bad people don't have fun then it doesn't matter if there's no alternative wargame.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
As someone who has spent countless hours play-testing far more detailed rule sets, I can say that, yeah, you can spot these things during the testing process.

IMO, it comes down to the process of testing, that being whether GW is really doing it in a comprehensive fashion.

Results seem to say that they're not.

Agreed. Time crunch or no, plenty of the stuff in new releases is THAT obvious.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
And?

Would decreasing the speed of these books be a bad thing?

You tell us.
We're 24 months & 22 army books (counting the DA/BA/SW/DW) in, KNOW we still have 2 completely knew books coming (World Eaters & Nu-Squats) & people are howling because the Guard & Demons still aren't out yet.
Ok, granted, 2020/2021 was a bit rough release schedule wise due to a global pandemic shuttering things & some global shipping problems....
Still though, 22 books (for 40k!) in 24 months.
Oh, and a lackluster FW volume.
And you want this to slow down?

ccs wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
And?

Would decreasing the speed of these books be a bad thing?

You tell us.
We're 24 months & 22 army books (counting the DA/BA/SW/DW) in, KNOW we still have 2 completely knew books coming (World Eaters & Nu-Squats) & people are howling because the Guard & Demons still aren't out yet.
Ok, granted, 2020/2021 was a bit rough release schedule wise due to a global pandemic shuttering things & some global shipping problems....
Still though, 22 books (for 40k!) in 24 months.
Oh, and a lackluster FW volume.
And you want this to slow down?

Yes. They clearly struggle to keep pace with their own releases and the meta. There is no reason it needs to be a 36 month cycle, open it out to 48 months and spread thinner. Bin off the limited time campaign books.

 Ordana wrote:

brainpsyk wrote:

Tyel wrote:

I kind of feel that would only apply if you assume the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is putting in the book.

Assuming that Codex design is done by a vaguely cohesive team, the rules designer should know
A) Datasheets
B) Buffs from other Datasheets (and psychic powers etc)
C) Army Special Rules
D) Army Purity Bonuses
E) Chapter Tactics
F) Warlord Traits & Relics
G) Stratagems.
H) Any further bonuses via Army of Renown etc.

Holding your hands up to say "but I never assumed people would stack A, B, C, D etc together" (which I feel GW have tried on occasion) is a failure of imagination. Obviously they would.

All this does really is add another layer to our spreadsheet. Does unit A - with this or that buff architecture - have disproportionate "power for its points" compared to 40k as a whole? If yes, its probably going to be a problem. It might not be - because win% is determined by getting objectives, not just lethality and toughness - but that's what playtesting should reveal.

The TL/DR is that the designer shouldn't be surprised that someone stacks loads of buffs on Ad Mech Rangers. Because they are the one who put those buffs in there for players to find.

Think of it this way. The community is still finding combos months and months after a codex is released, with tens of thousands of players. You're expecting a couple a designers to mystically know all of the possible combinations of A-thru-H, which is quite unrealistic. (Again, I give GW no quarter/excuses for units like Voidweavers/Pyrovores/etc., things where the core datasheet is busted from the get-go).

I agree with your sentiment that there is a good chunk of "the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing" at GW. Just look at Guard and AoC. HotE was a great buff for the Guard. AoC just nerfed the crap out of everybody, so the buff the Guard just got nerfed them right back where they were before. It's seriously a WTF moment.

I also think theres quite the internal conflict in GW, where you have the "good 'ole boys" club vs. people trying to move the game (and company forward). The GOBs are used to not caring about the game, just pump out broken stuff for people to buy, as that's what they've always done, and those folks are in middle management (I've seen this time and time again where I work). On the other hand you have the progressives trying to make a balanced game, and they probably have somebody in middle-upper management in a different org on their side, so they're able to shake things up, but no authority to fix the crap at the source. I wouldn't be surprised if this is why we're still seeing the busted codexes (the GOB) and the move to online points & quick(ish) Dataslates from the Progressives.

I'm interested, what combo's is the community still finding months and months after the codex released?

They're not. Everything is found within a couple of weeks AT MAX.
Now maybe sometimes it isn't DISCUSSED as a valid tactic, but nothing NEW is being discovered.

ccs wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
And?

Would decreasing the speed of these books be a bad thing?

You tell us.
We're 24 months & 22 army books (counting the DA/BA/SW/DW) in, KNOW we still have 2 completely knew books coming (World Eaters & Nu-Squats) & people are howling because the Guard & Demons still aren't out yet.
Ok, granted, 2020/2021 was a bit rough release schedule wise due to a global pandemic shuttering things & some global shipping problems....
Still though, 22 books (for 40k!) in 24 months.
Oh, and a lackluster FW volume.
And you want this to slow down?

I mean, 40k has to many factions. Which is my biggest complaint about squats. It already takes forever to update books despite the fast pace. The last thing 40k needs is more factions.

ccs wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
And?

Would decreasing the speed of these books be a bad thing?

You tell us.
We're 24 months & 22 army books (counting the DA/BA/SW/DW) in, KNOW we still have 2 completely knew books coming (World Eaters & Nu-Squats) & people are howling because the Guard & Demons still aren't out yet.
Ok, granted, 2020/2021 was a bit rough release schedule wise due to a global pandemic shuttering things & some global shipping problems....
Still though, 22 books (for 40k!) in 24 months.
Oh, and a lackluster FW volume.
And you want this to slow down?

I'd say "people are howling" because balance is bad. If balance was good while people waited for their new books, I imagine there would be less howling.

If IG were rocking the tournament wins, I think you'd be hearing a lot more howling from non IG players.

Eldenfirefly wrote:
Just to inject a bit from my perspective as I had been involved in writing for an ongoing magazine publication before (It wasn't warhammer related). And I was also involved in the production of said magazine as well.

Its a lot of work. And the lead times are crazy. Everything needs to be final, edited, laid out, pictures inserted, and sent to printers weeks before print.

I wasn't even writing stuff like rules. Yet, I can say confidently there wasn't much time to review either. We finish one issue, and a short time later, we are already sitting down for meetings to plan and write for the next issue.

Consider the number of books that GW churns out and sells every other month. Then combine it with minatures and marketing that all has to be coordinated to go together with a codex release ...

All I can say is... unless they have a vast number of people, otherwise, they are basically racing from one publication to the next.

Is there a better way to do this? Especially when it comes to a codex release which involves so many rules? Maybe there is. I don't know. But I have been on the other side of a print magazine production before, and I will say for sure, its not so easy.

If GW hired like 4 guys at the beginning of an edition (let's say 10th), said "Start writing 11th edition and all the codexes now, you have 4 years before it goes to print" and that was their sole job at GW I don't see a reason why they shouldn't be able to do it. The foundational work is there in terms of game structure, mechanics, unit themes etc, all they need to do is make a design philosophy within the framework of what is already set in stone (IGOUGO, hit/wound/damage, Movement/Psychic/Shooting/melee turn structure) and get to work fitting the armies into the design philosophy. If Uwe Rosenberg can average 2.5 unique games a years I'm sure 4 guys could fix 40k in a 4 years.

 Sim-Life wrote:

Eldenfirefly wrote:
Just to inject a bit from my perspective as I had been involved in writing for an ongoing magazine publication before (It wasn't warhammer related). And I was also involved in the production of said magazine as well.

Its a lot of work. And the lead times are crazy. Everything needs to be final, edited, laid out, pictures inserted, and sent to printers weeks before print.

I wasn't even writing stuff like rules. Yet, I can say confidently there wasn't much time to review either. We finish one issue, and a short time later, we are already sitting down for meetings to plan and write for the next issue.

Consider the number of books that GW churns out and sells every other month. Then combine it with minatures and marketing that all has to be coordinated to go together with a codex release ...

All I can say is... unless they have a vast number of people, otherwise, they are basically racing from one publication to the next.

Is there a better way to do this? Especially when it comes to a codex release which involves so many rules? Maybe there is. I don't know. But I have been on the other side of a print magazine production before, and I will say for sure, its not so easy.

If GW hired like 4 guys at the beginning of an edition (let's say 10th), said "Start writing 11th edition and all the codexes now, you have 4 years before it goes to print" and that was their sole job at GW I don't see a reason why they shouldn't be able to do it. The foundational work is there in terms of game structure, mechanics, unit themes etc, all they need to do is make a design philosophy within the framework of what is already set in stone (IGOUGO, hit/wound/damage, Movement/Psychic/Shooting/melee turn structure) and get to work fitting the armies into the design philosophy. If Uwe Rosenberg can average 2.5 unique games a years I'm sure 4 guys could fix 40k in a 4 years.

Stuff set in stone is part of the problem.

 Blackie wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:
LOL did someone try to defend Indexhammer as balanced again?

Apparently yes, unbelievable .

"Here are my 5 obsec, -3 to hit Stormravens with full rerolls to hit and wound"

ERJAK wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:
LOL did someone try to defend Indexhammer as balanced again?

Apparently yes, unbelievable .

"Here are my 5 obsec, -3 to hit Stormravens with full rerolls to hit and wound"

Sure, but the nerf to that was changes to the core rules, not the codexes. It'd be interesting to see late 8th core rules use the index armies, and then simply try to balance using point adjustments from there.

Like a lot of things, I feel Index Hammer was fine if you both had decidedly unoptimised lists (due to moving from 7th).

Certain units being clearly undercosted, no restrictions on soup and spam, and 1st turn deepstrike were however clearly an issue which needed to be resolved.

Alphabet Soup Chaos Turkey is what I remember being the most traumatic about indexhammer.

Should've let the FW guys write the rules.

 Insectum7 wrote:

ccs wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
And?

Would decreasing the speed of these books be a bad thing?

You tell us.
We're 24 months & 22 army books (counting the DA/BA/SW/DW) in, KNOW we still have 2 completely knew books coming (World Eaters & Nu-Squats) & people are howling because the Guard & Demons still aren't out yet.
Ok, granted, 2020/2021 was a bit rough release schedule wise due to a global pandemic shuttering things & some global shipping problems....
Still though, 22 books (for 40k!) in 24 months.
Oh, and a lackluster FW volume.
And you want this to slow down?

I'd say "people are howling" because balance is bad. If balance was good while people waited for their new books, I imagine there would be less howling.

If IG were rocking the tournament wins, I think you'd be hearing a lot more howling from non IG players.

Yeah. When armies require players to re-balance 40k themselves to actually play it is understandable they want the situation to get better.

I'm sure those players are buying tons of models though /s

 Sim-Life wrote:

 Ordana wrote:
Increasing the development time of a codex does not only effect the first book.

If a codex takes 3 months to develop, test and write then 3 writers working staggered can release a codex every month.
If a codex takes 4 months you need an extra writer to work on an extra codex or you get a months gap every 3e codex.

The problem here is that you're assuming that all the codexes HAVE to be developed one at a time, when it would be much better for the game and codexes if they were written and developed simultaneously. They don't have to be released as such, but they should be this way.

A key component to having a dominant game system is to constantly have new things for people to buy.

These rule sets like 9th Age stagnate and people eventually leave even if it might be well balanced ( yet their community does not have a consensus that the game is balanced or in a good place for various reasons ).

For this reason it would be pretty hard to develop them simultaneously. GW has to expand the factions available to keep new stuff coming down the line.

'New cool gak' sells. OP rules aren't the sales lever ( not your argument, but I added in due to other posts ).

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:

 Ordana wrote:
Increasing the development time of a codex does not only effect the first book.

If a codex takes 3 months to develop, test and write then 3 writers working staggered can release a codex every month.
If a codex takes 4 months you need an extra writer to work on an extra codex or you get a months gap every 3e codex.

The problem here is that you're assuming that all the codexes HAVE to be developed one at a time, when it would be much better for the game and codexes if they were written and developed simultaneously. They don't have to be released as such, but they should be this way.

A key component to having a dominant game system is to constantly have new things for people to buy.

These rule sets like 9th Age stagnate and people eventually leave even if it might be well balanced ( yet their community does not have a consensus that the game is balanced or in a good place for various reasons ).

For this reason it would be pretty hard to develop them simultaneously. GW has to expand the factions available to keep new stuff coming down the line.

'New cool gak' sells. OP rules aren't the sales lever ( not your argument, but I added in due to other posts ).

More interesting rules for older units is one of the only levers they really have for older kits. That and discount bundles. Note though, that they don't NEED to be OP, they just need to be better than the previous incarnation.

ERJAK wrote:
More interesting rules for older units is one of the only levers they really have for older kits. That and discount bundles. Note though, that they don't NEED to be OP, they just need to be better than the previous incarnation.

Until very recently GW didn't have the capacity to spin more than just new releases.

GW isn't making up models in advance not knowing whether or not they'll sell based on a new codex.

*GW sells out on box X*
*GW does another "run" and puts it on the shelf and goes back to the production schedule for all the kits that have to get to the brick and mortars every Tuesday*

"Yea, Bill. Print up loads of Centurions. Why? Because someone who plays Raven Guard will figure out how useful they are and people will go nuts."

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:

 Ordana wrote:
Increasing the development time of a codex does not only effect the first book.

If a codex takes 3 months to develop, test and write then 3 writers working staggered can release a codex every month.
If a codex takes 4 months you need an extra writer to work on an extra codex or you get a months gap every 3e codex.

The problem here is that you're assuming that all the codexes HAVE to be developed one at a time, when it would be much better for the game and codexes if they were written and developed simultaneously. They don't have to be released as such, but they should be this way.

A key component to having a dominant game system is to constantly have new things for people to buy.

These rule sets like 9th Age stagnate and people eventually leave even if it might be well balanced ( yet their community does not have a consensus that the game is balanced or in a good place for various reasons ).

For this reason it would be pretty hard to develop them simultaneously. GW has to expand the factions available to keep new stuff coming down the line.

'New cool gak' sells. OP rules aren't the sales lever ( not your argument, but I added in due to other posts ).

Where did I say they should stop new releases?

 Sim-Life wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:

 Ordana wrote:
Increasing the development time of a codex does not only effect the first book.

If a codex takes 3 months to develop, test and write then 3 writers working staggered can release a codex every month.
If a codex takes 4 months you need an extra writer to work on an extra codex or you get a months gap every 3e codex.

The problem here is that you're assuming that all the codexes HAVE to be developed one at a time, when it would be much better for the game and codexes if they were written and developed simultaneously. They don't have to be released as such, but they should be this way.

A key component to having a dominant game system is to constantly have new things for people to buy.

These rule sets like 9th Age stagnate and people eventually leave even if it might be well balanced ( yet their community does not have a consensus that the game is balanced or in a good place for various reasons ).

For this reason it would be pretty hard to develop them simultaneously. GW has to expand the factions available to keep new stuff coming down the line.

'New cool gak' sells. OP rules aren't the sales lever ( not your argument, but I added in due to other posts ).

Where did I say they should stop new releases?

Where would the new rules for those new releases that aren't in the codex because they hadn't been designed 4 years out live?

 Sim-Life wrote:

Where would the new rules for those new releases that aren't in the codex because they hadn't been designed 4 years out live?

In the codexes....

GW is a miniature company, they should do the rules in one shot, then release missing models.

and halfway through the edition, add some PA-style book for all factions (then minis again after)

 Sim-Life wrote:
Where did I say they should stop new releases?

I'm not saying you did - I'm just commenting on a factor that makes it hard to juggle the opposing forces.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:

Where would the new rules for those new releases that aren't in the codex because they hadn't been designed 4 years out live?

In the codexes....

GW is a miniature company, they should do the rules in one shot, then release missing models.

and halfway through the edition, add some PA-style book for all factions (then minis again after)

And you're back to chapterhouse again. Plus plenty of people will be annoyed they can't field unit X because it won't be released for 3 years.

Dudeface wrote:
And you're back to chapterhouse again. Plus plenty of people will be annoyed they can't field unit X because it won't be released for 3 years.

Yea I don't think there's any way that it would be beneficial for GW to release rules without models. The secondary market is way too robust now.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
And you're back to chapterhouse again. Plus plenty of people will be annoyed they can't field unit X because it won't be released for 3 years.

Yea I don't think there's any way that it would be beneficial for GW to release rules without models. The secondary market is way too robust now.

The best answer is to do more model releases alongside campaign books. Divorcing even just medium (i.e. 2-3 full kits and 1-2 character clampacks) model releases from the codexes would be great for the game and is something they already do...sometimes.

The two caveats to this is that A) The rules content of the campaign books has to be worth whatever the cost is and B) They need to get the App into a state where I can feel confident that it'll accurately cover at least the content of the campaign books, even if I don't trust it for my main codex rules or list making. Carrying around 2-4 campaign books isn't something anyone wants to do and I don't think it's unreasonable to assume players will use the App for at least those in a non-narrative setting.

This wouldn't be a problem if GW could finally switch over to a digital format of some sort for their rules distribution.

As it is right now, for a new unit in AoS they just drop the Warscroll/unit card for it, then the next codex cycle it gets added in to the book.

ERJAK wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
And you're back to chapterhouse again. Plus plenty of people will be annoyed they can't field unit X because it won't be released for 3 years.

Yea I don't think there's any way that it would be beneficial for GW to release rules without models. The secondary market is way too robust now.

The best answer is to do more model releases alongside campaign books. Divorcing even just medium (i.e. 2-3 full kits and 1-2 character clampacks) model releases from the codexes would be great for the game and is something they already do...sometimes.

The two caveats to this is that A) The rules content of the campaign books has to be worth whatever the cost is and B) They need to get the App into a state where I can feel confident that it'll accurately cover at least the content of the campaign books, even if I don't trust it for my main codex rules or list making. Carrying around 2-4 campaign books isn't something anyone wants to do and I don't think it's unreasonable to assume players will use the App for at least those in a non-narrative setting.

Seems reasonable, but we're back to the books not being balanced off against each other very well again due to staggered campaign releases. It works OK if you're splashing in a couple of units but a rework ala crons would be impossible without a 2.0 book.

Dudeface wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:

Where would the new rules for those new releases that aren't in the codex because they hadn't been designed 4 years out live?

In the codexes....

GW is a miniature company, they should do the rules in one shot, then release missing models.

and halfway through the edition, add some PA-style book for all factions (then minis again after)

And you're back to chapterhouse again. Plus plenty of people will be annoyed they can't field unit X because it won't be released for 3 years.

i'm not saying they would do it, but it probably would be the best way to do releases for them (along with finally accepting Proxies/count-as as part of the game)

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
Where did I say they should stop new releases?

I'm not saying you did - I'm just commenting on a factor that makes it hard to juggle the opposing forces.

Not really. Design the codexes and planned new units, release units in a campaign book later down the line after the codex release for everyone like Privateer Press used to do. I actually don't think people are generally opposed to extra books in theory, it's just that GW releases so many at once and they don't have a lot of useful content.

If you designed all the codexes at once including new models, while the codex cycle is ongoing our 4 plucky guys design a grand campaign book. The rules for the planned new models were all written and balanced at the start of the edition so they're free to focus on things like new missions, Crusade stuff, fluff etc.

 Thadin wrote:
This wouldn't be a problem if GW could finally switch over to a digital format of some sort for their rules distribution.

As it is right now, for a new unit in AoS they just drop the Warscroll/unit card for it, then the next codex cycle it gets added in to the book.

This is the point when you wonder if GW will ever decide their 40K Strategy (no rules unless you buy the book) isn't making them more money than the AOS Strategy (unit rules on the website, army rules in the book). It would certainly make dropping the occasional unit without worrying about a book (Codex or Campaign book) to support their rules.

They no longer do the free unit rules for AoS on the website :( can get through the app, I think...?

 alextroy wrote:

 Thadin wrote:
This wouldn't be a problem if GW could finally switch over to a digital format of some sort for their rules distribution.

As it is right now, for a new unit in AoS they just drop the Warscroll/unit card for it, then the next codex cycle it gets added in to the book.

This is the point when you wonder if GW will ever decide their 40K Strategy (no rules unless you buy the book) isn't making them more money than the AOS Strategy (unit rules on the website, army rules in the book). It would certainly make dropping the occasional unit without worrying about a book (Codex or Campaign book) to support their rules.

They need to hire Mr. Maltsev (wahapedia)
and include all their beautiful art there.

 Just_Breathe wrote:

 alextroy wrote:

 Thadin wrote:
This wouldn't be a problem if GW could finally switch over to a digital format of some sort for their rules distribution.

As it is right now, for a new unit in AoS they just drop the Warscroll/unit card for it, then the next codex cycle it gets added in to the book.

This is the point when you wonder if GW will ever decide their 40K Strategy (no rules unless you buy the book) isn't making them more money than the AOS Strategy (unit rules on the website, army rules in the book). It would certainly make dropping the occasional unit without worrying about a book (Codex or Campaign book) to support their rules.

They need to hire Mr. Maltsev (wahapedia)
and include all their beautiful art there.

Kinda hard with the economic sanctions on Russia (Wahapedia is hosted on Russian IIRC, great for evading lawyers, not so great for business).

 Tyran wrote:

Kinda hard with the economic sanctions on Russia (Wahapedia is hosted on Russian IIRC, great for evading lawyers, not so great for business).

Given the situation in Russia I bet he'd be down to move to the UK.

 Just_Breathe wrote:
They need to hire Mr. Maltsev (wahapedia)
and include all their beautiful art there.

The lack of art is half the appeal. Remove the rules from the codexes and boost the amount of art and lore and you have two great products instead of one product that is bad at rules and bad at lore.

 Just_Breathe wrote:

 alextroy wrote:

 Thadin wrote:
This wouldn't be a problem if GW could finally switch over to a digital format of some sort for their rules distribution.

As it is right now, for a new unit in AoS they just drop the Warscroll/unit card for it, then the next codex cycle it gets added in to the book.

This is the point when you wonder if GW will ever decide their 40K Strategy (no rules unless you buy the book) isn't making them more money than the AOS Strategy (unit rules on the website, army rules in the book). It would certainly make dropping the occasional unit without worrying about a book (Codex or Campaign book) to support their rules.

They need to hire Mr. Maltsev (wahapedia)
and include all their beautiful art there.

Nah, hire some "security experts" and eliminate it instead.

That sort of behaviour should not be rewarded.

 Sim-Life wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
Where did I say they should stop new releases?

I'm not saying you did - I'm just commenting on a factor that makes it hard to juggle the opposing forces.

Not really. Design the codexes and planned new units, release units in a campaign book later down the line after the codex release for everyone like Privateer Press used to do. I actually don't think people are generally opposed to extra books in theory, it's just that GW releases so many at once and they don't have a lot of useful content.

I completely agree, especially with the bolded part. Having the bulk of each army set up in an initial release, with further releases throughout the life of the edition would be great. The problem with GW's non-Codex releases is they're almost always terrible value for each individual army. You might get a 2-page Army of Renown or 1-page new character datasheet, or you might get what amounts to a mini-supplement fleshing out an entire sub-faction. There doesn't seem to be any overall plan for what gets released and when.

If we had more for a given army in each of these books it might encourage more people to buy them. GW should probably also have more faith in their "3 ways to play" (which is actually 2) and separate out the Crusade and Matched play stuff completely in their supplements. They can keep the basic Crusade rules for each faction in their respective Codex (or Index under this new proposal, I guess) but thereafter it should be in its own line of books exclusively. Also, for the love of God, can we not have the Crusade rules right in the middle of all the other rules for an army in their Codex? I have no idea who decides on the layout for each book, but GW have an amazing ability to somehow put every section in the wrong place, so you can't find anything when flipping through your Codex.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Dysartes wrote:

 Just_Breathe wrote:


They need to hire Mr. Maltsev (wahapedia)
and include all their beautiful art there.

Nah, hire some "security experts" and eliminate it instead.

That sort of behaviour should not be rewarded.

While I'm not in favour of piracy or copyright infringement, I do think Waha is very well thought out in terms of how it presents and organises information. Miles ahead of GW's approach. GW could actually learn a lot from that aspect of it.

Yeah, Wahapedia should be held up as a good standard for Wh40k digital rules presentation.

It can also be decried as piracy, but I actually think shutting it down will lose many many players. I don't know of any who don't compensate for the absurdity of the rules right now by just using Wahapedia.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Yeah, Wahapedia should be held up as a good standard for Wh40k digital rules presentation.

It can also be decried as piracy, but I actually think shutting it down will lose many many players. I don't know of any who don't compensate for the absurdity of the rules right now by just using Wahapedia.

I use it as a frame of reference as the presentation is well laid out as you mention, I do however own everything I use to play so I'm not using it as anything beyond a reference function since its better than the app.

Dudeface wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Yeah, Wahapedia should be held up as a good standard for Wh40k digital rules presentation.

It can also be decried as piracy, but I actually think shutting it down will lose many many players. I don't know of any who don't compensate for the absurdity of the rules right now by just using Wahapedia.

I use it as a frame of reference as the presentation is well laid out as you mention, I do however own everything I use to play so I'm not using it as anything beyond a reference function since its better than the app.

Same for me, but I do also use it to sneak references to my opponent's rules that I don't own sometimes. Of course, the player in our group that refuses to even acknowledge Wahapedia exists also complains endlessly about how the books are laid out so poorly and the app is "mostly wrong" (their words). They also tend to know about 6% of their rules so playing with Wahapedia open to their army to verify their every move is mandatory if you want anything close to a clean game.

 Dysartes wrote:

Nah, hire some "security experts" and eliminate it instead.

That sort of behaviour should not be rewarded.

hmm poor daddy GW, must eliminate all threats even at the expense of players

 Dysartes wrote:
Nah, hire some "security experts" and eliminate it instead.

That sort of behaviour should not be rewarded.

I think, but can't prove that Wahapedia is a net positive for GW.

At certain times in history piracy informs the path the consumer wishes to take and in this case it is an accessible digital tool. I would gladly pay GW for their own Wahapedia.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:
Nah, hire some "security experts" and eliminate it instead.

That sort of behaviour should not be rewarded.

I think, but can't prove that Wahapedia is a net positive for GW.

At certain times in history piracy informs the path the consumer wishes to take and in this case it is an accessible digital tool. I would gladly pay GW for their own Wahapedia.

It'd be interesting to find out, I'd also wager that the vast majority of gnashing over points updates being in the MFM were from people who only ever used battlescribe/wahapedia/PDFs, given that they were free in the app if you owned the legitimate product.

Dudeface wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:
Nah, hire some "security experts" and eliminate it instead.

That sort of behaviour should not be rewarded.

I think, but can't prove that Wahapedia is a net positive for GW.

At certain times in history piracy informs the path the consumer wishes to take and in this case it is an accessible digital tool. I would gladly pay GW for their own Wahapedia.

It'd be interesting to find out, I'd also wager that the vast majority of gnashing over points updates being in the MFM were from people who only ever used battlescribe/wahapedia/PDFs, given that they were free in the app if you owned the legitimate product.

LOL, they're free on BS and Waha as well, people just don't like GW's silly app.

Dudeface wrote:
It'd be interesting to find out, I'd also wager that the vast majority of gnashing over points updates being in the MFM were from people who only ever used battlescribe/wahapedia/PDFs, given that they were free in the app if you owned the legitimate product.

I sub to Wahammer+ and have app access, but the app is just terrible. I want digital points even with app access. It's just that unusable and GW has not met their commitments that they made on it after its launch.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:
Nah, hire some "security experts" and eliminate it instead.

That sort of behaviour should not be rewarded.

I think, but can't prove that Wahapedia is a net positive for GW.

At certain times in history piracy informs the path the consumer wishes to take and in this case it is an accessible digital tool. I would gladly pay GW for their own Wahapedia.

No doubt.
Having the rules readily available is so important for my local groups.

 vict0988 wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:
Nah, hire some "security experts" and eliminate it instead.

That sort of behaviour should not be rewarded.

I think, but can't prove that Wahapedia is a net positive for GW.

At certain times in history piracy informs the path the consumer wishes to take and in this case it is an accessible digital tool. I would gladly pay GW for their own Wahapedia.

It'd be interesting to find out, I'd also wager that the vast majority of gnashing over points updates being in the MFM were from people who only ever used battlescribe/wahapedia/PDFs, given that they were free in the app if you owned the legitimate product.

LOL, they're free on BS and Waha as well, people just don't like GW's silly app.

So... Why did so many people complain about paying for points updates then?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
It'd be interesting to find out, I'd also wager that the vast majority of gnashing over points updates being in the MFM were from people who only ever used battlescribe/wahapedia/PDFs, given that they were free in the app if you owned the legitimate product.

I sub to Wahammer+ and have app access, but the app is just terrible. I want digital points even with app access. It's just that unusable and GW has not met their commitments that they made on it after its launch.

Oh 100% the project manager on that needs a slap.

Dudeface wrote:


So... Why did so many people complain about paying for points updates then?

Because free on there, doesn't mean free to use in an tournament or official location often.
Which makes them essentially free but not useable in many cases.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
It'd be interesting to find out, I'd also wager that the vast majority of gnashing over points updates being in the MFM were from people who only ever used battlescribe/wahapedia/PDFs, given that they were free in the app if you owned the legitimate product.

I sub to Wahammer+ and have app access, but the app is just terrible. I want digital points even with app access. It's just that unusable and GW has not met their commitments that they made on it after its launch.

Oh 100% the project manager on that needs a slap.

just one?

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:
Nah, hire some "security experts" and eliminate it instead.

That sort of behaviour should not be rewarded.

I think, but can't prove that Wahapedia is a net positive for GW.

At certain times in history piracy informs the path the consumer wishes to take and in this case it is an accessible digital tool. I would gladly pay GW for their own Wahapedia.

Yep, like piracy dropped when people could access most of the shows they wanted, legally, on demand on a few places (Amazon, Netflix).

Then each cable company/channel decided to make their own application and lock their stuff to there and in so doing recreated the situation which made piracy a better customer experience than the legal route.

Or, Nintendo sitting on the massive catalogue of retro games it owns but not releasing them on its digital storefronts. These games are not legally acquirable outside of managing to find one second hand. So yeah, pirate those games if you want to play them. Nintendo doesn't want to sell them, after all.

As I see we already have people eliminating context from my comments from the quote chain...

- I'm not defending GW's apps, nor Warhammer+ as a whole
- I'm not defending the short-lived campaign books, nor the apparent quality of certain rules releases (though I do appreciate the PDF indicating when stuff rotates out, as long as it is kept updated).
- I have consistently been against the piracy of content. Pay creators, don't pirate their work.
- The person I was responding to suggested hiring the person behind that site - someone who is, by definition, pirating the content from GW's books. Doing so would see them reaping some degree of benefit from what they've done, which should be discouraged.
- I have nothing against a digital distribution of GW's rules, as long as it is done via the IP-holder, not via piracy.
- No, I don't get why they got rid of official e-books (etc) either, though I guess they may have made getting content on that site easier.

 Dysartes wrote:
As I see we already have people eliminating context from my comments from the quote chain...

- I'm not defending GW's apps, nor Warhammer+ as a whole
- I'm not defending the short-lived campaign books, nor the apparent quality of certain rules releases (though I do appreciate the PDF indicating when stuff rotates out, as long as it is kept updated).
- I have consistently been against the piracy of content. Pay creators, don't pirate their work.
- The person I was responding to suggested hiring the person behind that site - someone who is, by definition, pirating the content from GW's books. Doing so would see them reaping some degree of benefit from what they've done, which should be discouraged.
- I have nothing against a digital distribution of GW's rules, as long as it is done via the IP-holder, not via piracy.
- No, I don't get why they got rid of official e-books (etc) either, though I guess they may have made getting content on that site easier.

Well GW ain't doing it correctly the first five times, so they don't get money. IF they ever do, maybe they'll get money. As is, just because they're the IP creator doesn't mean they deserve anything more than they already got.

Dudeface wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:
Nah, hire some "security experts" and eliminate it instead.

That sort of behaviour should not be rewarded.

I think, but can't prove that Wahapedia is a net positive for GW.

At certain times in history piracy informs the path the consumer wishes to take and in this case it is an accessible digital tool. I would gladly pay GW for their own Wahapedia.

It'd be interesting to find out, I'd also wager that the vast majority of gnashing over points updates being in the MFM were from people who only ever used battlescribe/wahapedia/PDFs, given that they were free in the app if you owned the legitimate product.

Given that pt changes are an errata to the game they should just be free on the Community page along with all the other errata....

 Dysartes wrote:

Nah, hire some "security experts" and eliminate it instead.

That sort of behaviour should not be rewarded.

You mean putting in thankless effort as a third party to make their game actually playable at official events? Lol. If Waha went down the playability of 40k would suffer dramatically.

Dudeface wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:
Nah, hire some "security experts" and eliminate it instead.

That sort of behaviour should not be rewarded.

I think, but can't prove that Wahapedia is a net positive for GW.

At certain times in history piracy informs the path the consumer wishes to take and in this case it is an accessible digital tool. I would gladly pay GW for their own Wahapedia.

It'd be interesting to find out, I'd also wager that the vast majority of gnashing over points updates being in the MFM were from people who only ever used battlescribe/wahapedia/PDFs, given that they were free in the app if you owned the legitimate product.

You don't even need to own book to get points in app.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:
As I see we already have people eliminating context from my comments from the quote chain...

- I'm not defending GW's apps, nor Warhammer+ as a whole
- I'm not defending the short-lived campaign books, nor the apparent quality of certain rules releases (though I do appreciate the PDF indicating when stuff rotates out, as long as it is kept updated).
- I have consistently been against the piracy of content. Pay creators, don't pirate their work.
- The person I was responding to suggested hiring the person behind that site - someone who is, by definition, pirating the content from GW's books. Doing so would see them reaping some degree of benefit from what they've done, which should be discouraged.
- I have nothing against a digital distribution of GW's rules, as long as it is done via the IP-holder, not via piracy.
- No, I don't get why they got rid of official e-books (etc) either, though I guess they may have made getting content on that site easier.

Well GW ain't doing it correctly the first five times, so they don't get money. IF they ever do, maybe they'll get money. As is, just because they're the IP creator doesn't mean they deserve anything more than they already got.

Well nobody is entitled for 40k rules.

Myself i hope every pirate gets sooner or later fired and won't find new job.