I wasn't there, but what I suspect happened around the end of 7th was that GW realized it was becoming unsustainable from a business perspective to simply increase the scope of their Warhammer settings forever. In order to continue growing, something about their business had to change. Nuking WFB was one answer. Rebooting 40k with a focus on gameplay and accessibility was another. Both answers have clearly worked out for them, but not without losing a lot of people along the way unfortunately.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Idk the setting feels pretty wide open to me. There is so little fluff for the non-marines that you can do almost anything. Just like old 40k.
Definitely no Xenos tho
'IDK the setting's pretty wide open to me. there's so little fluff for Non-Kingdoms of Men characters that you can do almost anything.
Definitely no Hobbits, Orcs, Elves, Wizards, Ents, Goblins, or Easterlings though.'
artific3r wrote: I would love to get into historicals someday. As I understand it, 40k is not really a wargame in the traditional sense. 30k leans that direction but I'd assume there are still plenty of differences.
They're so cheap you can literally just get two armies for the price of a single 40k one, or even less, and forcibly loop some unfortunate friend or family member into the hobby.
Nowadays it's more Like 4 depending upon system and size.
Just go take a look at perry miniatures (incidentally also sculpted for gw some of the best old kits)
Unit1126PLL wrote: Idk the setting feels pretty wide open to me. There is so little fluff for the non-marines that you can do almost anything. Just like old 40k.
Definitely no Xenos tho
According to my vast experience browsing the internet, the inclusion of xenos in a GW product will completely make or break the game for a huge percentage of 40k fans.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Idk the setting feels pretty wide open to me. There is so little fluff for the non-marines that you can do almost anything. Just like old 40k.
Definitely no Xenos tho
Depends upon the Players creativity, miltia, solar aux and mechanicum make for good rules for xenos if one puts his mind to it. Even some of the really obscure ones.
artific3r wrote: It's just really hard for me to relate emotionally to anything short of a hideously grotesque alien monstrosity, if you know what I mean.
Howabout just some Eldar?
Is the argument here that I'm somehow wrong to want non-human players in my galactic-wide sci fi setting? I don't get it.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Yeah you can fake it till you make it but there's genuinely no Xenos in 30k officially.
That said, there are two army lists that explicitly tell you to use any models (even outside GWiirc) so...
I mean, if I don't want to play 10th edition, but I wanted to use models that I already own for a setting I enjoy. . . I can play earlier editions or alternative rule sets. The solution is very simple.
The ultimate point here is that moving to HH is not a particularly good solution for many of those who aren't keen on 10th. I'm sure GW would love it if I threw money at a different system they also happen to publish, but I'll pass.
artific3r wrote: It's just really hard for me to relate emotionally to anything short of a hideously grotesque alien monstrosity, if you know what I mean.
Howabout just some Eldar?
Is the argument here that I'm somehow wrong to want non-human players in my galactic-wide sci fi setting? I don't get it.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Yeah you can fake it till you make it but there's genuinely no Xenos in 30k officially.
That said, there are two army lists that explicitly tell you to use any models (even outside GWiirc) so...
I mean, if I don't want to play 10th edition, but I wanted to use models that I already own for a setting I enjoy. . . I can play earlier editions or alternative rule sets. The solution is very simple.
The ultimate point here is that moving to HH is not a particularly good solution for many of those who aren't keen on 10th. I'm sure GW would love it if I threw money at a different system they also happen to publish, but I'll pass.
Yeah, roger that on not being perfect for everyone. Though if it really took off, I think they wouldn't hesitate to add in Xenos- maybe the first by 2030.
Teasing aside, I know it isn't perfect, but it has the soul of 40k missing from 10th, and has some improvements over the older editions conceptually... but honestly, it has some flaws too (still too many USRs for example).
artific3r wrote: It's just really hard for me to relate emotionally to anything short of a hideously grotesque alien monstrosity, if you know what I mean.
Howabout just some Eldar?
Is the argument here that I'm somehow wrong to want non-human players in my galactic-wide sci fi setting? I don't get it.
I'm just poking fun at people like us who prefer alien monsters over humans. My main armies are eldar and daemons. I don't play space marines. I get it.
My dream setting would be 30k marines mixed with 40k xenos. Which I suppose is Great Crusade. But I also like Chaos so hopefully they can find some way to work that in there when they get around to it.
Even playing older editions isn't as viable for xenos players as pretty much all xenos factions have gotten considerable expansions of their unit rosters.
artific3r wrote: I wonder how many people here have played 10th extensively. Speaking from a purely competitive standpoint, the internal balance for many factions is the best I've ever seen. I can't believe how much emphasis there is on movement and utility compared to raw damage. I've never played an edition where so much of my collection was playable. List building has been a lot of fun. Stratagems are largely excellent and impactful. Morale matters, and in some cases a lot -- it frequently results in big points swings if you know what you're doing.
Yes, we lost a lot of flavor and customization. I'm more of a narrative player/hobbyist myself to be honest. But in terms of pure abstract gameplay, as someone who prefers narrative but can also find enjoyment in solving a well-designed puzzle, things have been pretty great.
I have not played 10th, and I won't discount your experience, but for me 10th opened up by sending a hefty number of my units to Legends.
legends are still legal to play with tbh, unless you're spamming tournaments but i don't think its your kind of playstyle considering the contents of your posts
Legal and Plausible are not the same thing. Its legal to own an F-16 Fighter Jet. But its not very plausible.
artific3r wrote: It's just really hard for me to relate emotionally to anything short of a hideously grotesque alien monstrosity, if you know what I mean.
Howabout just some Eldar?
Is the argument here that I'm somehow wrong to want non-human players in my galactic-wide sci fi setting? I don't get it.
I'm pretty open minded, but I'm not sure how feasible playing with a non-human player would work. I mean I can see someone already making the Chess With A Pigeon meme using a 40K table. Maybe AI could learn how to play.
Now that I've entertained myself with semantics, I think what I'd do is take 10th Points, and whatever edition I was looking to play, and try and figure out what the multiplier(s) is/are. There are still a bunch of units from even as far back as 2E - If I had a playing group looking to do this, I'd sit down with them, pick as many examples as I could and compare then/now points with a short Plus/Minus rules change list i.e. changes to Embarkation for Land Raiders - changes to how many guns can fire for that really really sucky vehicle edition if that's where you're aiming... grab Calgar, Ahriman, Chaos Legionaires, Chosen, Tac Marines, Guardians, Guardsman squads, yadda yadda. See what % differential these staples have, hit the "new" units with that modifier - then compare these new units to the staples/examples from before to see if they're looking right. Most of them will probably be pretty close.
Tyran wrote: Even playing older editions isn't as viable for xenos players as pretty much all xenos factions have gotten considerable expansions of their unit rosters.
This ties into what I was saying earlier. A game with limitless creative opportunities requires scope, and scope requires money. By the end of 7th it seems like GW had exhausted their ability to continuously increase scope while maintaining sales. Something had to change about the fundamental design of the game, which I imagine was fairly convoluted and impenetrable by that point, catering only to the most hardcore players. Hence the 8e reboot, followed by 9th and 10th.
Tyran wrote: Even playing older editions isn't as viable for xenos players as pretty much all xenos factions have gotten considerable expansions of their unit rosters.
This ties into what I was saying earlier. A game with limitless creative opportunities requires scope, and scope requires money. By the end of 7th it seems like GW had exhausted their ability to continuously increase scope while maintaining sales. Something had to change about the fundamental design of the game, which I imagine was fairly convoluted and impenetrable by that point, catering only to the most hardcore players. Hence the 8e reboot, followed by 9th and 10th.
I had a similar impression, but more localized/specialized. Its my guess that they did the Primaris Range shift because Space Marine Players had all the stuff they wanted. With them being in almost every starter set and many of the special run sets, sales for Space Marines had to be cratering. Thus the range refresh and Squat Smackdown.
Insectum7 wrote: What sucks about HH is that there's no Xenos. It just can't be a replacement for 40k. 40k is where the fun, creativity, and personality should be. Not in some fluff-spank "pseudo-historical".
Honestly, everything I hear about 30k makes me think GW took completely the wrong route with 8th edition 40k.
Rihgu wrote: I remember saying this here on Dakkadakka a few years ago and Mike Brandt himself came online to tell me I was wrong and picking table sides is not a skill.
How is he the guy running GW's events?
Wayniac wrote: My issue is still with how they equate "balanced faction" with "tournament win rate", when IMHO if the faction does well in tournaments but with one single "meta" build, that actually means the (inter-faction) balance is awful and isn't something that should be lauded.
That's my chief criticism of GW's insistence on reporting "win rates": They're meaningless in a vacuum and without any context. Yet they talk about them like they understand them completely, and then go and make knee-jerk blanket changes to the game based upon these results which they so clearly don't understand.
Dudeface wrote: I mention this as consolidation of options has come up a lot.
And in the same book there are units that can't have the weapons that are actually in the kit, so that doesn't really prove anything.
Remember: The only consistent thing about GW is their inconsistency.
This highlights another subset of 40k fans that's been getting neglected lately. Those who really enjoy the wide-open, highly-personalized, highly creative, expressive aspects of the setting will not be satisfied by 30k. There might be some overlap between this group and the historicals group, but they are not quite the same. If GW was smart they would find a way to build a product for this group. But I think that's hard, because you cannot match the sheer size and scope of mainline 40k without a lot of money coming in, and it's precisely that scope that makes 40k great for the really creative fans.
I think folks who love the openness of 40k but are frustrated with 40k rules/ system/prices/whatever, may be the sort that gravitate toward Grimdark where -in addition to its other virtues- one can explore the faction of their choice without concern for the current meta or release schedule.
I don't know what moron came up with the notion that tables at tournament games must be set and perfectly uniform, but I really want to punch them.
This.
The tournament crowd seems to believe it improves balance, reality is that it increases the advantages of going first. In previous editions where you had to choose whether to deploy first or go first, you were in actuality making a decision about whether you wanted to maximize your defense by deploying into the most advantageous terrain possible or if you wanted to maximize your offense by making opening moves and potentially taking first blood.
With symmetrical terrain, you completely neutralize the advantage of being able to select your deployment zone to maximize its benefit to you, and consequently allow your opponent more freedom with regards to how they manage their opening turn.
Rihgu wrote:
I remember saying this here on Dakkadakka a few years ago and Mike Brandt himself came online to tell me I was wrong and picking table sides is not a skill.
That's an embarrassing hot take for Mike Brandt. It's not necessarily a skill you want to build your game around (and part of the reason why so many games in the past were decided by a players deployment), but it is in fact a skill, and one which was in my view a lesser evil than the alternative (which is what we have now) - your games are still decided by your deployment, you just have less feelsbad about it because you can't blame the gakky terrain on your side of the table for disadvantaging you vs your opponent anymore instead of taking responsibility for your own poor decisions to pick that side.
I have been flamed for suggesting terrain should be asymmetrical so that it becomes a choice which side you pick. That's not to say one side should be completely open but each side should have different pieces of terrain so each side offers it's own advantages and the side you pick becomes a tactical decision.
I was told with a straight face by tournament players that such a thing would be unbalanced because not all terrain is equal, and blocking LOS is the most important thing so you "need" both sides to have identical terrain, and not having identical terrain would make certain armies auto lose.
The fact this indicates a huge flaw with the rules was completely ignored and basically shrugged as not the problem, the problem was not having identical terrain on each side.
The most perplexing thing about that attitude is just how recent it is. This whole symmetrical terrain thing is borne of one or two US tournaments... and somehow it metastasised and now consumes everything, even the parent company.
H.B.M.C. wrote: The most perplexing thing about that attitude is just how recent it is. This whole symmetrical terrain thing is borne of one or two US tournaments... and somehow it metastasised and now consumes everything, even the parent company.
I blame the fact they got people like Brandt and Reecius to "guide" them with competitive play so it turned into boring trash.
Well that explains why the game is paint by numbers now. Imagine planning your army around static terrain layouts as opposed to way back in the day trying to make a TAC list that can react to different battlefields. I said right from the start and I want to repeat it: The only way this game currently functions at all is because of the oppressive LOS blocking everywhere. Funnily enough in an edition where melee is horse poop bad (except against T3 Sv5+ W1 hordes). I don't understand who would want an <18" range shooty meta?
For me it has. I can't even set up my gaming table photo realistically anymore like SS82 or MWG style as these comp simps in my area follow the BS terrain layouts GW made. ... Can't play with my beautifully painted models on beautiful tables. Just infinite fighting over the exact same destroyed buildings, snooze fest.
And this is why symmetrical tables have always been and always will be utter cancer.
I don't know what moron came up with the notion that tables at tournament games must be set and perfectly uniform, but I really want to punch them. That's all???? You're far, far too nice...
Spoiler:
vipoid wrote: A lot of tournament lists are incredibly boring to play against and look no more fun to play.
I mean let's have a look at GW's most recentDunning Kruger Comedy Fest Metawatch article:
[spoiler]
Does that look like fun? To make Sisters work you've got to bring not one, not two, but three special characters? Makes me wonder when does it stop being "Your guys" and become "Their guys" if your list contains multiple special characters. I imagine that if Marines didn't have the Chapter distinction, we'd be seeing lists with multi-chapter Special Characters as well. Also, near as I can tell, the Death Cult Assassins are there just to fulfil the Dedicated Transport requirement.
The World Eater one ain't much better?
Spoiler:
Now in WE's defence, they only have half a Codex, but again, we've got a list using 2 of their 3 special character (and given how many WE lists I've seen with Kharn, I'm genuinely surprised he's not there as well). Also cool WE list with its single unit of Berzerkers and loads of... spawn...
But I guess it's all fine as long as the mighty win rates are on track.
[/spoiler]
I don't know what moron came up with the notion that tables at tournament games must be set and perfectly uniform, but I really want to punch them.
Asymmetry is a super important part of setting up tables for Infinity and picking a side based on the matchup is an important skill to develop.
Infinity tables are automatically nicer looking than 40k tables.
I remember saying this here on Dakkadakka a few years ago and Mike Brandt himself came online to tell me I was wrong and picking table sides is not a skill.
Yeah, like quadruple feth that guy. I try really hard to ignore their "contributions" to 40k, unfortunately, 9&10th are shitshows. So if that's their contribution to the game....they can go feth something else up instead.
Gibblets wrote: Imagine planning your army around static terrain layouts as opposed to way back in the day trying to make a TAC list that can react to different battlefields.
Something I've consistently observed is that most competitive players don't want to have to prepare for multiple possibilities and apply their skills as a general to adapt; they want known objectives and a predictable battlefield layout so that they can hone and then execute a pre-planned, list-driven strategy for an ideal chance of winning.
The players who are actually good at 40K can react on the fly and succeed at the gameplay stage rather than just the listbuilding stage. They are vastly outnumbered by netlisters and number-crunchers who, whenever the game has had enough objective variety to need a diverse set of capabilities rather than min-maxing to a single mission type, will min-max anyways and then unironically bitch that the RNG of mission selection is what made them lose.
So here we are- bland symmetrical tables, bland symmetrical missions, and a widespread, obnoxious, pernicious attitude that anything deviating from the zen-like perfection of smashing armies into abstract hold-for-5VP objective markers plopped between pairs of L-shaped ruins is destructive to the game.
^So then the question I have in response is: Is pandering to that crowd necessary to run successful events?
Like, if I were running things, I'd increase the options for lists, run events with a wide variety in tables, and try to emphasize the messy fun of it, with the understanding that the winner will require a good list, a flexible skillset, and some amount of luck as to not get screwed by some gnarly matchup brought about by the increased variety.
Slight counterpoint, as Long as gw designs the terrain rules and interactions so lackluster, so Long changeing it that one can choose a side is still rather.... I want to say redundant but not entirely.
It's an issue in HH 2.0 aswell, terrain and cover is lackluster, gw circumvented that by making artillery and a lot of ranged weaponry far less deadly, for PA units.
My chosen point of going about the arty dominance in HH would've been to make cover more relevant with a dual system and high cover saves whilest maintaining lethality. Which finally would've also allowed to establish a need for anti-cover weapons like flamers, nadelaunchers etc.
That beeing said a wargame that requires actual playerskill and therefore adaptability and not just Target priority and force building to achieve that, has to have more dynamic challanges, like assymetric tables, attack/defense type missions, deployment choice.
One shudders to imagine the battle of grandson with symetrical terrain...
Dudeface wrote: I mention this as consolidation of options has come up a lot.
And in the same book there are units that can't have the weapons that are actually in the kit, so that doesn't really prove anything.
Remember: The only consistent thing about GW is their inconsistency.
I wasn't trying to prove anything other than a genuine example of someone saying "I couldn't build this from the box so why did they give me options", since people never seem to see that side of it. Which I understand because to most of us we're from the time that a hand swap or a bits hunt was reasonably normal and part of the wider hobby.
What I find most funny is when warmachine was popular, you know an actual competitive game designed for that purpose, the terrain guidelines for comp play specifically said to NOT make it symmetrical but have different types of terrain on either side because choosing what side was supposed to be a tactic.
What bothers the feth out of me is the vehemence from the competitive crowd that the game literally does not function without boring trash L-shaped ruins as the only major terrain pieces, that it doesn't function without objective based gameplay (especially those terrible secondary objectives), that it doesn't function without house ruling the bottom floor of those boring L-shaped ruins to completely block LOS. They will say this with a straight face and see nothing wrong with it. Not that there's some imbalance which is bad for competitive play (that I would at least understand) but that the game is literally UNPLAYABLE AT ALL to where some factions automatically lose if any one of those (terrain especially) is not present.
If that were actually true the fact they're okay with it just always being a thing rather than condemning the game for being so terrible that those things are required (yet not by gw) is mind boggling.
People want symmetrical terrain and missions because they get one game per week where they're having to travel 30 mins to an hour to get to their LGS, after a full day of work by the way, and they don't want to get saddled with a crap board where they got shot off the table in turn 1 because all of the cover was on the Tau players half. They want everything to be fair and symmetrical because it's a random PUG with someone they may have never played before and so the less variables that have to be discussed or argued down about can be reduced. Besides, I thought 40k was meant to be some casual beer and pretzels game? Why subject a random casual player to an incredibly unfair lopsided board and mission if they've brought an army that isn't suited for either of those things? feth all that about being "a better general" they just wanna roll some dice and have a fun, full game.
All the weird thought experiments dakka likes to do about this kind of gak is always a nightmare to read because none of you play events or have any real experience of the tournament scene. Most of you always haven't played in general since 7th or earlier.
And I remember playing games with randoms in older editions on gakky boards down at the local GW. It was this mix of getting shot off the board turn 1 because 40k has always been hyper lethal if there hasn't been enough LOS blocking terrain, getting weird whacky terribly unbalanced missions that caused arguments and bad experiences, or people just houseruled said feth it and played "pitched battle dawn of war deployment whoever kills more points wins" because that was the only way to avoid drama and give people the appearance of fairness.
The GW mission system is designed for the actual modern reality of wargaming which is not a very small circle of friends who all know each other very well and who have ample space in their own homes to set up their tables and play missions that they themselves have designed. But the thing is you can still happily do that if that is the circle/community of people you have around you.
So why is 40k the only game with that problem? I don't hear any other wargame complain about "needing" that type of terrain or bullgak missions to function for pickup games. Note I'm not talking about true historical games, but mainstream games in the same vein as 40k; meant for pugs and tournaments. Eg. Bolt action, flames of war, legion, conquest, etc.
Wayniac wrote: So why is 40k the only game with that problem?
Because unlike actual wargamers and wargames 40k doesn't test terrain and manouvre skills anymore.
It chose the cheap cop out symetrical board because that was easier to get done right... Well no actually since the factions are still asymetrical by design even though gw has done ever more to dumb it down there aswell, the symetrical board gives Off the illusion of balance, and that is why people that don't want to understand or can't understand terrain prefer it.
That is not to say that a symetrical table can't work well but you are not really testing some of the most important skills of a wargame then.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Bosskelot wrote: People want symmetrical terrain and missions because they get one game per week where they're having to travel 30 mins to an hour to get to their LGS, after a full day of work by the way, and they don't want to get saddled with a crap board where they got shot off the table in turn 1 because all of the cover was on the Tau players half. They want everything to be fair and symmetrical because it's a random PUG with someone they may have never played before and so the less variables that have to be discussed or argued down about can be reduced. Besides, I thought 40k was meant to be some casual beer and pretzels game? Why subject a random casual player to an incredibly unfair lopsided board and mission if they've brought an army that isn't suited for either of those things? feth all that about being "a better general" they just wanna roll some dice and have a fun, full game.
All the weird thought experiments dakka likes to do about this kind of gak is always a nightmare to read because none of you play events or have any real experience of the tournament scene. Most of you always haven't played in general since 7th or earlier.
And I remember playing games with randoms in older editions on gakky boards down at the local GW. It was this mix of getting shot off the board turn 1 because 40k has always been hyper lethal if there hasn't been enough LOS blocking terrain, getting weird whacky terribly unbalanced missions that caused arguments and bad experiences, or people just houseruled said feth it and played "pitched battle dawn of war deployment whoever kills more points wins" because that was the only way to avoid drama and give people the appearance of fairness.
The GW mission system is designed for the actual modern reality of wargaming which is not a very small circle of friends who all know each other very well and who have ample space in their own homes to set up their tables and play missions that they themselves have designed. But the thing is you can still happily do that if that is the circle/community of people you have around you.
And that currently wasn't happening with 70% winrate factions? Truly faction capability clearly was horrifically impacted by assymetric terrain.
/S
A faction hitting a 70% win rate is an entirely different issue and doesn't disprove the notion that unfair terrain match ups absolutely swing the game in a given players favour.
Themed boards are fun and I've had loads of great games on them but I've had more where I've basically deployed then lost because the terrain balance was garbage.
Oh boy did the board look nice but when I've just wasted my Saturday afternoon getting pasted by someone I've never met before at my old local club, it's not a good feeling.
That is not to say I think the tournament standard is better and I do think it could use some refinement to allow for more of an enjoyable visual spectacle but in terms of more objective balance? The tournament standard wins out purely because I know at least one factor isn't going to sink me before I've even deployed.
Bosskelot wrote: People want symmetrical terrain and missions because they get one game per week where they're having to travel 30 mins to an hour to get to their LGS, after a full day of work by the way, and they don't want to get saddled with a crap board where they got shot off the table in turn 1 because all of the cover was on the Tau players half.
That's garbage. Symmetrical boards are not required and making it out as if they're important for people in this fallacious example is just dishonest.
You can have plenty of LOS-blocking terrain with out everything being a perfectly symmetrical set of L-shaped ruins.
Bosskelot wrote: People want symmetrical terrain and missions because they get one game per week where they're having to travel 30 mins to an hour to get to their LGS, after a full day of work by the way, and they don't want to get saddled with a crap board where they got shot off the table in turn 1 because all of the cover was on the Tau players half.
That's garbage. Symmetrical boards are not required and making it out as if they're important for people in this fallacious example is just dishonest.
You can have plenty of LOS-blocking terrain with out everything being a perfectly symmetrical set of L-shaped ruins.
If any elite army right now does not get it basic minium of LoS blocking terrain, especialy against 50% or higher win rate army, the game is done turn 1 50% of times. We are operating with specific base sizes and movments. Without those "L" shaped terrains there would be even more focus on playing only shoting armies. And no one wants to have games where one dude got 3 "L" shapes, the other got only two, then the first guy went first and blew up the second dudes army to a point where victory, aside for some loaded dice miracle, is not possible. Terrain and the slow forcing of every army in to a horde size is IMO one of the things that make 10th less fun, then 9th.
Gert wrote: A faction hitting a 70% win rate is an entirely different issue and doesn't disprove the notion that unfair terrain match ups absolutely swing the game in a given players favour.
Themed boards are fun and I've had loads of great games on them but I've had more where I've basically deployed then lost because the terrain balance was garbage.
Oh boy did the board look nice but when I've just wasted my Saturday afternoon getting pasted by someone I've never met before at my old local club, it's not a good feeling.
That is not to say I think the tournament standard is better and I do think it could use some refinement to allow for more of an enjoyable visual spectacle but in terms of more objective balance? The tournament standard wins out purely because I know at least one factor isn't going to sink me before I've even deployed.
That was not my point.
My point was that regardless of Terrain setup factions inherently due to their design may find advantages or disadvantages. Nvm the far more pressing balance issues due to gw's release system and lagging data input. Nvm lack of quality assurance for index and codex balance Nvm writing.
And if the terrain rules in regards to movement , cover were solid that allready would improve even the symetrical tables.
That is however not to say that symetrical prepredictable-tables with always the same layout and missions didn't stunt skill by virtue of their setup alone. Because that is what has happened in combination with pick side missions.
The key to making assymetric tables work would be a rematch on the table in an attack/defend type scenario and as a potential possibility it would force a more flexible list Type by mere existence.
Of course due to time constraints that would have to deflate points themselves on the field. Which could also open up a sideboard type deal.
Bosskelot wrote: People want symmetrical terrain and missions because they get one game per week where they're having to travel 30 mins to an hour to get to their LGS, after a full day of work by the way, and they don't want to get saddled with a crap board where they got shot off the table in turn 1 because all of the cover was on the Tau players half. They want everything to be fair and symmetrical because it's a random PUG with someone they may have never played before and so the less variables that have to be discussed or argued down about can be reduced. Besides, I thought 40k was meant to be some casual beer and pretzels game? Why subject a random casual player to an incredibly unfair lopsided board and mission if they've brought an army that isn't suited for either of those things? feth all that about being "a better general" they just wanna roll some dice and have a fun, full game.
All the weird thought experiments dakka likes to do about this kind of gak is always a nightmare to read because none of you play events or have any real experience of the tournament scene. Most of you always haven't played in general since 7th or earlier.
And I remember playing games with randoms in older editions on gakky boards down at the local GW. It was this mix of getting shot off the board turn 1 because 40k has always been hyper lethal if there hasn't been enough LOS blocking terrain, getting weird whacky terribly unbalanced missions that caused arguments and bad experiences, or people just houseruled said feth it and played "pitched battle dawn of war deployment whoever kills more points wins" because that was the only way to avoid drama and give people the appearance of fairness.
The GW mission system is designed for the actual modern reality of wargaming which is not a very small circle of friends who all know each other very well and who have ample space in their own homes to set up their tables and play missions that they themselves have designed. But the thing is you can still happily do that if that is the circle/community of people you have around you.
*yawn*
Play chess. Symmetrical terrain doesn't fix any of the problems you described, it just eliminates something that crap players blame for their losses as a variable and nothing more.
Also.
because none of you play events or have any real experience of the tournament scene
Lol. Okay, and? You think being a tournament player makes you special or means your opinion matters more? Sit down.
In KT me and my friends had absolutely terrible games due to very specific terrain requirements this game has. Sometimes a melee team was unshootable ever, sometimes an alpha strike was possible that decided the entire game in the first activation. Then we discovered tournament maps and it helped.
Cool looking terrain setups may be cool, but not so much when they lead to nonsensical non-games.
I don't think limiting possible setups to just a few or going symmetrical are good solutions. The best one is a VERY comprehensive list of guidelines, dos and don'ts and advice on how to set up terain for a good game. The "let's set up terrain to look cool" has the most potential for resulting in a crappy game in my (30y) experience with wargames.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Actually, considering how crucial terrain setup is for a fair and interesting game, I am shocked how rulebooks never have comprehensive and specific advice on how to do it.
Sometimes the official sources even offer bad advice, like official Warmachine rules for terrain resulting in total domination of shooting or terrible WD battle report tables, open plains with nonsensical pieces of terrain too small to hide anything.
I wish we could have several pages of example good and bad boards in rulebooks with explanation what is wrong with them and why. And sets of principles like "half of the center line between DZs should be covered with LOS-blocking terrain" that allow some variety (variety is the spice of wargaming!) and the use of terrain from personal collections, but protect players for wasting time playing on an unfair and boring board.
The tournament crowd seems to believe it improves balance, reality is that it increases the advantages of going first.
except most of the time, it favors going second.... This is why GW decided to force the winner of the roll-off to go first.
On the current table layout, shooting from DZ to DZ or turn 1 charges are relatively rare, so going second means you're letting your opponent overextend themselves because they have to complete secondaries.
Turn 1 alpha strikes that insta win the game havnt really been a thing on the new terrain layouts with recommended density (barring a few examples like Eldar that move fast enough to clear the terrain, Towering stuff or Indirect fire spam)
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Wayniac wrote: So why is 40k the only game with that problem? I don't hear any other wargame complain about "needing" that type of terrain or bullgak missions to function for pickup games. Note I'm not talking about true historical games, but mainstream games in the same vein as 40k; meant for pugs and tournaments. Eg. Bolt action, flames of war, legion, conquest, etc.
40k seems to be the only game with this problem.
Because other games have plenty of mechanics to prevent alpha striking.
-SW : Legions usually only has a few guns in range of stuff on turn 1 and their cover rules are better for example
-Grimdark Future has alternating activations, so you can prevent the alpha strike
-Infinity has a reaction system, where there is always an odd of your turn 1 push to fail because of it (although a skilled player in infinity will 100% be able to gak on a less skilled player)
-AoS has very little shooting overall so terrain isnt a real problem and is mostly there to create chokepoints and give a thematic to the table.
So in my opinion, 40k should either :
- halve all the ranged on their guns (with 24" range or more) if they want to keep stuff as killy as it is right now, that way you don't need to go through 4 buildings to finally have LoS on something.
- introduce Alternating activations (oh gak , here we go again)
- reduce the overall output of everything
- reduce the number of models an army consists of
Wayniac wrote: So why is 40k the only game with that problem? I don't hear any other wargame complain about "needing" that type of terrain or bullgak missions to function for pickup games. Note I'm not talking about true historical games, but mainstream games in the same vein as 40k; meant for pugs and tournaments. Eg. Bolt action, flames of war, legion, conquest, etc.
40k seems to be the only game with this problem.
Because 40K is unique in having a bunch of characteristics that make it a problem: high lethality, permissive unit capabilities (you can always move, cast psychic powers, prep for a charge, whatever, and still shoot at full strength), long ranges relative to the board size (with no modifiers to make shooting at your maximum range less effective), permissive target declaration (full split fire, resolve your shooting in whatever order you want), LOS rules that make units vulnerable if any model is exposed, ineffective cover rules (+1 to your save is so mild that you need to block LOS to survive), restrictive deployment rules (no good terrain at your table edge? It's already over), and a turn structure that both facilitates and rewards alpha striking exposed units off the table.
It's a combination of a ton things that all add up to mean if any part of a unit is visible, and your opponent wants it dead, it dies. So if you don't have enough LOS-blocking terrain to hide at least half your army, or if the LOS-blocking terrain isn't big enough to conceal entire units from every angle, then the game doesn't function. It's perfectly possible to make asymmetric layouts that function, but you can't just slap down terrain at random and expect a good game.
It's not that asymmetry is inherently a problem, it's that the game is so critically reliant on terrain to mask functional issues that if you decide to roll your own instead of a boring, prescriptive tournament layout, you are assuming a major role in balancing the game.
Missions are a different thing entirely, and there it's more about players expecting a consistent target to listbuild towards.
Missions are a different thing entirely, and there it's more about players expecting a consistent target to listbuild towards.
i think the current missions are mostly fine for anything outside of narrative. They can't really be 100% tailored to in listbuilding like they could in 9th, they require a decent amount of variety in your lists (not as much as i'd like) and apart from a few outliers (Area Denial and capture enemy outposts being doable on turn 1 and not autoshuffling) each of them brings dynamism and force players to think about the positioning of their units.
Investigate signals is a really good addition IMO as it forces you to not simply push up with everything (once your opponent's deepstrike reserve is empty) and requires you to try and take control of the corners, meaning the battle doesn't always end up in a moshpit on the center objective
Cyel wrote: In KT me and my friends had absolutely terrible games due to very specific terrain requirements this game has. Sometimes a melee team was unshootable ever, sometimes an alpha strike was possible that decided the entire game in the first activation. Then we discovered tournament maps and it helped.
Cool looking terrain setups may be cool, but not so much when they lead to nonsensical non-games.
I don't think limiting possible setups to just a few or going symmetrical are good solutions. The best one is a VERY comprehensive list of guidelines, dos and don'ts and advice on how to set up terain for a good game. The "let's set up terrain to look cool" has the most potential for resulting in a crappy game in my (30y) experience with wargames.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Actually, considering how crucial terrain setup is for a fair and interesting game, I am shocked how rulebooks never have comprehensive and specific advice on how to do it.
Sometimes the official sources even offer bad advice, like official Warmachine rules for terrain resulting in total domination of shooting or terrible WD battle report tables, open plains with nonsensical pieces of terrain too small to hide anything.
I wish we could have several pages of example good and bad boards in rulebooks with explanation what is wrong with them and why. And sets of principles like "half of the center line between DZs should be covered with LOS-blocking terrain" that allow some variety (variety is the spice of wargaming!) and the use of terrain from personal collections, but protect players for wasting time playing on an unfair and boring board.
This. The terrain rules in most wargames are atrocious. Terrain guidelines should be standardized - i.e. buildings shall be constructed of such that they have 1/4" thick walls and 5" height floor-to-floor. Hills shall be constructed in a terraced style of 1" height per level with a 2" lip, etc. Whatever works for the scale and nature of the game in question. The game should define the size of standard pieces (i.e. small pieces are 5"x3" and 2 levels high, medium ruins are 6"x8" and 3 levels high, large ruins are 12" square and 4 levels high), categorize them (area terrain, obstruction, rough terrain, scatter, etc.), and then define how many of each type and size you should have for a given table size and points level, etc. THEN, there should be setup rules (spacing, zones in which certain types can and can't be placed, etc.). I haven't looked at the 40k rulebook in a bit, but I'm pretty sure it still recommends that your terrain should cover about 25% of the table and thats about the extent of it - that is entirely meaningless. 25% of the table with what - line of site blockers? Area terrain? 25% of the table being covered with aegis defense lines will give you a very different experience from a game of 25% low hills or 25% ruins.
This.
The tournament crowd seems to believe it improves balance, reality is that it increases the advantages of going first.
except most of the time, it favors going second.... This is why GW decided to force the winner of the roll-off to go first.
On the current table layout, shooting from DZ to DZ or turn 1 charges are relatively rare, so going second means you're letting your opponent overextend themselves because they have to complete secondaries.
Turn 1 alpha strikes that insta win the game havnt really been a thing on the new terrain layouts with recommended density (barring a few examples like Eldar that move fast enough to clear the terrain, Towering stuff or Indirect fire spam)
Well yeah, thats more of a nu-40k problem/phenomenon rather than the traditional nature of the game in past editions. The decision to have the winner of the rolloff go first started I think in 8th or 9th IIRC. That was implemented in response to the rise of symmetrical terrain, which in turn was implemented as a result of first turn advantagere sulting from non-symmetrical terrain in previous editions of the game where winning the rolloff gave you a choice.
The tail is wagging the dog.
So in my opinion, 40k should either :
- halve all the ranged on their guns (with 24" range or more) if they want to keep stuff as killy as it is right now, that way you don't need to go through 4 buildings to finally have LoS on something.
- introduce Alternating activations (oh gak , here we go again)
- reduce the overall output of everything
- reduce the number of models an army consists of
There are other options. Using a system similar to conquest where your models don't start on the table but advance on to your table edge over the course of the game for example, so that theres a progressive "escalation" in the game rather than two gunlines lined up on opposite ends of the table like they're civil war reenactors or recreating a scene from Braveheart, for example. In older editions many missions used night-fighting rules for the opening turn of the game in order to offset the impact of alpha strike by limiting offensive lethality while both players were still getting into fighting posture.
Wayniac wrote: So why is 40k the only game with that problem? I don't hear any other wargame complain about "needing" that type of terrain or bullgak missions to function for pickup games. Note I'm not talking about true historical games, but mainstream games in the same vein as 40k; meant for pugs and tournaments. Eg. Bolt action, flames of war, legion, conquest, etc.
40k seems to be the only game with this problem.
Because 40K is unique in having a bunch of characteristics that make it a problem: high lethality, permissive unit capabilities (you can always move, cast psychic powers, prep for a charge, whatever, and still shoot at full strength), long ranges relative to the board size (with no modifiers to make shooting at your maximum range less effective), permissive target declaration (full split fire, resolve your shooting in whatever order you want), LOS rules that make units vulnerable if any model is exposed, ineffective cover rules (+1 to your save is so mild that you need to block LOS to survive), restrictive deployment rules (no good terrain at your table edge? It's already over), and a turn structure that both facilitates and rewards alpha striking exposed units off the table.
It's a combination of a ton things that all add up to mean if any part of a unit is visible, and your opponent wants it dead, it dies. So if you don't have enough LOS-blocking terrain to hide at least half your army, or if the LOS-blocking terrain isn't big enough to conceal entire units from every angle, then the game doesn't function. It's perfectly possible to make asymmetric layouts that function, but you can't just slap down terrain at random and expect a good game.
It's not that asymmetry is inherently a problem, it's that the game is so critically reliant on terrain to mask functional issues that if you decide to roll your own instead of a boring, prescriptive tournament layout, you are assuming a major role in balancing the game.
Missions are a different thing entirely, and there it's more about players expecting a consistent target to listbuild towards.
It's a wonder how 40k gets away with barely any terrain guidelines, when terrain is such a huge part of the game balance (maybe GW doesn't realize it? I can't imagine how, but this is GW). Now the competitive solution is just lame and boring, but the comp players don't care because they don't like themed boards anyway. Still, it's incredible how there's no guidelines when it's such a crucial thing, and GW terrain tends to suck eggs anyway.
chaos0xomega wrote: The only rational argument I've heard for symmetrical terrain is that they are good for balance in RTS games.
My counterpoint to that is that 40k is not an RTS and the fact it's turn based has a significant impact on the impact terrain has on gameplay
I would argue this is itself a bit of a misunderstanding of RTS, with StarCraft 2 they are much more concerned with the bases and access to resources being balanced than map balance in its entirety.
You can have up to 10 bases, with often the only thing being you cannot both start on the same side. Scouting and sussing out how to engage is a huge skill.
And learning how the position can change build orders and viable openings is a big part of the game. Seen games even at pro level where a mistake or poor luck on scouting out positions have changed up the game a lot.
Even league of legends isn’t entirely symmetrical, but teams can change up how the terrain itself is used a lot.
Honestly GW terrain is a bit of abomination that feeds back into itself, with bad rules, often inadequate official terrain, that then feeds into bad rules.
NMNR is a terrain issue as well.
I personally don't see the fun in planning for everything in a pick up game or even a tournament, and being able to plan for almost everything, by knowing what terrain you are walking into, and what objectives you need to accomplish, to then knowing what army you are most likely going to be playing based on these limiting factors.
Bring some chaos and unpredictability of it. You are a Drukhari player, all loaded up on transports, cool, however you are defending a fortified beachhead in this scenario.
The good players would still perform, they just wouldn't be able to plan to the enth degree nearly everything beforehand other than their dice rolls - which are manipulated as much as possible in their favour due to strats and/or rerolls.
Bring some chaos and unpredictability of it. You are a Drukhari player, all loaded up on transports, cool, however you are defending a fortified beachhead in this scenario.
The good players would still perform, they just wouldn't be able to plan to the enth degree nearly everything beforehand other than their dice rolls - which are manipulated as much as possible in their favour due to strats and/or rerolls.
except thats the exact situation that is problematic, and the cause of why so much terrain is there.
No, a good Drukhari won't perform because it all relies on them going first so they can move up the board and hide their fragile transports. 40k is too lethal so if the drukhari's opponent goes first (assuming theyre not a melee only faction), they will have a devastating alpha strike on the drukhari player.
Asymmetrical terrain isn't "one side doesn't have cover and the other has plenty of it" its "Cover isnt positioned exactly the same on both sides but has a similar amount".
Asymmetrical terrain isn't "one side doesn't have cover and the other has plenty of it" its "Cover isnt positioned exactly the same on both sides but has a similar amount".
My 10th edition games always feature asymmetrical terrain setups, but watch table quarter head roughly the same terrain features positioned to look good. The terrain should make sense in relation to the objectives (come points, radar towers, etc)
So the playing field is "symmetric" for the amount of different terrain sizes, types and densities, but not symmetric in their extract placement. Makes choosing attacker and defender for the leviathan scenarios interesting.
I imagine GW exists in a state of confusion over terrain, they keep designing and making these elaborate and often impractical terrain kits that I'd wager don't sell as well as they'd want due to the price & volume needed. But then see people complaining about terrain everywhere and can't join the dots.
Bring some chaos and unpredictability of it. You are a Drukhari player, all loaded up on transports, cool, however you are defending a fortified beachhead in this scenario.
The good players would still perform, they just wouldn't be able to plan to the enth degree nearly everything beforehand other than their dice rolls - which are manipulated as much as possible in their favour due to strats and/or rerolls.
except thats the exact situation that is problematic, and the cause of why so much terrain is there.
No, a good Drukhari won't perform because it all relies on them going first so they can move up the board and hide their fragile transports. 40k is too lethal so if the drukhari's opponent goes first (assuming theyre not a melee only faction), they will have a devastating alpha strike on the drukhari player.
Asymmetrical terrain isn't "one side doesn't have cover and the other has plenty of it" its "Cover isnt positioned exactly the same on both sides but has a similar amount".
Perhaps it would help to bring back some of the old asymmetric missions where you have an attacker and a defender?
e.g. something like Meat Grinder, where one player is trying to defend a fortified position for a set number of turns, and the other has infinite reinforcements of infantry.
Dudeface wrote: I imagine GW exists in a state of confusion over terrain, they keep designing and making these elaborate and often impractical terrain kits that I'd wager don't sell as well as they'd want due to the price & volume needed. But then see people complaining about terrain everywhere and can't join the dots.
It would probably depend a lot on management having a clue about how it interacts with the game, they also have a big habit of this terrain looks good, but is super specific and doesn’t play well with the rules.
Great looking terrain that works half as well as 15 mins with a cardboard box is a issue.
Considering their Lord of the rings terrain is so good now, I think it is really just how to 40k is managed.
Bring some chaos and unpredictability of it. You are a Drukhari player, all loaded up on transports, cool, however you are defending a fortified beachhead in this scenario.
The good players would still perform, they just wouldn't be able to plan to the enth degree nearly everything beforehand other than their dice rolls - which are manipulated as much as possible in their favour due to strats and/or rerolls.
except thats the exact situation that is problematic, and the cause of why so much terrain is there.
No, a good Drukhari won't perform because it all relies on them going first so they can move up the board and hide their fragile transports. 40k is too lethal so if the drukhari's opponent goes first (assuming theyre not a melee only faction), they will have a devastating alpha strike on the drukhari player.
Asymmetrical terrain isn't "one side doesn't have cover and the other has plenty of it" its "Cover isnt positioned exactly the same on both sides but has a similar amount".
The problem is, that as a meassure of skill, like i said an potential attack and defend scenario would force you to consider to not just go full transport. However, an attack and defend scenario would also profit from a switch in position. And a sideboard. But on the fly adaption is as already pointed out not something many people in the current comp scene want.
Now if the faction is able to do so is a whole other debate.
I wanted to share some of my many pictures of tables I set up and played on in 9th that show both (a)symmetrical that works. I'll use mostly my autumn table so it shows clearly the differences.
Those look like tables I would enjoy playing on, personally.
The one thing that irks me though, is if you bring something like a baneblade or a knight, it looks like you're not going to have too good a time because theres no space to really maneuver.
But thats not really a terrain problem, thats a GW problem for pushing the envelope on the size of the miniatures you can field.
Perhaps it would help to bring back some of the old asymmetric missions where you have an attacker and a defender?
e.g. something like Meat Grinder, where one player is trying to defend a fortified position for a set number of turns, and the other has infinite reinforcements of infantry.
yes, but those kind of missions aren't ideal for pick up games, so by default we get the leviathan missions. Nothing stops you from talking with your opponent beforehand and figure out a fun mission to play
But rolling for a mission and getting the "respawning infantry" mission when one of the players brought a list with no infantry would be a pretty big feelbad.
These missions are also inherently not as balanced depending on the matchup. Respawning Guardsmen is fine , respawning Terminators isnt as much for example.
Folks who are linking them need to separate the idea that symmetrical terrain and having enough blocking terrain are connected.
There are myriad asymmetrical ways to setup a table where there is plenty of blocking terrain for both sides. There's an example of such above.
All you need is one player who is confident enough to setup the terrain asymmetrically and then either let their opponent choose or roll off for sides.
This. The terrain rules in most wargames are atrocious. Terrain guidelines should be standardized - i.e. buildings shall be constructed of such that they have 1/4" thick walls and 5" height floor-to-floor. Hills shall be constructed in a terraced style of 1" height per level with a 2" lip, etc. Whatever works for the scale and nature of the game in question. The game should define the size of standard pieces (i.e. small pieces are 5"x3" and 2 levels high, medium ruins are 6"x8" and 3 levels high, large ruins are 12" square and 4 levels high), categorize them (area terrain, obstruction, rough terrain, scatter, etc.), and then define how many of each type and size you should have for a given table size and points level, etc. THEN, there should be setup rules (spacing, zones in which certain types can and can't be placed, etc.). I haven't looked at the 40k rulebook in a bit, but I'm pretty sure it still recommends that your terrain should cover about 25% of the table and thats about the extent of it - that is entirely meaningless. 25% of the table with what - line of site blockers? Area terrain? 25% of the table being covered with aegis defense lines will give you a very different experience from a game of 25% low hills or 25% ruins.
Good lord. As if 40k didn't have enough rules already. No game needs terrain construction specifications. That would be just another way for GW to try and corral us into buying their own terrain kits. Is every game going to have their own terrain construction rules? Are we going to have to have separate, precisely-measured terrain sets for every game we play?
Must everything be spoon fed to players?
I would argue for less of this sort of foolishness and instead ask more maturity from players.
The solution for terrain setups is the same solution I offer up when folks argue about competitive vs narrative games (often a false dichotomy, but I digress...). What is needed is simply for players to have a conversation with their opponents about what kind of game they want to play, how they envision the battlefield to look, how they want to get there and possibly what scenario to play. Possibly followed by a dice roll for sides.
The problem is, that as a meassure of skill, like i said an potential attack and defend scenario would force you to consider to not just go full transport. However, an attack and defend scenario would also profit from a switch in position. And a sideboard. But on the fly adaption is as already pointed out not something many people in the current comp scene want.
Now if the faction is able to do so is a whole other debate.
It's not about full transport or not, it's about one side being in the open for the opponent to shoot down in an alpha strike.
tneva82 wrote: Of course asymdetric doesn't mean one side is barren.
Symmetric ls cop out for those who suck in terrain placement.
The argument I usually see is that both sides need the same amount of LOS blocking terrain, or one side can auto-win. Which is absolute bollocks. It's worse than symmetrical terrain, its IDENTICAL terrain, instead of having say one side with extra cover, or something, and one side with more blocking terrain; that's not seen as acceptable.
I remember the way Warmachine used to suggest it, keeping in mind that hills also gave you a bonus to defense (equivalent would be harder to hit in 40k), was something like maybe one side has an extra hill, but the other side has an extra forest (blocks LOS/gives cover) or obstacle (gives cover), so that the choice in side is a tactical one, not a meaningless one, you didn't want both sides to have the same terrain pieces, although you usually wanted them to have equivalent pieces and a similar number.
40k apparently can't do that as there is no equivalent piece to just flat out blocking LOS, so that even if one side had more cover, that wouldn't be acceptable.
40k apparently can't do that as there is no equivalent piece to just flat out blocking LOS, so that even if one side had more cover, that wouldn't be acceptable.
Because there is a ton of armies with expetions, ignoring cover, LoS ingoring shoting or stuff similar to it. How fun is going to be the game where one army gets more cover, but then the eldar player gets more LoS blocking terrain. The cover may as well not be there, but the LoS blocking terrain very much impacts the game. I had seen enough of 8th towers of doom, to know that no symetric terrain and w40k ends really bad in real games.
And I say this as someone who really doesn't like the 10th terrain rules and how a gigantic Land Raider can't drive through a wall.
Gibblets wrote: I wanted to share some of my many pictures of tables I set up and played on in 9th that show both (a)symmetrical that works. I'll use mostly my autumn table so it shows clearly the differences.
Some of those don't look bad, but since you are operating on a basic blank table, doing it symmetrically can be done, however it doesn't fit into a thematic table that looks like it should belong.
i will just use a few examples of my tables, now granted they are set up for 5th ed games where terrain works a bit differently with area terrain, hard cover saves and blocking LOS terrain, but the tables look and feel like they belong.
Additionally dependent on mission setup, because the tables are not mirrored it gives a real decision rather or not you want to deploy first and reveal your force allocation by choosing table side or deploy second. the fact it is an older edition also means there are 2 separate roll offs-set up and who gets first turn. forcing both tactical deployment and maneuver.
Oh, terrain has never been an issue in our games. Our dogma states that one player sets up the board and another chooses their deployment zone. Ends up being assymmetrical but reasonably balanced (both players can veto to move single items on the board before choosing delpoyment, but this is done in good faith)
This. The terrain rules in most wargames are atrocious. Terrain guidelines should be standardized - i.e. buildings shall be constructed of such that they have 1/4" thick walls and 5" height floor-to-floor. Hills shall be constructed in a terraced style of 1" height per level with a 2" lip, etc. Whatever works for the scale and nature of the game in question. The game should define the size of standard pieces (i.e. small pieces are 5"x3" and 2 levels high, medium ruins are 6"x8" and 3 levels high, large ruins are 12" square and 4 levels high), categorize them (area terrain, obstruction, rough terrain, scatter, etc.), and then define how many of each type and size you should have for a given table size and points level, etc. THEN, there should be setup rules (spacing, zones in which certain types can and can't be placed, etc.). I haven't looked at the 40k rulebook in a bit, but I'm pretty sure it still recommends that your terrain should cover about 25% of the table and thats about the extent of it - that is entirely meaningless. 25% of the table with what - line of site blockers? Area terrain? 25% of the table being covered with aegis defense lines will give you a very different experience from a game of 25% low hills or 25% ruins.
Good lord. As if 40k didn't have enough rules already. No game needs terrain construction specifications. That would be just another way for GW to try and corral us into buying their own terrain kits. Is every game going to have their own terrain construction rules? Are we going to have to have separate, precisely-measured terrain sets for every game we play?
Must everything be spoon fed to players?
I would argue for less of this sort of foolishness and instead ask more maturity from players.
The solution for terrain setups is the same solution I offer up when folks argue about competitive vs narrative games (often a false dichotomy, but I digress...). What is needed is simply for players to have a conversation with their opponents about what kind of game they want to play, how they envision the battlefield to look, how they want to get there and possibly what scenario to play. Possibly followed by a dice roll for sides.
Yeah, because giving players the exact specifications they need to construct their own terrain seamlessly suitable for play within the construct of the rules means you can only use terrain designed by one particular company. Makes perfect sense.
Your response here is the only immature thing about this discussion.
I'm going to start with a picture that I've had in my gallery for over 13 years, long before this cancerous symmetrical nonsense ever came about. It was my criticism of a table set that I felt was inadequate. Not London GT inadequate, for those who remember that debacle, but still quite insufficient for a game of 40k:
Many of you know my passion/obsession with terrain, and this is part of why symmetrical builds annoy me so much. They are anti-creative, don't tell stories, and as people have been repeating throughout this thread, they breed this mentality is all you have to do is bring your netdeck list that you didn't write to pre-set tables using pre-set missions and you're a "competitive gamer". It's bollocks, pure and simple. Some of the best games I've ever played - even competitive ones - have been so because the terrain changed how we had to approach the game. I still remember an ancient Adepticon report from Janthkin (IIRC) talking about how one table had a big sign-post/billboard on one side that became the focal point of their defence. Moments like that are what make terrain interesting, where it becomes a big part of the game, not just some imagined method of "balancing" two sides that are already and inherently imbalanced.
So here are some of my recent tables (some of these were test shots for layouts before I painted the terrain):
Spoiler:
In that last one, during the final game, there was a lot more "stuff" in that empty middle. The pic you see was just the test to figure out the layout of the walls and the various sections of the cargo/docks area.
Terrain is important. Any claim that games need symmetry for "balance" are bunk. This is a recent phenomena. Nothing more than a brain bug that has settled in the heads of a few prominent tournament runners (some of whom have terrain sets to sell... hmm... ) and has propagated like a disease.
feth. I need a cigarette after looking at those photos.
Terrain is the third army on the table. The game is (or was... but still should be) just as much about beating your opponent as it is about wrestling with the terrain - thats like, pretty much what war *is* and you can't have a *war*game if you aren't.
For a while I've thought that tournaments should be their own rules set.
Like combat patrols are currently.
Here are our fixed army lists tested into the ground for balance, here is our symmetrical terrain so you both have identical challenges.
Go nuts...
Because tournaments are now purely win measuring contests, they really want a game of chess with 40k colours, that way the only variables are their skill and the dice (maybe they could just get rid of the dice and give each unit in the locked down tournament lists an average percentage success value and then it's purely their skill - that's going back to the rock paper scissors of little wars...).
IMO if tournaments had their own army list ecosystem restricted to purely balanced lists, maybe 3 per faction, then maybe casual gaming wouldn't get as subsumed by tournament culture because it would be where your personality and creativity existed.
HBMCs examples look beautiful, but many of them are far too open in my opinion. 3 and 9 stand out as shooting galleries with far too little cover, especially for vehicles (can even a Rhino hide anywhere on 9?) These are pretty bad imo.
I like 2, 4 and 6 a lot, I think they are really good, but I would still add some more cover in DZs (assuming long deployments).
And yeah I absolutely agree that symmetry is neither good or necessary.
I'm going to start with a picture that I've had in my gallery for over 13 years, long before this cancerous symmetrical nonsense ever came about. It was my criticism of a table set that I felt was inadequate. Not London GT inadequate, for those who remember that debacle, but still quite insufficient for a game of 40k:
Many of you know my passion/obsession with terrain, and this is part of why symmetrical builds annoy me so much. They are anti-creative, don't tell stories, and as people have been repeating throughout this thread, they breed this mentality is all you have to do is bring your netdeck list that you didn't write to pre-set tables using pre-set missions and you're a "competitive gamer". It's bollocks, pure and simple. Some of the best games I've ever played - even competitive ones - have been so because the terrain changed how we had to approach the game. I still remember an ancient Adepticon report from Janthkin (IIRC) talking about how one table had a big sign-post/billboard on one side that became the focal point of their defence. Moments like that are what make terrain interesting, where it becomes a big part of the game, not just some imagined method of "balancing" two sides that are already and inherently imbalanced.
So here are some of my recent tables (some of these were test shots for layouts before I painted the terrain):
Spoiler:
In that last one, during the final game, there was a lot more "stuff" in that empty middle. The pic you see was just the test to figure out the layout of the walls and the various sections of the cargo/docks area.
Terrain is important. Any claim that games need symmetry for "balance" are bunk. This is a recent phenomena. Nothing more than a brain bug that has settled in the heads of a few prominent tournament runners (some of whom have terrain sets to sell... hmm... ) and has propagated like a disease.
Dude , put a nsfw warning there for that table porn!!!!
Hellebore wrote: For a while I've thought that tournaments should be their own rules set.
Like combat patrols are currently.
Here are our fixed army lists tested into the ground for balance, here is our symmetrical terrain so you both have identical challenges.
Go nuts...
Because tournaments are now purely win measuring contests, they really want a game of chess with 40k colours, that way the only variables are their skill and the dice (maybe they could just get rid of the dice and give each unit in the locked down tournament lists an average percentage success value and then it's purely their skill - that's going back to the rock paper scissors of little wars...).
IMO if tournaments had their own army list ecosystem restricted to purely balanced lists, maybe 3 per faction, then maybe casual gaming wouldn't get as subsumed by tournament culture because it would be where your personality and creativity existed.
all this would do is mean anything else doesn't exist. We already saw that with the optional matched play addendums for events: people just used them all the time, every time, even for friendly games because people keep pushing that "if it's good for tournaments it benefits your casual games too" gak.
You'd see people tell others who ask for starting an army to just buy one of the competitive lists and nothing else (already a problem as you get people even now who buy a specific list rather then build a collection to choose from).
Just my small opinion on this:
I am not YET into the game. So I could just see the rules and I am not sure what about to think.
When I started the game, I think it was 7th edition?
Then they started to 'washing up' the factions.
I was an Imperial Guard player in core meanings.
When they 'strip away' the Platoon-System my army felt like 'faceless'. Especially cause I was an infantry based player and it often occur that I had like 2 platoons in any of my list. Now that wasn't possible anymore.
Now its its the Battleline where you can field 6 Units.
But especially when you play Astra-Militarum, the army doesn't 'feel' like an army anymore.
Now it seems they go to the route where they have simply Unit-Names for different models instead of just giving the Core-Rules.
Example:
Cadian Shock Troops
Death Korps of Krieg
Infantry Squad
My Question here is: Why I have 3 different units instead of just giving them 3 Options. (Cadian Doctrine, Krieg-Doctrine, Militarum Doctrine) which just add something special. Now they put up more and more models in it.
This is in my opinion the false way. In my Opinion they should make 1 Main rule and that's it.
I stopped Playing 40k some years later because the rules get more washed up. Now we have some Command Points and all these special stuff which happens 'outside' of the battlefield.
In my edition I had to setup a model to get an Airstrike and everything. It felt much more 'playing a story'.
I had so much epic moments when I had my 50 Men Squad with a Commissar in it, which build up a line and holding up tyranids wave after wave (in the end I still lost) - but the game itself felt epic.
Or when one of my big squads lost a morale test, fell back - even commissar killing a soldier didn't work - But after the next wave I was able to completely wipe out a big Orc-Squads.
It doesn't feel like that anymore with all these special kind of stuff around and watering it down so extreme.
Because that would mean that they'd have to check for balance more and consider depth over dictating your models via specific boxes whilest still maintaing IP and trademark.
Afterall GW isn't selling a DKoK Command squad, which then would potentially open up their market to 3rd parties.
Terrain is the third army on the table. The game is (or was... but still should be) just as much about beating your opponent as it is about wrestling with the terrain - thats like, pretty much what war *is* and you can't have a *war*game if you aren't.
I take it you've never played any Navel or aircraft wargames.
ccs wrote: I take it you've never played any Navel or aircraft wargames.
We're talking about games that use terrain, how they use terrain, and the role that terrain plays, and your response is "Well what about games that don't use terrain, huh???", worded in such a snarky* way that it can only be a (bad) attempt at a gotcha post.
What about them? They're not relevant to the discussion at all.
I'm going to start with a picture that I've had in my gallery for over 13 years, long before this cancerous symmetrical nonsense ever came about. It was my criticism of a table set that I felt was inadequate. Not London GT inadequate, for those who remember that debacle, but still quite insufficient for a game of 40k:
Many of you know my passion/obsession with terrain, and this is part of why symmetrical builds annoy me so much. They are anti-creative, don't tell stories, and as people have been repeating throughout this thread, they breed this mentality is all you have to do is bring your netdeck list that you didn't write to pre-set tables using pre-set missions and you're a "competitive gamer". It's bollocks, pure and simple. Some of the best games I've ever played - even competitive ones - have been so because the terrain changed how we had to approach the game. I still remember an ancient Adepticon report from Janthkin (IIRC) talking about how one table had a big sign-post/billboard on one side that became the focal point of their defence. Moments like that are what make terrain interesting, where it becomes a big part of the game, not just some imagined method of "balancing" two sides that are already and inherently imbalanced.
So here are some of my recent tables (some of these were test shots for layouts before I painted the terrain):
Spoiler:
In that last one, during the final game, there was a lot more "stuff" in that empty middle. The pic you see was just the test to figure out the layout of the walls and the various sections of the cargo/docks area.
Terrain is important. Any claim that games need symmetry for "balance" are bunk. This is a recent phenomena. Nothing more than a brain bug that has settled in the heads of a few prominent tournament runners (some of whom have terrain sets to sell... hmm... ) and has propagated like a disease.
Oh those are gorgeous.
Really love the time and patience you've spend getting a god balance of terrain that also looks fantastic.
If you don't mind me asking, what are you using for all the different base tables you have? Are they mats with images on that you lay over the table, or do you have a ton of different squares that go together to form them?
Wayniac wrote: all this would do is mean anything else doesn't exist. We already saw that with the optional matched play addendums for events: people just used them all the time, every time, even for friendly games because people keep pushing that "if it's good for tournaments it benefits your casual games too" gak.
You'd see people tell others who ask for starting an army to just buy one of the competitive lists and nothing else (already a problem as you get people even now who buy a specific list rather then build a collection to choose from).
Well the point would be that you may not find some units for sale in the tournament lists (tournaments are not the main source of GW income so it wouldn't affect their sales), meaning that casual gaming would offer freedom and variety to stamp your personality on your army, like it used to be.
Tournaments are then their own ecosystem where super serious playersTM who want to show their skill get a totally balanced Chess game to do so.
I actually agree with Hellebore. The reason tournament rules are commonly taken as the de facto standard is because the entire game is currently written around Matched Play.
But if you make competitive play its own, unique thing with highly restrictive (but balanced) rules, then maybe players will start to really think about whether they're really looking for a Balanced Competitive Game™, or something with a bit more room for personal freedom, particularly if the tradeoff is losing the ability to customize your list. Competitive players get a more balanced and constrained experience to test their skills, casual players don't have the influence of tournament gaming breathing down their necks, win-win.
It does mean that listbuilding to exploit imbalance would no longer be an essential skill in competitive play, but feth it.
If tournament players widely decide that they want to use the mode that allows for more personal freedom even if it's less balanced and just use that for tournaments anyways (which I imagine they most likely would, judging from every competitive player I've ever met), then I imagine things wouldn't be much different at all if they did release a wildly different & much more constrained Matched Play mode.
Rihgu wrote: If tournament players widely decide that they want to use the mode that allows for more personal freedom even if it's less balanced and just use that for tournaments anyways (which I imagine they most likely would, judging from every competitive player I've ever met), then I imagine things wouldn't be much different at all if they did release a wildly different & much more constrained Matched Play mode.
Well the point would be that GW only sanctions tournaments that use their patented tournament systemTM, marketed as a game where when you win you know it was entirely down to player skill at tactics and strategy and not list rorting.
Anyone that refuses to run their tournament system would quickly get straightened out by social pressure from people who claim anyone who refuses is just no good at playing and wants to hide it in their list building shenanigans...
I doubt it will happen, but the way GW controls the hobby environment, if they did it, then people would buy into the conceit and self police it like they do with everything else.
The long and short is, I'd much rather they segregate out tournaments than do it to standard/crusade games. Tournaments should be an exception distinct from the game, not part of its standard.
Yep. Starting with 8th ed, I didn't know anyone who played "book 40k" - i.e. real 40k. Everyone locally would default to the assumption that you were playing ITC regulations even in casual pickup games, which was... interesting when newcomers came in and found that the rules were different than what was found in their rulebooks. Going back to 4th or 5th it was common for even local tournaments to utilize INATFAQ or other competitive rules packets, but casual play was at least dictated by what was published in your core rulebook. I want to say that I started seeing ITC comp takeover casual play in 7th, and by 8th it was default. The takeover of the competitive circuit for the most part means I don't have to play with Reecius gakky overglorified house rules and can play with rules published by the designers of the actual game itself but I am permanently stuck having to play the competitive mode of the game regardless as everyonenow just uses the latest GT Mission packet.
chaos0xomega wrote: Yep. Starting with 8th ed, I didn't know anyone who played "book 40k" - i.e. real 40k. Everyone locally would default to the assumption that you were playing ITC regulations even in casual pickup games, which was... interesting when newcomers came in and found that the rules were different than what was found in their rulebooks. Going back to 4th or 5th it was common for even local tournaments to utilize INATFAQ or other competitive rules packets, but casual play was at least dictated by what was published in your core rulebook. I want to say that I started seeing ITC comp takeover casual play in 7th, and by 8th it was default. The takeover of the competitive circuit for the most part means I don't have to play with Reecius gakky overglorified house rules and can play with rules published by the designers of the actual game itself but I am permanently stuck having to play the competitive mode of the game regardless as everyonenow just uses the latest GT Mission packet.
Harking back to dakka discussions from back then this was very much a USA thing. In other places ITC was pretty much unknown outside of tournament circuits. And within the tournament group for europe ETC was more relevant.
Honestly a dedicated tournament mode would likely help in terms of focus and integrity for the players.
I would be concerned that if they released new kit A for an army and it wasn't included in the comp rules, it simply wouldn't sell. Then assume that either none comp play was dead or people didn't want that army and dial back support for it.
I don't trust the player base as it is now now to just carry on using comp rules and instead leave the none-comp models to rot. Likewise you'd go from online advice for new player shifting from "that model looks cool but isn't very viable" to "you can't even use that model for the game mode that matters".
chaos0xomega wrote: Yep. Starting with 8th ed, I didn't know anyone who played "book 40k" - i.e. real 40k. Everyone locally would default to the assumption that you were playing ITC regulations even in casual pickup games, which was... interesting when newcomers came in and found that the rules were different than what was found in their rulebooks. Going back to 4th or 5th it was common for even local tournaments to utilize INATFAQ or other competitive rules packets, but casual play was at least dictated by what was published in your core rulebook. I want to say that I started seeing ITC comp takeover casual play in 7th, and by 8th it was default. The takeover of the competitive circuit for the most part means I don't have to play with Reecius gakky overglorified house rules and can play with rules published by the designers of the actual game itself but I am permanently stuck having to play the competitive mode of the game regardless as everyonenow just uses the latest GT Mission packet.
Harking back to dakka discussions from back then this was very much a USA thing. In other places ITC was pretty much unknown outside of tournament circuits. And within the tournament group for europe ETC was more relevant.
Well I feel this is kind of a blessing and a curse. The rules absorbed a lot of ITC and US play to become what they are today, because they were popular with the largest customer base. Which brings all the good and bad of that with it.
ITC rules weren't even good. They were boring, symmetrical, bland, and their secondaries put all the "tactics" into list building, literally letting you build lists to min-max what secondaries you were picking and what your opponent could pick.
And hey, surprise, surprise, that's basically what 8th and 9th edition tournaments were entirely.. 10th too, but at least the Leviathan deck has SOME interesting flavor... many of which still get ignored by tournaments (like a lot of the Mission Rules).
It's almost like GW learned the wrong thing from the fiasco in 7th, and felt that the tournament crowd was the biggest because they are the loudest thanks to forums/Youtube, so figured hey we need to listen to these guys rather than stop being arrogant douchebags and putting out garbage rules.
Not wanting to get political but it's almost a Warhammer version of "get woke, go broke" where the loudest group crying for change is also the smallest but LOOKS like they're the largest thanks to social media and so the company listens and changes for them, and then alienates their REAL fans as a result.
Wayniac wrote: ITC rules weren't even good. They were boring, symmetrical, bland, and their secondaries put all the "tactics" into list building, literally letting you build lists to min-max what secondaries you were picking and what your opponent could pick.
And hey, surprise, surprise, that's basically what 8th and 9th edition tournaments were entirely.. 10th too, but at least the Leviathan deck has SOME interesting flavor... many of which still get ignored by tournaments (like a lot of the Mission Rules).
It's almost like GW learned the wrong thing from the fiasco in 7th, and felt that the tournament crowd was the biggest because they are the loudest thanks to forums/Youtube, so figured hey we need to listen to these guys rather than stop being arrogant douchebags and putting out garbage rules.
Not wanting to get political but it's almost a Warhammer version of "get woke, go broke" where the loudest group crying for change is also the smallest but LOOKS like they're the largest thanks to social media and so the company listens and changes for them, and then alienates their REAL fans as a result.
What rules do you want to asymmetrical? Faction secondaries?
How can you align the belief that everybody wants to play competitively with GW listening to competitive players being wrong? Why should they listen to a fringe part of the community that wants 4th edition style missions and randomised asymmetrical terrain and random army sizes for everyone, including those that don't want it? How about the flood of narrative content GW have produced since the start of 8th?
The random roulette mission decks where you combine different things produce flavourless and horribly balanced missions, especially the stupid mission deck from 8th/9th that so many on Dakka love. ITC really helped curb a lot of OP lists which created more faction diversity at times where the game was broken, if GW hadn't reacted as fast as they did to SM2.0 it would have been up to ITC to fix that turd as well, un unhappy coincidence of SM2.0 playing into the ITC rules at the time of release made ITC rules bad for a brief moment, but to a pointless degree since SM2.0 were firmly broken in GW's Russian roulette mission pack with secondary missions being generated every turn as well. What could be more stupid for a tournament than randomly generating secondaries every turn? Americans had it right when it came to tournaments, they just need to play a casual game once in a while and not try to get everyone into the competitive environment.
Whether to cater more to tournaments or for other reasons, I just feel 40k has gone in the wrong direction in general. It also has a weird tendency to try and over-correct things that were already fixed.
For example, while the psychic system in 8th and 9th could be a bit bland (how many ways to we really need to inflict d3 mortal wounds? ), it still worked well in removing the worst excesses of the 7th edition magic system. However, 10th then slapped it into the ground for no discernible reason.
Another example is allies. In 8th edition, more allies meant more CPs. Thus, in 8.5 they started adding loyalty bonuses to encourage players not to use allies (or at least give a reason not to). However, 9th edition made it disadvantageous to use allies at all because doing so now cost you CP, rather than gaining you CP. But instead of removing the now-unnecessary loyalty bonuses, it piled them onto every army. This was a major source of bloat as a lot of these mechanics added a good deal of busywork (e.g. Fate Dice on Eldar and Harlequins, or the absolute mess that is Necron Command Protocols). But then, rather then cutting back on that obvious bloat, 10th instead decided to cut abilities like Battle Focus and keep Fate Dice as the central army rule.
Right now, Combat Patrol provides the greatest separate play mode. It is isolated from all of the other ways to play.
In 9th, Crusade was far more separated from Matched play- none, or very few, of the rules updates throughout the edition applied to Crusade. Can't have two subfactions in the same army? Never applied to Crusade. Flyer limits? Never occurred in Crusade. Rule of three? Not in Crusade.
But now, every update applies book wide, so only Combat Patrol remains insulated from the "Oh, It's Thursday, so everything has changed and now I have to rebuild every army list" phenomenon.
Yet another thing I like less about 10th than I did 9th.
Wayniac wrote: ITC rules weren't even good. They were boring, symmetrical, bland, and their secondaries put all the "tactics" into list building, literally letting you build lists to min-max what secondaries you were picking and what your opponent could pick.
And hey, surprise, surprise, that's basically what 8th and 9th edition tournaments were entirely.. 10th too, but at least the Leviathan deck has SOME interesting flavor... many of which still get ignored by tournaments (like a lot of the Mission Rules).
It's almost like GW learned the wrong thing from the fiasco in 7th, and felt that the tournament crowd was the biggest because they are the loudest thanks to forums/Youtube, so figured hey we need to listen to these guys rather than stop being arrogant douchebags and putting out garbage rules.
Not wanting to get political but it's almost a Warhammer version of "get woke, go broke" where the loudest group crying for change is also the smallest but LOOKS like they're the largest thanks to social media and so the company listens and changes for them, and then alienates their REAL fans as a result.
What rules do you want to asymmetrical? Faction secondaries?
How can you align the belief that everybody wants to play competitively with GW listening to competitive players being wrong? Why should they listen to a fringe part of the community that wants 4th edition style missions and randomised asymmetrical terrain and random army sizes for everyone, including those that don't want it? How about the flood of narrative content GW have produced since the start of 8th?
The random roulette mission decks where you combine different things produce flavourless and horribly balanced missions, especially the stupid mission deck from 8th/9th that so many on Dakka love. ITC really helped curb a lot of OP lists which created more faction diversity at times where the game was broken, if GW hadn't reacted as fast as they did to SM2.0 it would have been up to ITC to fix that turd as well, un unhappy coincidence of SM2.0 playing into the ITC rules at the time of release made ITC rules bad for a brief moment, but to a pointless degree since SM2.0 were firmly broken in GW's Russian roulette mission pack with secondary missions being generated every turn as well. What could be more stupid for a tournament than randomly generating secondaries every turn? Americans had it right when it came to tournaments, they just need to play a casual game once in a while and not try to get everyone into the competitive environment.
ITC lists had a tendency to reduce risk and input in-game by winning during list construction.
2000 point standard games? Comes from pre-ITC trend of not wanting to have "gaps" in the army.
ITC lists largely were constructed with specific secondaries in mind to maximise their own and minimise how many can be given up in turn. This leads to the game being "solved" largely before play.
Many of the secondaries, the most popular in particular, were passive or owning player controlled. This was because if you reduce interactivity using your "solved" army, you can maths out points with piecemeal trading units.
There was a lack of emphasis on reacting to in-game variables, or changing environments, which is why those card packs were praised. You won not because your opponent couldn't kill more than X characters, horde units or vehicles, but based on your armies ability to move and react.
It's not to downplay their achievements of creating a widely accepted rules set for tournament play. As noted, many of the above traits exist in today's game. But what they did create was a game that was built off simple maths you could generally calculate pregame.
This is admittedly from someone who did not play ITC but did watch plenty and soak up plenty of resources about the US game in 7th/8th. My opinion and thoughts are anecdotal.
GW started pandering to the ITC crowd because the ITC put the money where their mouth was and managed to get large amounts of people to adopt their rulesets as standard.
Had they ignored it chances are ITC would keep growing and diverging until GW had little control over the rules of their own game.
Tyran wrote: GW started pandering to the ITC crowd because the ITC put the money where their mouth was and managed to get large amounts of people to adopt their rulesets as standard.
Had they ignored it chances are ITC would keep growing and diverging until GW had little control over the rules of their own game.
I still think that would have been preferable to allowing an outside entity to dictate changing your rules based on an incredibly vocal minority who loves to shout down all dissenting opinions.
Tyran wrote: And it wasn't working then. We do have to remember this was paired with GW's troubles during 7th that saw them losing money.
I'm pretty sure not making the game tournament-focused, despite ITC and competitive players thinking that was the reason, had anything to do with the problems in 7th. I swear, that happened at the worst possible time because it really made the comp crowd think that GW was literally failing due to not making the game for them, and then 8th revitalizing it was sort of a "See, it's true! Now they're listening to us comp players and they're a success!" moment, and ruined everything.
Is it a minority though? How else would GW get to know that maybe with not everyone playing eldar in w40k, their rule set is generating some adverse feelings as far as fun and 10th ed goes? Or the same for bad factions. How is GW suppose to be notified that they dropped the ball on a faction, other then to see that no one is playing it. In AoS , as flawed a game as it is, it helps a lot that GW can just see which scrolls are used, which aren't, what the win rates are both in general and in specific match ups.
It doesn't help the people playing around the world to know, that if someone plays the odd "narrative" driven games, that GW favours, certain armies aren't impossible to beat.
It took GW 3 years and a DT member to actualy see it with his own eyes, to understand that maybe double dip kill secondaries aren't good in 9th ed. They had zero problems with swarms of flyarants, till they saw how the army plays. It is not the worlds foult that GW plays w40k in most fringe way imaginable. AoS has a ton of event players on the design team, not the test team, and the rules are a lot better. While of course not perfect and still GW in style.
Tyran wrote: GW started pandering to the ITC crowd because the ITC put the money where their mouth was and managed to get large amounts of people to adopt their rulesets as standard.
Had they ignored it chances are ITC would keep growing and diverging until GW had little control over the rules of their own game.
I still think that would have been preferable to allowing an outside entity to dictate changing your rules based on an incredibly vocal minority who loves to shout down all dissenting opinions.
It worked fine for 25 years.
A vocal minority that somehow managed to make most of the US play their way... Doesn't pass the smell test. The silent majority that wants to play roulette missions just doesn't exist, find the handful of people in your area who wants to play that way but stop trying to make us believe that everyone wants to play with dragon attacks that determine the game more than player decisions and relic missions which create tonnes of unwinnable matchups. Prove that a loud minority can change how everyone plays, make your state mainly play the 4th edition missions, shouldn't be a challenge at all since it's proper GW rules and not overhyped homebrew or whatever you want to call ITC.
Tyran wrote: GW started pandering to the ITC crowd because the ITC put the money where their mouth was and managed to get large amounts of people to adopt their rulesets as standard.
Had they ignored it chances are ITC would keep growing and diverging until GW had little control over the rules of their own game.
I still think that would have been preferable to allowing an outside entity to dictate changing your rules based on an incredibly vocal minority who loves to shout down all dissenting opinions.
It worked fine for 25 years.
A vocal minority that somehow managed to make most of the US play their way... Doesn't pass the smell test. The silent majority that wants to play roulette missions just doesn't exist, find the handful of people in your area who wants to play that way but stop trying to make us believe that everyone wants to play with dragon attacks that determine the game more than player decisions and relic missions which create tonnes of unwinnable matchups. Prove that a loud minority can change how everyone plays, make your state mainly play the 4th edition missions, shouldn't be a challenge at all since it's proper GW rules and not overhyped homebrew or whatever you want to call ITC.
As far as I know, GW doesn't publish information that would allow anyone to make an informed statement.
I'm going to assume that the UK has the highest player base per capita, but I don't know about absolute numbers. With a world wide hobby, it certainly is possible for a loud minority to influence the dominant playstyle in the US, because on the world stage, all of the US is a minority. There are 400 million 'Mericans. There are 7.6 billion of everyone else. If every single customer in the US wanted tournament play only, that could still be a minority of players on the world stage.
Having said that, however, the US is one of the world's largest economies, and likely the largest in which 40k is played in significant numbers. And it IS possible that the US has a disproportionate share of both unique customers and total dollars spent.
Comparing these numbers with the number of people who play in tournaments is the only way to really be sure about who the global majorities and minorities may be.
What I can tell you as a Canadian is that up here, I'm not aware of any "National Level" tournaments. There's probably some sort of tournament scene in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, but even as Canadians, we don't hear abut them if they exist at all. In my country, the home circle gamer probably IS the majority, and we certainly are in my city. Our marketplace is also only 40 million strong, so on the world stage we don't really influence the hobby at all.
As with most discussions, people tend to argue ferociously from their own perspectives without considering big picture ideas- myself included. Almost everything is more complicated in real life than we make it sound on Dakka.
I'm of the opinion ITC was more a result of GWs reluctant approach to updates and FAQs pre-8th Edition. So the community took that in their own hands and with 8th ITC wasn't relevant anymore over night.
I never understood why GW felt the need to streamline the missions ITC style, 8th had the best missions overall. You had matched play missions with progressive scoring that got an update once per year in CA, you had the open war deck which worked okay, you had maelstrom, you had cities of death missions and additional campaign missions like Vigilus. With 9th everything that was left where highly abstracted matched missions, yes, even crusade overall had mostly the same symmetrical and abstracted missions. A 9th edition Mission where you defended a convoy or civilians against an enemy attack didn't give you a datasheet for a convoi truck or for a generic group of civilians and how they move, behave when the enemy comes closer and where they try to run to, no, your highly valuable civilians are a circle on the ground, an objective just like in any other Mission.
This, people, is where I'd agree that "soul" was lost.
For me, I’m ok with a more streamlined game for general meetup and play, but feel the system just lacks so much for a more narrative experience. Therefore I will probably play a hybrid of 9th and 10th. Keep current 10th rules and strats etc, but reintroduce psychic disciplines (performed in command phase unless a “shooting” attack), litanies, warlord traits and relics, etc. This will probably work better in a crusade system because I can’t stand the current era of “heirloom” weapons.
vipoid wrote: If you don't mind me asking, what are you using for all the different base tables you have? Are they mats with images on that you lay over the table, or do you have a ton of different squares that go together to form them?
Most of them are 6x4 mats, some double side, and all form Gamemat.eu. The stuff you see under the city table was from a Kickstarter that is 4 tiles that make up a 6x4 table, and they can be spun around and moved around to create different combinations.
vipoid wrote: For example, while the psychic system in 8th and 9th could be a bit bland (how many ways to we really need to inflict d3 mortal wounds? ), it still worked well in removing the worst excesses of the 7th edition magic system. However, 10th then slapped it into the ground for no discernible reason.
It's just GW learning the wrong lessons and overbalancing things as they always do.
Even now, part of the problem is that people will refuse to play things not Leviathan, or cite them as not being "real" 40k. Even things like Crusade, or the Bunker missions they have been publishing in white dwarf (four of them now, all of them are based on the Open War mission in the core rules so no secondary objectives but interesting twists or additions for VP, like one of them certain objectives give a 5++ save, another if your warlord dies your whole army needs to take Battle-shock, very interesting missions that aren't just Leviathan stuff), people immediately start bitching that you "need" secondary objectives to have a balanced game, which IMHO just sounds like ITC propaganda bullgak that has bled into the masses.
I never understood why GW felt the need to streamline the missions ITC style, 8th had the best missions overall.
Because Mike Brandt and Reecius wouldn't use them, nor would their competitive cultists, which meant the average player also wouldn't use it because "if its good enough for competitive players, its good enough for everyone else".
And yes, it is 100% the problem of a vocal minority dictating the rules to the wider community. There are approximately 700k members on the warhammer 40k subreddit for example, but the latest metawatch article is based only on 60k games logged since the balance dataslate dropped on July 9th. I shouldn't have to explain to you the math there, that 700k probably makes up 20% of the global 40k playerbase I would guess, so you're talking about 3.5 million players worldwide, and you expect me to believe that collectively they have only played 60k games over the past 3 months total? That basically means that 120,000 players played a single game in 3 months and the other however many million didn't touch the game at all. Thats ludicrous. And the fact of the matter is that for most of us here, none of the games we have played in that timeframe are being logged, because most of us are not active tournament players registering our games with BCP or ITC. Also look at the warhammer competitive subreddit, about 110k members, so the competitive player reddit is about 15% of the size of the broader 40k reddit - and warhammer competitive includes AoS and 30k players, so the actual 40k competitive playerbase is arguably even smaller. And a lot of the people on warhammer competitive are players that don't actually play tournaments, they are just players motivated to win and keep up with the meta to give themselves a competitive edge. A quick perusal at the BCP database indicates that theres a total of just under 20k ITC ranked players and 37k BCP ranked players for 40k worldwide, for example, so the actual competitive (ie tournament going) 40k playerbase is actually quite small in the context of the hundreds of thousands or even millions of players that we expect to exist... but the rules are increasingly catering to that group of lets say 40,000 players and forcing the other 3.4 million or so I've estimated to play their way.
That big survey GW does seems to show year after year that casual play at home or a local club outweighs any competitive play.
People who don't play games outnumber casual players as well.
The majority of Warhammer hobbyists aren't even in it for the games just the models.
Apart from that there is no way to gather hard data the way it can be done with tournaments, which is one of the issues. It's not so much a case of the "loud minority" but rather those who attend tournaments and generate discussion of the game in a more in-depth way are really the only people actually talking about it purely due to the nature of casual players.
If you get maybe a game a month, you aren't going to notice the wombo combos or broken units as much, if ever, compared to people who play all the time at tournaments.
Folks I work with who are into the hobby are like me, they buy things because they're cool not because they're meta so they wouldn't take part in a 30-page forum thread about the positives and negatives of a given army or spend hours scouring Reddit for the best options to win games because it literally doesn't matter to them.
JNAProductions wrote: How would you go about gathering data from non-tournament games?
Genuine question.
I wouldn't. But I also wouldn't use tournament data as the only metric for balancing, especially since those people will always find the OP combos and abuse them, so trying to fix it is a futile effort as they just move onto whatever is next, they never "learn" not to do it in the first place, so GW constant chasing them every few month does nothing but shake up the game for everyone else, invalidate codexes before they ever come out, and in general make it hard to find half the rules anyway.
Where tournament data should help is identifying actually broken things (e.g. Titanic, Eldar) and, if it's showing that the factions have an acceptable win rate but then you look and it's like 1-2 lists that are viable, identifying what should be corrected to fix that. Instead they act like a 55% win rate is something to be proud of, and comp players will say look how great the balance is we have 8 factions all within 3% win rates or whatever crap, but then you see each of those factions are being propped up by one "meta" list and that's it. So it's IMHO useless.
I never understood why GW felt the need to streamline the missions ITC style, 8th had the best missions overall.
Because Mike Brandt and Reecius wouldn't use them, nor would their competitive cultists, which meant the average player also wouldn't use it because "if its good enough for competitive players, its good enough for everyone else".
And yes, it is 100% the problem of a vocal minority dictating the rules to the wider community. There are approximately 700k members on the warhammer 40k subreddit for example, but the latest metawatch article is based only on 60k games logged since the balance dataslate dropped on July 9th. I shouldn't have to explain to you the math there, that 700k probably makes up 20% of the global 40k playerbase I would guess, so you're talking about 3.5 million players worldwide, and you expect me to believe that collectively they have only played 60k games over the past 3 months total? That basically means that 120,000 players played a single game in 3 months and the other however many million didn't touch the game at all. Thats ludicrous. And the fact of the matter is that for most of us here, none of the games we have played in that timeframe are being logged, because most of us are not active tournament players registering our games with BCP or ITC. Also look at the warhammer competitive subreddit, about 110k members, so the competitive player reddit is about 15% of the size of the broader 40k reddit - and warhammer competitive includes AoS and 30k players, so the actual 40k competitive playerbase is arguably even smaller. And a lot of the people on warhammer competitive are players that don't actually play tournaments, they are just players motivated to win and keep up with the meta to give themselves a competitive edge. A quick perusal at the BCP database indicates that theres a total of just under 20k ITC ranked players and 37k BCP ranked players for 40k worldwide, for example, so the actual competitive (ie tournament going) 40k playerbase is actually quite small in the context of the hundreds of thousands or even millions of players that we expect to exist... but the rules are increasingly catering to that group of lets say 40,000 players and forcing the other 3.4 million or so I've estimated to play their way.
Pretty much this-
GW makes their money on volume of sales. most gamers including 40K gamers are not us. they collect and paint but may not play hardly at all, or very rarely. i seem to remember a poll we did here years ago where most people who still "actively" wargame maybe get a game or 2 in a month for a total of a few hours.
Compare that to somebody like me who has a hardcore group of dedicated gamers who drive out of their way or have changed their life choices just to stay in the area because we have such a good community where over a dozen players come in at least once a week and spent in excess of 12 hours just on one day gaming a dozen different systems including various GW games both past and present. it makes us far better experienced and vocal about things like GW shenanigans. yet most of us are not tournament minded players who are in that group of people who publicly track games for GW.
the vast majority it seems 40K wise don't even do the previous and many just drop out after a year or so do to cost or other factors. it is nowhere near where it was when i started as far as frequency, drive or volume of players. most of us old school guys have had a huge collection built up over decades for many years so we don't really need much from GW anymore other than the game rules itself. and when they Feth that up we ignore that to.
This will and does cause friction with the tournament/you must play the most current edition crowd. as i know of people who dislike me because i advocate and promote older editons of 40K/specialist games over the thing they call current 40K . on the up side it does draw in players who enjoy it as well.
Yeah, the only reason I played any of 9th/10th is my favored opponent. Otherwise I stick to "not-40k" (i.e. 30k, Necromunda, Epic). Thankfully the previously mentioned systems draw in a similar mindset.
I'm not interested in having to pull teeth to get a try-hard to agree to my list (most are legends), which terrain is what, and that I'm playing to relax). Fortunately for myself, it's not difficult to avoid playing them as I'd rather NOT play(at all) than play with a douchebag.
I've brought this up before, but does anyone recall how Chapter Approved changed from something that was all about trying out fun new things, adding new missions and different ways of playing to a strict set of new missions for tournaments? It was sometime between 8th and 9th (probably coinciding with Tournament Edition 40k, which is what 9th was).
I think my fav mission in 8th was one where there were 6 objectives, and each objective had a value (1 to 6). Each player placed 3, and depending on what number that objective had, it would vanish at the end of that game turn (games were also 6 and not 5 turns - a change which is yet another symptom of tournament play taking over). Meant that getting the higher number objectives was better, as they could be scored longer, but you may not place them, so you could end up with the 1 and 2 near you, and the 5 and 6 near your opponent. It was great fun. I presume modern day tournament crowds would scream bloody murder about its "imbalance", probably because they can't build a netlist tailored to win it without thinking.
Wayniac wrote: ... people immediately start bitching that you "need" secondary objectives to have a balanced game, which IMHO just sounds like ITC propaganda bullgak that has bled into the masses.
Much like we "need" symmetrical terrain for a balanced game.
This has to be the gaming equivalent of the Overton Window.
Hellebore wrote: For a while I've thought that tournaments should be their own rules set.
Like combat patrols are currently.
Here are our fixed army lists tested into the ground for balance, here is our symmetrical terrain so you both have identical challenges.
Go nuts...
Because tournaments are now purely win measuring contests, they really want a game of chess with 40k colours, that way the only variables are their skill and the dice (maybe they could just get rid of the dice and give each unit in the locked down tournament lists an average percentage success value and then it's purely their skill - that's going back to the rock paper scissors of little wars...).
IMO if tournaments had their own army list ecosystem restricted to purely balanced lists, maybe 3 per faction, then maybe casual gaming wouldn't get as subsumed by tournament culture because it would be where your personality and creativity existed.
From Rogue Trader to 7th edition we had over 20 years of seeing what 40K looked like when GW ignored the existence of tournament-level play and the answer is that the game looked like gak. I don't know why anyone has to "wonder" what 40K would resemble as a game without catering to the pros when in 80% of the game's history literally no one on the design team gave a damn about balance and it showed.
It's been very interesting witnessing tourny-play become more and more of a scapegoat for balancing problems as time goes on. I'm really curious what people think tournament-play had to do with the creation of things like Daemon-factory, strength D weapons, invisibility spam,deathstars with 2+ invulns, allies shenanigans etc.
I think my fav mission in 8th was one where there were 6 objectives, and each objective had a value (1 to 6). Each player placed 3, and depending on what number that objective had, it would vanish at the end of that game turn (games were also 6 and not 5 turns - a change which is yet another symptom of tournament play taking over). Meant that getting the higher number objectives was better, as they could be scored longer, but you may not place them, so you could end up with the 1 and 2 near you, and the 5 and 6 near your opponent. It was great fun. I presume modern day tournament crowds would scream bloody murder about its "imbalance", probably because they can't build a netlist tailored to win it without thinking.
The reason missions like this don't catch on is because for the vast majority of players, their one game a month could go "ah, you placed 5 and 6 on your side and I've just got 1 and 2 here".
Wasn't there another one in 8 where there was an objective in the center that you couldn't take invulnerable saves while you controlled it? Bet daemons players really loved that one a whole lot.
The best part is, if you politely requested a re-rack when the situation turned for the worse for you like that, you got eyed like a WAAC player. "Oh, unfavorable mission so you back out? Bet you wouldn't be asking for a re-rack if YOU got 5 and 6!"
BlaxicanX wrote: ...It's been very interesting witnessing tourny-play become more and more of a scapegoat for balancing problems as time goes on. I'm really curious what people think tournament-play had to do with the creation of things like Daemon-factory, strength D weapons, invisibility spam,deathstars with 2+ invulns, allies shenanigans etc.
I think you're missing the point. Tournament play isn't being blamed for "balance problems", it's being blamed for the game turning into what, to some of us, is an ever blander and blander exercise in grinding balls of numbers against each other that doesn't make any concessions to narrative or immersion, and for a community that is increasingly confused and terrified by the prospect of varying from the official rules in any way lest they "ruin the balance of the game". The difference between 3rd-7th and 8th-10th isn't that one was balanced and the other wasn't, it's that in 3rd-7th we all knew and acknowledged the game didn't work very well as written and we should have the freedom to fiddle with it, while 8th-10th feels increasingly like it's dominated by an attitude that people should be playing "real 40k" and any deviation from the official rules should be frowned on and criticized.
I mean, our group plays points levels that have varied since 3rd Ed: 850, 1055, 1255, 1850, 1855, 2555 and so on.
Talked about a 2055 list a few weeks ago (not here) and had someone tell me with a straight face that you can't play that points level.
Excuse me, what?
It's just like the "minimum sized" boards that were created simply because of GW's box-sizes, but were leapt upon with ravenous hunger by the tournament crowd who saw $$$ for new custom sized mats and symmetrical terrain sets to go with them.
H.B.M.C. wrote: I've brought this up before, but does anyone recall how Chapter Approved changed from something that was all about trying out fun new things, adding new missions and different ways of playing to a strict set of new missions for tournaments? It was sometime between 8th and 9th (probably coinciding with Tournament Edition 40k, which is what 9th was).
9th I'm pretty sure. Chapter Approved in 8th was like the pre-AOS 3.0 GHB (which also now is just tournament rules and lost everything else that made it interesting): Had something for each type of play, so it included some wacky missions, some fun narrative ones (I want to say 8th had Cityfight and Planetstrike stuff), and then matched play. And 9 out of 10 times, it may as well have just been the Matched Play stuff as that's all anyone bought it for, and all anyone cared about. I remember that after even the first Chapter Approved of 8th, nobody wanted to even touch the missions in the rulebook; it HAD to be the chapter approved missions or nothing. Even though the book missions were perfectly fine, they weren't "updated" so therefore were bad.
That's the mindset I hate most of all. The idea just because it's the latest set of matched play crap, it's better than the previous on and the previous one is obsolete, and if you mention using it you get the same kind of look like if you turned up with plastic army men proxying space marines and coke cans proxying tanks. All the variety is gone, it's whatever the latest "season" horsegak is (a horrific idea for a tabletop game by the way, this isn't a fething MOBA or Diablo) and everything else is junk that nobody should ever look at again.
I don't completely blame the tournament players, but I do think that the screaming about balance this and balance that has stripped the game of anything that made it interesting and enjoyable and left us with the bland shell we have now. is it playable? Sure. Is it good? Subjective, but maybe. But it's BLAND. It's simplistic in its design, seemingly to cater to the min-maxing players, and little thought is made for the other sides; but I bet you wont' see the tournament players say that needs to come back, because it doesn't affect them and, for most of them, it was just a waste of space, time, and design effort.
BlaxicanX wrote: It's been very interesting witnessing tourny-play become more and more of a scapegoat for balancing problems as time goes on.
It's not a scapegoat. There's a direct correlation between the shape the game is taking and how that relates to tournament games since 8th.
YES YES YES AND MORE YES.
Scapegoat it is not.
it's more like feth YOU AND YOUR ARMY mentality and "MY FUN MATTERS MORE THAN OUR FUN" focus.
it's not even that. it's that the comp play wants one thing good (a balanced game) which is good for non-comp, but then to achieve that wants to strip out everything else that makes non-comp fun. And, for whatever reason, they push the mindset that if you don't follow their lead, your game could *gasp* be unbalanced, and you might *gasp x2* waste some time in a game. it's fearmongering.
And thats arguably GWs fault for not balancing the game appropriately while still catering to a narrative mindset. Its possible to do both, the narrative competitive balance was healthy in the 4th/5th edition. IMO it was the 6th and 7th edition era when they actually started catering to the competitive community more that the disconnect between narrative and competitive started to set in.
The disconnect started the moment codex creep started. People have been playing to win since forever, codex creep just made the tools to do so very blatantly obvious.
EDIT: and while relatively tame compared to what would come after, codex creep really got going during 5th.
codex creep seems a natural process that ive encountered in basically every tabletop wargame I've ever played, so I'm not willing to blame that as root cause for a problem that is overwhelmingly unique to just 40k and Warmachine. I have not encountered the same behaviors or attitudes in the AoS or 30k communities, nor the Malifaux, MESBG, Battletech, Flames of War/Team Yankee, or Conquest communities (for just a cross section of the circles I travel in). Bolt Action is a weird one because there is a certain "competitive style" to the game that causes friction with those who play casually in some circles, etc.
Tyran wrote: GW started pandering to the ITC crowd because the ITC put the money where their mouth was and managed to get large amounts of people to adopt their rulesets as standard.
Had they ignored it chances are ITC would keep growing and diverging until GW had little control over the rules of their own game.
I still think that would have been preferable to allowing an outside entity to dictate changing your rules based on an incredibly vocal minority who loves to shout down all dissenting opinions.
It worked fine for 25 years.
A vocal minority that somehow managed to make most of the US play their way... Doesn't pass the smell test. The silent majority that wants to play roulette missions just doesn't exist, find the handful of people in your area who wants to play that way but stop trying to make us believe that everyone wants to play with dragon attacks that determine the game more than player decisions and relic missions which create tonnes of unwinnable matchups. Prove that a loud minority can change how everyone plays, make your state mainly play the 4th edition missions, shouldn't be a challenge at all since it's proper GW rules and not overhyped homebrew or whatever you want to call ITC.
As far as I know, GW doesn't publish information that would allow anyone to make an informed statement.
An educated guess would be that whatever most individuals say they privately want to play when you ask them is what the majority wants. If that's roulette missions but what you see at your club is mostly ITC missions because of two vocal and active tournament players that are always training for their next GT and the rotating list of rogue casual players go along with it because it's easier it still shouldn't be an issue to organize regular roulette missions in your area, so there'd be no reason to be such a vocal hater of the loud minority of ITC enjoyers. If it's ITC missions because they want player interactions and their opponent's list to be what decides the game, not (Russian) roulette missions or random terrain tables then there is no silent majority that wants what Wayniac claims the silent majority wants.
I'm going to assume that the UK has the highest player base per capita, but I don't know about absolute numbers. With a world wide hobby, it certainly is possible for a loud minority to influence the dominant playstyle in the US, because on the world stage, all of the US is a minority. There are 400 million 'Mericans. There are 7.6 billion of everyone else. If every single customer in the US wanted tournament play only, that could still be a minority of players on the world stage.
UK was happily playing their Frankenstein of Russian roulette and eternal war while the US was doing ITC (OMG homebrew is scary when Americans do it). If the UK had hated the 9th edition ITC-style missions they would have rioted and played with their 8th edition missions, if not at GTs then at home, maybe they did but if that was the case there is still no reason to make conspiracy theories about how the evil ITC people are influencing the game against the will of the silent majority. Every bad rules change becomes the fault of tournament players, but when GW cancels their competitive playtesters and decides to break the game with the Eldar Yahtzee mechanic people don't blame the vocal casuals.
Wayniac wrote: Even now, part of the problem is that people will refuse to play things not Leviathan, or cite them as not being "real" 40k. Even things like Crusade, or the Bunker missions they have been publishing in white dwarf (four of them now, all of them are based on the Open War mission in the core rules so no secondary objectives but interesting twists or additions for VP, like one of them certain objectives give a 5++ save, another if your warlord dies your whole army needs to take Battle-shock, very interesting missions that aren't just Leviathan stuff), people immediately start bitching that you "need" secondary objectives to have a balanced game, which IMHO just sounds like ITC propaganda bullgak that has bled into the masses.
Why is the silent majority that loves roulette missions and hates ITC devils refusing to play the roulette missions you suggest playing? Either it's because you're a gakhat and nobody wants to play you or it's because there is no silent majority that likes the missions you like. You're not so bad, you just have a different taste in 40k than your locals, no need to be angry at ITC or Nova.
JNAProductions wrote: How would you go about gathering data from non-tournament games?
Genuine question.
I wouldn't. But I also wouldn't use tournament data as the only metric for balancing, especially since those people will always find the OP combos and abuse them, so trying to fix it is a futile effort as they just move onto whatever is next, they never "learn" not to do it in the first place, so GW constant chasing them every few month does nothing but shake up the game for everyone else, invalidate codexes before they ever come out, and in general make it hard to find half the rules anyway.
Where tournament data should help is identifying actually broken things (e.g. Titanic, Eldar) and, if it's showing that the factions have an acceptable win rate but then you look and it's like 1-2 lists that are viable, identifying what should be corrected to fix that. Instead they act like a 55% win rate is something to be proud of, and comp players will say look how great the balance is we have 8 factions all within 3% win rates or whatever crap, but then you see each of those factions are being propped up by one "meta" list and that's it. So it's IMHO useless.
How can it both be futile and helpful? Now that GW have gotten everyone into a sane win rate they can make adjustments to internal balance (starting with making wargear cost points again). I think Death Guard and Eldar players are happy they can have game now without the Eldar player having to bring 1500 pts, even if it requires the Death Guard player to dig through his cabinets for the models that give him a chance.
H.B.M.C. wrote: ...Tournament Edition 40k, which is what 9th was...
That's an odd way to spell Crusade Edition 40k. Maybe you meant Narrative Edition 40k? Especially odd given how few tournaments there were at the start of 9th, what a puzzling statement.
BlaxicanX wrote: ...It's been very interesting witnessing tourny-play become more and more of a scapegoat for balancing problems as time goes on. I'm really curious what people think tournament-play had to do with the creation of things like Daemon-factory, strength D weapons, invisibility spam,deathstars with 2+ invulns, allies shenanigans etc.
I think you're missing the point. Tournament play isn't being blamed for "balance problems", it's being blamed for the game turning into what, to some of us, is an ever blander and blander exercise in grinding balls of numbers against each other that doesn't make any concessions to narrative or immersion, and for a community that is increasingly confused and terrified by the prospect of varying from the official rules in any way lest they "ruin the balance of the game". The difference between 3rd-7th and 8th-10th isn't that one was balanced and the other wasn't, it's that in 3rd-7th we all knew and acknowledged the game didn't work very well as written and we should have the freedom to fiddle with it, while 8th-10th feels increasingly like it's dominated by an attitude that people should be playing "real 40k" and any deviation from the official rules should be frowned on and criticized.
It's the casual 40k writers that decided to turn melee into a boring artificial stupidity grind instead of a tactical exercise in positioning.
Talked about a 2055 list a few weeks ago (not here) and had someone tell me with a straight face that you can't play that points level.
I actually did the same thing with 1500 points, I don't want to make a list for a game mode I'm never going to play again and that I can't compare apples to apples with anyone else, while 1k or 2k is more of a standard experience, it's a bit like watching a German language indie film instead of the latest blockbuster. With 2055 there's the added thing of feeling like someone refuses to play by the rules and cheats by going over the points limit when you've played by the rules and worked out the puzzle of getting a list that is close to but not higher than 2k.
Tyran wrote: GW started pandering to the ITC crowd because the ITC put the money where their mouth was and managed to get large amounts of people to adopt their rulesets as standard.
Had they ignored it chances are ITC would keep growing and diverging until GW had little control over the rules of their own game.
I still think that would have been preferable to allowing an outside entity to dictate changing your rules based on an incredibly vocal minority who loves to shout down all dissenting opinions.
It worked fine for 25 years.
A vocal minority that somehow managed to make most of the US play their way... Doesn't pass the smell test. The silent majority that wants to play roulette missions just doesn't exist, find the handful of people in your area who wants to play that way but stop trying to make us believe that everyone wants to play with dragon attacks that determine the game more than player decisions and relic missions which create tonnes of unwinnable matchups. Prove that a loud minority can change how everyone plays, make your state mainly play the 4th edition missions, shouldn't be a challenge at all since it's proper GW rules and not overhyped homebrew or whatever you want to call ITC.
As far as I know, GW doesn't publish information that would allow anyone to make an informed statement.
An educated guess would be that whatever most individuals say they privately want to play when you ask them is what the majority wants. If that's roulette missions but what you see at your club is mostly ITC missions because of two vocal and active tournament players that are always training for their next GT and the rotating list of rogue casual players go along with it because it's easier it still shouldn't be an issue to organize regular roulette missions in your area, so there'd be no reason to be such a vocal hater of the loud minority of ITC enjoyers. If it's ITC missions because they want player interactions and their opponent's list to be what decides the game, not (Russian) roulette missions or random terrain tables then there is no silent majority that wants what Wayniac claims the silent majority wants.
I'm going to assume that the UK has the highest player base per capita, but I don't know about absolute numbers. With a world wide hobby, it certainly is possible for a loud minority to influence the dominant playstyle in the US, because on the world stage, all of the US is a minority. There are 400 million 'Mericans. There are 7.6 billion of everyone else. If every single customer in the US wanted tournament play only, that could still be a minority of players on the world stage.
UK was happily playing their Frankenstein of Russian roulette and eternal war while the US was doing ITC (OMG homebrew is scary when Americans do it). If the UK had hated the 9th edition ITC-style missions they would have rioted and played with their 8th edition missions, if not at GTs then at home, maybe they did but if that was the case there is still no reason to make conspiracy theories about how the evil ITC people are influencing the game against the will of the silent majority. Every bad rules change becomes the fault of tournament players, but when GW cancels their competitive playtesters and decides to break the game with the Eldar Yahtzee mechanic people don't blame the vocal casuals.
Wayniac wrote: Even now, part of the problem is that people will refuse to play things not Leviathan, or cite them as not being "real" 40k. Even things like Crusade, or the Bunker missions they have been publishing in white dwarf (four of them now, all of them are based on the Open War mission in the core rules so no secondary objectives but interesting twists or additions for VP, like one of them certain objectives give a 5++ save, another if your warlord dies your whole army needs to take Battle-shock, very interesting missions that aren't just Leviathan stuff), people immediately start bitching that you "need" secondary objectives to have a balanced game, which IMHO just sounds like ITC propaganda bullgak that has bled into the masses.
Why is the silent majority that loves roulette missions and hates ITC devils refusing to play the roulette missions you suggest playing? Either it's because you're a gakhat and nobody wants to play you or it's because there is no silent majority that likes the missions you like. You're not so bad, you just have a different taste in 40k than your locals, no need to be angry at ITC or Nova.
JNAProductions wrote: How would you go about gathering data from non-tournament games?
Genuine question.
I wouldn't. But I also wouldn't use tournament data as the only metric for balancing, especially since those people will always find the OP combos and abuse them, so trying to fix it is a futile effort as they just move onto whatever is next, they never "learn" not to do it in the first place, so GW constant chasing them every few month does nothing but shake up the game for everyone else, invalidate codexes before they ever come out, and in general make it hard to find half the rules anyway.
Where tournament data should help is identifying actually broken things (e.g. Titanic, Eldar) and, if it's showing that the factions have an acceptable win rate but then you look and it's like 1-2 lists that are viable, identifying what should be corrected to fix that. Instead they act like a 55% win rate is something to be proud of, and comp players will say look how great the balance is we have 8 factions all within 3% win rates or whatever crap, but then you see each of those factions are being propped up by one "meta" list and that's it. So it's IMHO useless.
How can it both be futile and helpful? Now that GW have gotten everyone into a sane win rate they can make adjustments to internal balance (starting with making wargear cost points again). I think Death Guard and Eldar players are happy they can have game now without the Eldar player having to bring 1500 pts, even if it requires the Death Guard player to dig through his cabinets for the models that give him a chance.
H.B.M.C. wrote: ...Tournament Edition 40k, which is what 9th was...
That's an odd way to spell Crusade Edition 40k. Maybe you meant Narrative Edition 40k? Especially odd given how few tournaments there were at the start of 9th, what a puzzling statement.
BlaxicanX wrote: ...It's been very interesting witnessing tourny-play become more and more of a scapegoat for balancing problems as time goes on. I'm really curious what people think tournament-play had to do with the creation of things like Daemon-factory, strength D weapons, invisibility spam,deathstars with 2+ invulns, allies shenanigans etc.
I think you're missing the point. Tournament play isn't being blamed for "balance problems", it's being blamed for the game turning into what, to some of us, is an ever blander and blander exercise in grinding balls of numbers against each other that doesn't make any concessions to narrative or immersion, and for a community that is increasingly confused and terrified by the prospect of varying from the official rules in any way lest they "ruin the balance of the game". The difference between 3rd-7th and 8th-10th isn't that one was balanced and the other wasn't, it's that in 3rd-7th we all knew and acknowledged the game didn't work very well as written and we should have the freedom to fiddle with it, while 8th-10th feels increasingly like it's dominated by an attitude that people should be playing "real 40k" and any deviation from the official rules should be frowned on and criticized.
It's the casual 40k writers that decided to turn melee into a boring artificial stupidity grind instead of a tactical exercise in positioning.
Talked about a 2055 list a few weeks ago (not here) and had someone tell me with a straight face that you can't play that points level.
I actually did the same thing with 1500 points, I don't want to make a list for a game mode I'm never going to play again and that I can't compare apples to apples with anyone else, while 1k or 2k is more of a standard experience, it's a bit like watching a German language indie film instead of the latest blockbuster. With 2055 there's the added thing of feeling like someone refuses to play by the rules and cheats by going over the points limit when you've played by the rules and worked out the puzzle of getting a list that is close to but not higher than 2k.
The point you keep missing isn't whether ITC itself is bad or not, the point is that the influence it had actively changed the shape and course of the game.
No small number of people are saying the spirit and feel of the game has worsened since 40k became ITC lite. It's also not that houserules are scary when Americans do it. It's scary when it's forced on a large swathe of the community as the "correct" way to do it. And for the talk of "roulette missions", tempest of war came out to wide praise in 9th. 10th is based, in part on luck based objectives, albeit quite safe ones.
Further to that point, the reason ITC caused some problems as noted in many places, is that GW were balancing a game around their missions played their way. Which is why it became harder for ITC to constantly have to rebalance everything, because it was a different game.
Luck based missions have no room in a good tournament mission pack. They're the most fun to play casually. 10th edition missions have no narrative throughput, the deployment zone, objectives and special rules are decided seperately which is not to my taste.
Of course, ITC had an impact on the shape of the game, it was massively popular in the US and helped grow the scene to insane proportions. Just like fans of Tempest of War (Russian roulette) and the Open War deck and narrative missions (roulette) had an impact on the game. But I'm not claiming that the bleh missions in 10th came from a loud minority.
GW nerfed Ogryn when they were garbage and did not touch Bullgryn in the same patch despite that being a core competitive unit for the faction in ITC. Where did ITC missions help make balance worse for other mission sets? By nerfing Iron Hands which were 69% win rate in ITC? But wait, Iron Hands were 65% win rate in every mission format so they didn't cause damage there. Give me 5 concrete examples where ITC hurt balance for other mission sets and I'll give you 20 examples where the data gathered at ITC tournaments helping balance for everyone.
It sure as gak shouldn't be tempest or maelstrom missions providing the background for game analysis, it's way too random which can hide a lot of gak balance.
Lol, vict you assume that the standardised format doesn't do the same aswell , infact it will advantage certain types of factions far more so that when you play not standardised but out of the rulebook suddendly you are confronted with issues that are blindspots for your approach.
Also ro3, cultist nerfs , aircraft and indirect fire etcetc.
Arguably due to the non randomised approach you have massive issues in regards to statistical bias.
vict0988 wrote: Luck based missions have no room in a good tournament mission pack. They're the most fun to play casually. 10th edition missions have no narrative throughput, the deployment zone, objectives and special rules are decided seperately which is not to my taste.
Of course, ITC had an impact on the shape of the game, it was massively popular in the US and helped grow the scene to insane proportions. Just like fans of Tempest of War (Russian roulette) and the Open War deck and narrative missions (roulette) had an impact on the game. But I'm not claiming that the bleh missions in 10th came from a loud minority.
GW nerfed Ogryn when they were garbage and did not touch Bullgryn in the same patch despite that being a core competitive unit for the faction in ITC. Where did ITC missions help make balance worse for other mission sets? By nerfing Iron Hands which were 69% win rate in ITC? But wait, Iron Hands were 65% win rate in every mission format so they didn't cause damage there. Give me 5 concrete examples where ITC hurt balance for other mission sets and I'll give you 20 examples where the data gathered at ITC tournaments helping balance for everyone.
It sure as gak shouldn't be tempest or maelstrom missions providing the background for game analysis, it's way too random which can hide a lot of gak balance.
Loud minority (streamers, podcasts, YouTube content) > primarily event focused and US based > play ITC missions and advertise it as best way to play > people start playing ITC casually as it's the content they're normalised to > GW missions actively avoided or not played > GW takes over from ITC > online presences and the like rockets > people now only play tournament matched play as the "default" > GW skews their marketing and products appropriately > present day.
Maybe my memory is skewed, but I feel ITC wasn't unknown in the UK even in 7th edition, and was an increasingly common ruleset in tournaments by the second half of 2018 or into 2019.
Really though I'd just echo the point that people didn't like this system of "we're doing this mission, oh your army is screwed" any more than "oh you get this side of the table, yeah this terrain is completely unfair".
There were various attempts to make Russian Roulette work - but I don't think it was ever that popular. It was sort of enjoyable because ITC has generally produced a hard meta (these 2-3 lists=win everything) whereas everything's up in the air with Tempest of War. But losing (or even winning) games just because you draw well and they draw badly isn't all that fun. There's no illusion that you made the correct decisions and therefore "played better".
BlaxicanX wrote: ...It's been very interesting witnessing tourny-play become more and more of a scapegoat for balancing problems as time goes on. I'm really curious what people think tournament-play had to do with the creation of things like Daemon-factory, strength D weapons, invisibility spam,deathstars with 2+ invulns, allies shenanigans etc.
I think you're missing the point. Tournament play isn't being blamed for "balance problems", it's being blamed for the game turning into what, to some of us, is an ever blander and blander exercise in grinding balls of numbers against each other that doesn't make any concessions to narrative or immersion, and for a community that is increasingly confused and terrified by the prospect of varying from the official rules in any way lest they "ruin the balance of the game". The difference between 3rd-7th and 8th-10th isn't that one was balanced and the other wasn't, it's that in 3rd-7th we all knew and acknowledged the game didn't work very well as written and we should have the freedom to fiddle with it, while 8th-10th feels increasingly like it's dominated by an attitude that people should be playing "real 40k" and any deviation from the official rules should be frowned on and criticized.
B-b-b-b-bingo! You see it all the time on various places like Reddit and even here. Mentions of "official" base sizes, a thing which does not, and hasn't ever existed in 40k. People asking things like if their opponent would frown on them to use a HH Rhino in 40k, the aforementioned example showing how it has permeated its way into newer players without them ever having been exposed as to "why" they were told to think that was even a question they had to ask. The list goes on...
The more random the inputs the more statistical bias, that's why I said it's a problem.
I don't see how Ro3 makes it impossible to balance formats without Ro3. If a unit often gets taken at 3 then it needs to be nerfed, this will benefit formats where you can take 5 of them. How often will a unit only be good once you can take 6 of them but not when you take 3? I'd say never. I can see rule of 2 for Flyers limiting things enough to blind the designers from certain problematic flyers because 2 Flyers is very few. What was the Cultist nerf you mentioned and what do you mean by the indirect fire nerf? That it didn't apply to certain formats?
Why most people in the US preferred ITC doesn't matter, most people preferred it, there was no silent majority wanting to play UK Frankenmissions. If you want a loud minority to actually decide then there needs to be a silent majority that disagrees.
vict0988 wrote: The more random the inputs the more statistical bias, that's why I said it's a problem.
So why do all statistics that are worth anything at all randomise the people they question as much as possible from their datapoint in a specific set of people ? Even when it is a specific field and therefore the subset of questioned people get's restricted?
I don't see how Ro3 makes it impossible to balance formats without Ro3. If a unit often gets taken at 3 then it needs to be nerfed, this will benefit formats where you can take 5 of them. How often will a unit only be good once you can take 6 of them but not when you take 3? I'd say never. I can see rule of 2 for Flyers limiting things enough to blind the designers from certain problematic flyers because 2 Flyers is very few. What was the Cultist nerf you mentioned and what do you mean by the indirect fire nerf? That it didn't apply to certain formats?
Why most people in the US preferred ITC doesn't matter, most people preferred it, there was no silent majority wanting to play UK Frankenmissions. If you want a loud minority to actually decide then there needs to be a silent majority that disagrees.
Ro3 was a Bandaid solution to units that were a problem in the ITC sphere but a lot of these weren't an issue in non ITC standardised formats. It didn't help that we are talking about GW for which 3+ Veterans = 3+ Badmoons planes. Something that would've been more than obvious to GW if it had actually sat down and tested the far less restricted detachment system with any ammount of it. feths sake it was obvious from merely reading the rules.
The cultist nerf was: because in ITC standardised formats you saw only cultists in 8th -9th instead of CSM for comp CSM lists. So clearly Cultists were a problem, except they weren't their mainline competitor that was even better, was picked plentifully and the endresult was that a comparative worse unit got a higher Pts pricetag. Whilest they still pushed CSM out due to opportunity cost provoked by internal factors thanks to a fethed up wound table and doubleshooting nonsenery.
Just looking at the ITC system hasn't done realistically anyhting, it merely highlights which units in which factions perform good enough in these circumstances, and those are far too small due to the pool of terrain and mission design to be accurate enough to solely square balance on it. Indeed the lack of list variety provoked by that small specific set of missions is the key reason as to why it is a problem to draw data from it exclusivly as is done, because GW is lazy. Arguably a lot of wrong takes from it would be avoidable if GW had better internal and more flexible testing in it's forces and built the balance from there, instead of post release on the fly adaptation from an overly specific subset of the player population that is the issue.
For the record, i still think competition data is worth more than casual data, however, we can't ignore that the current competitive data pool comes from a specific set dictated by specific parameters that differ far too much to draw deciscive conclusion out of it in many cases.
vict0988 wrote: That's an odd way to spell Crusade Edition 40k. Maybe you meant Narrative Edition 40k? Especially odd given how few tournaments there were at the start of 9th, what a puzzling statement.
You can keep sayin' it as much as you like, but it ain't ever gonna be true.
Why most people in the US preferred ITC doesn't matter, most people preferred it, there was no silent majority wanting to play UK Frankenmissions. If you want a loud minority to actually decide then there needs to be a silent majority that disagrees.
Of course it matters. If it becomes the de-facto game format in your store, it doesn't make it your preferred game method, it makes the only one you have assured access to. The efforts GW have gone through to bake those preferences/habits into the game are directly impacting the "soul" as described repeatedly over the last few pages.
We get it, you like ITC mission, you don't like randomness in your games. It sounds like GW has moved the game forwards towards your preferences. But I'd also take stock of the fact you are the vocal minority in this thread at this point.
Grimtuff wrote: B-b-b-b-bingo! You see it all the time on various places like Reddit and even here. Mentions of "official" base sizes, a thing which does not, and hasn't ever existed in 40k. People asking things like if their opponent would frown on them to use a HH Rhino in 40k, the aforementioned example showing how it has permeated its way into newer players without them ever having been exposed as to "why" they were told to think that was even a question they had to ask. The list goes on...
Our own Breton made a post talking about how he would check old Sternguard and new Sternguard vs the terrain on the table to see whether he'd be fine using old Sternguard over the newer models, lest the few mm shorter Marines give an advantage.
vict0988 wrote: That's an odd way to spell Crusade Edition 40k. Maybe you meant Narrative Edition 40k? Especially odd given how few tournaments there were at the start of 9th, what a puzzling statement.
You can keep sayin' it as much as you like, but it ain't ever gonna be true.
It is certainly true, as HBMC says that tournament play drove all the balancing data, and that it was the format most played in 9th.
However, it is also true that in 9th there were far more published resources with Crusade content than without. It is also true that Crusade was more of its own thing in 9th than it is in 10th. There have already been more updates affecting Crusade in 10th than there were in all of 9th- PL changed once or twice; Armour of Contempt and Boarding Actions were the only changes in 9th that affected Crusade if I'm not mistaken.
In 10th, every fething points up date has, and will continue to affect Crusade. Another thing I dislike about 10th.
To this day I've still never actually seen someone play Crusade, and only know one person irl who has any experience with the format. If not for threads on dakka I'd assume it was not really a successful format.
chaos0xomega wrote: To this day I've still never actually seen someone play Crusade, and only know one person irl who has any experience with the format. If not for threads on dakka I'd assume it was not really a successful format.
someone at the local club has mentioned using it for a campaign, seems to be getting a sub zero amount of traction. Have to say I have basically no idea what it is
chaos0xomega wrote: To this day I've still never actually seen someone play Crusade, and only know one person irl who has any experience with the format. If not for threads on dakka I'd assume it was not really a successful format.
I think crusade has two major issues that even now kind of make it in a weird spot:
1) in my experience people really don't like bookkeeping even though it has minimal. In ninth at least I also feel there was a lot of misconceptions that people didn't realize you still agreed to a point or power level; I recall talking to a few people thought the idea was okay but were afraid of having a situation where they may have had say a 50 PL force and their opponent had 60 because God forbid you don't have exactly even levels.
2) this goes back to the previous discussion but because the missions are specific and don't use matched play it still has that stigma. I can't put my finger up what it is but I don't get why people are so caught up in match play as the only thing that could even remotely be balanced when we've obviously seen that's a load of crap.
But if you go on to like the competitive subreddit or something and ask about using missions not Leviathan or don't have secondaries you immediately told how this is a terrible idea and how some armies automatically win or automatically lose because apparently secondary objectives are such a cornerstone to game balance that it's inconceivable to think of not using them.
chaos0xomega wrote: To this day I've still never actually seen someone play Crusade, and only know one person irl who has any experience with the format. If not for threads on dakka I'd assume it was not really a successful format.
someone at the local club has mentioned using it for a campaign, seems to be getting a sub zero amount of traction. Have to say I have basically no idea what it is
The problem with Crusade is it's quite a complex and intimidating-looking system if you have no experience with it. Just flick through the Crusade section of any Codex and you'll see it appears like a lot of work and info for questionable improvements to your gaming. That's likely what turns people off.
As far as the general direction this tread has gone in, I agree that tournament play has driven much of what GW has done during 8th-10th. In some ways this is good. Gathering standardised data about army strength is very useful to help balance the game. My problem is GW don't seem to be able to (or want to) interpret the data at all and seem to concentrate far too much on win rate and not enough on other factors like what successful armies look like, what variety there is and how they actually play. I think the ultra standardised approach to tournaments is a massive problem. Randomness is not the great enemy in a tournament setting. The correct amount of randomness is essential in testing the key skills that should be needed in wargaming. I don't know the exact amount of randomness that should be injected but I can tell you it's more than we've had since the ITC/WTC became so prominent.
Most of my games in 9th were crusade, I literally had only 1 non-crusade game in that edition.
But that's also why I know that crusade missions are hardly different from the matched play ones.
Sgt. Cortez wrote: Most of my games in 9th were crusade, I literally had only 1 non-crusade game in that edition.
But that's also why I know that crusade missions are hardly different from the matched play ones.
Sgt. Cortez wrote: Most of my games in 9th were crusade, I literally had only 1 non-crusade game in that edition.
But that's also why I know that crusade missions are hardly different from the matched play ones.
I still think crusade big problems is the systems it’s built on, not crusade itself. 40K is just not great, and if players are only getting a few games a year, then even if crusade was the best way to play it would probably still be used less.
It’s a fine campaign system, that GW wanted to sell as a narrative system. But good narrative comes from good game rules, and is supplemented by good campaigns.
Even Mordheim, one of GW best games ever has a very satisfying game play on its own despite being simple. The campaign that surrounds it just enhances what may be fairly simple mechanics.
Sgt. Cortez wrote: Most of my games in 9th were crusade, I literally had only 1 non-crusade game in that edition.
But that's also why I know that crusade missions are hardly different from the matched play ones.
No secondaries, that's enough
Well, they called them agendas but it's not that different .
chaos0xomega wrote: To this day I've still never actually seen someone play Crusade, and only know one person irl who has any experience with the format. If not for threads on dakka I'd assume it was not really a successful format.
About 2/3rds of my 10th games are crusade, and I like crusade, but 10-ths take on it is very poorly balanced for the different factions. Like, Knights, Nids, and Tau all suffer from the fact that they are full of monsters/Walkers, who don't get buffs like other factions but instead have to go down a kill-tally upgrade tree, just as an example. The missions are pretty good, but some are horribly tipped in one player's favor, meaning you are relying on a dice-roll to determine who wins or loses. Not saying I want perfectly symmetrical missions or anything like that, but 10ths crusade is so horribly imbalanced for certain factions and for players joining an existing crusade I can't really recommend it without serious overhaul. At least 10ths crusade anyway.
Sgt. Cortez wrote: Most of my games in 9th were crusade, I literally had only 1 non-crusade game in that edition.
But that's also why I know that crusade missions are hardly different from the matched play ones.
I still think crusade big problems is the systems it’s built on, not crusade itself. 40K is just not great, and if players are only getting a few games a year, then even if crusade was the best way to play it would probably still be used less.
It’s a fine campaign system, that GW wanted to sell as a narrative system. But good narrative comes from good game rules, and is supplemented by good campaigns.
Even Mordheim, one of GW best games ever has a very satisfying game play on its own despite being simple. The campaign that surrounds it just enhances what may be fairly simple mechanics.
Have played Mordhiem a few times, and Necromunda, both have simple mechanics and the idea of a quite small force that you grow and grow to love. a lot of little details in a reasonably basic framework make both work and work well.
Chain of Command has a campaign system I think would work well for 40k as well, your force gets at best minor buffs from the campaign rules, which are really all about balancing three things:
- how well your character feels about themselves
- how well respected your character is by those they lead
- how well respected your character is by superiors
there are maps etc as well, but the core of it is trying to balance and grow the three above
The problem with Crusade is it's quite a complex and intimidating-looking system if you have no experience with it. Just flick through the Crusade section of any Codex and you'll see it appears like a lot of work and info for questionable improvements to your gaming. That's likely what turns people off.
The progression system certainly can be intimidating for people who prefer wargames.
If you've GMed a 1-20 D&D campaign of any edition, the amount of book keeping Crusade calls for is neglible... But most people who prefer wargames haven't GMed a 1-20 D&D campaign because they prefer wargames. That's why Crusade looks like a lot of work and book keeping.
I can't speak for all people who prefer RPGs, but for me, most wargames are just dull. That's not to say that I can't have fun when I play them- but they are stand-alone one of games that I play casually when a friend is willing to most of the work to make that happen- often supplying the rules, models etc. RPGs, on the other hand, are regular events- I played weekly for five years or so- one campaign 1-20 and the last one we left at 5th due to irreconciliable differences between my partner and I and the rest of the group. Too bad too, because the character I played in that campaign was one of my favourite characters of my 40+ years of RPGing.
I can have that same sense of immersion and progress over time when I use Crusade.
When I don't, it's a series of unrelated stand-alone games with no growth and development over time, which is far less interesting for me.
think campaigns, in any game, have a huge problem,, the need to have a group who can meet up and play them on a regular basis and players who won't lose interest if they are not on a winning streak.
it is interesting how the gameplay gets very different when preserving you own force and minimising casualties becomes a further objective (which is why the why Flame of War scores normal games is interesting). This also creates side missions regardless of the game system, e.g. the desire to splat that hard to replace unit and a willingness to take casualties to do it
leopard wrote: think campaigns, in any game, have a huge problem,, the need to have a group who can meet up and play them on a regular basis and players who won't lose interest if they are not on a winning streak.
it is interesting how the gameplay gets very different when preserving you own force and minimising casualties becomes a further objective (which is why the why Flame of War scores normal games is interesting). This also creates side missions regardless of the game system, e.g. the desire to splat that hard to replace unit and a willingness to take casualties to do it
Yeah the biggest potential issue I have found in both leagues and campaigns is not limiting games per week. People who can only play once a week feel there's zero reason to bother because the guy who can play 3+ times a week just keeps getting ahead. Even if it's a Crusade or narrative and there's no prize, people tend to lose interest if it feels like they can't "win" just due to not having the time. Even in a system like Crusade which, I'm pretty sure, has ways to give a bonus to someone who is playing with a less experienced force against someone with more, it's the fact of "he can play more than me so he's going to be just better".
Tyran wrote: The disconnect started the moment codex creep started. People have been playing to win since forever, codex creep just made the tools to do so very blatantly obvious.
EDIT: and while relatively tame compared to what would come after, codex creep really got going during 5th.
Maybe it would help if GW released all codices at the same time.
As opposed to over a period spanning multiple years, which seems to involve locking the respective writers in separate basements and whipping them if they're ever caught trying to talk to one another.
found when running a campaign having teams, not individuals helps, the campaign generates conflicts, teams can nominate whoever to fight the battle (helps if people have reasonably similar forces available in terms of factions) so if Fred say can't get down to often he always gets a game but not being there doesn't slow things down too much.
a good campaign feels like you are doing something, but doesn't become a millstone
seems also very important not to tie progression too much to the results, like you are part of something larger, an important part but in a way that stops an early winner running away
Tyran wrote: The disconnect started the moment codex creep started. People have been playing to win since forever, codex creep just made the tools to do so very blatantly obvious.
EDIT: and while relatively tame compared to what would come after, codex creep really got going during 5th.
Maybe it would help if GW released all codices at the same time.
As opposed to over a period spanning multiple years, which seems to involve locking the respective writers in separate basements and whipping them if they're ever caught trying to talk to one another.
Then how would they stretch out purchases for the years? Seriously this would have been the best thing for them to do. And then release supplements with EXTRAS, not redo codexes. once again they had the perfect chance to do that with 10th, and went right back to selling codexes that are outdated the minute they release anyway.
Tyran wrote: The disconnect started the moment codex creep started. People have been playing to win since forever, codex creep just made the tools to do so very blatantly obvious.
EDIT: and while relatively tame compared to what would come after, codex creep really got going during 5th.
Maybe it would help if GW released all codices at the same time.
As opposed to over a period spanning multiple years, which seems to involve locking the respective writers in separate basements and whipping them if they're ever caught trying to talk to one another.
Then how would they stretch out purchases for the years? Seriously this would have been the best thing for them to do. And then release supplements with EXTRAS, not redo codexes. once again they had the perfect chance to do that with 10th, and went right back to selling codexes that are outdated the minute they release anyway.
I mean, this was the privateer press approach and it didnt exactly stop.power creep either...
It's also very much a thing that might work at year 0, but considering the current games size - in terms of workload for a design team to simultaneously produce 30 (?) Codices for a simultaneous release, let alone the printing resources for that many well as manufacturing requirements... and try and plug the leaks on this while you're at it...
Dont get me wrong, its a Nice and fairly feasable idea for a new start and a small game, but its a pipe dream for a mature game with a large roster of things. Even pp abandoned this approach midway through mk3 with a 'codex-esque' approach to new factions and rules
Grimtuff wrote: B-b-b-b-bingo! You see it all the time on various places like Reddit and even here. Mentions of "official" base sizes, a thing which does not, and hasn't ever existed in 40k. People asking things like if their opponent would frown on them to use a HH Rhino in 40k, the aforementioned example showing how it has permeated its way into newer players without them ever having been exposed as to "why" they were told to think that was even a question they had to ask. The list goes on...
Our own Breton made a post talking about how he would check old Sternguard and new Sternguard vs the terrain on the table to see whether he'd be fine using old Sternguard over the newer models, lest the few mm shorter Marines give an advantage.
That's where we're at.
Meanwhile, i'm putting my latest Chaos Lord With Jumpack (RIP, found out yesterday he's not even in legends anymore ) on a 50mm base lol
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chaos0xomega wrote: To this day I've still never actually seen someone play Crusade, and only know one person irl who has any experience with the format. If not for threads on dakka I'd assume it was not really a successful format.
Theres a local group that plays it, i tried it for a few games and it's just more bookkeeping. And being "stuck" playing the exact same list isn't something i enjoy that much.
There are two issues that keeps GW tied to the codex system.
The first one is that you kinda want to stretch out your releases. It creates a more stable income base, keeps investors happy and keeps your IP relevant. Also it mitigates the risk of cannibalizing your own sales.
The second one is that GW can barely write an index release, I don't believe they can write all the codexes at the same time.
So when they first presented crusade as a concept, they kind of advertised it as a one-man campaign system. As in you didn't have to play it with just one group or in a league format, but instead you could link your narrative games with all your different opponents together and have your army progress and level up, etc. regardless of whether or not your opponents were all tracking to the same group and whatnot. And that sounded cool, and if it worked that way it would be great, and in theory if it was an app-enabled system and/or functioned like the D&D adventurers league it could actually work.
But thats not... not how it works. Not how I've seen anyone actually use it anyway.
VladimirHerzog wrote: Theres a local group that plays it, i tried it for a few games and it's just more bookkeeping. And being "stuck" playing the exact same list isn't something i enjoy that much.
A nice house rule around that is to start with bigger Order of Battle than the games you are planning to play.
Tyran wrote: There are two issues that keeps GW tied to the codex system.
The first one is that you kinda want to stretch out your releases. It creates a more stable income base, keeps investors happy and keeps your IP relevant. Also it mitigates the risk of cannibalizing your own sales.
The second one is that GW can barely write an index release, I don't believe they can write all the codexes at the same time.
GW does codexes in a series of loose batches/wave. I.E. they are doing design and playtest on an average of 2-4 books at a time, each of those 2-4 books might start work at the same time, but they are finished one at a time in sequence, and they start the next batch before they finish up the previous batch, so there is some limited crossover but not a lot. They never playtest a codex against every other codex in the game, instead they only playtest it against the other books that are currently in batch development at the time. This is part of where codex creep comes from. If batch 1 was space marines and tyranids for example, they put tyranids out the door and were finishing up space marines when they started batch 2 which is Ad Mech and Necrons, so those two books will get played against Space Marines but probably not Tyranids, which means they are balanced in the context of one faction but not the others, etc. Then when batch 3 hits, Nids and Marines are fully out, maybe they catch the tail end of Ad Mech, and Necrons are in for a bit. So they are balancing "progressively". They rely on very limited external playtesting to contextualize books outside of what they are currently working on but whether they incorporate that feedback is hit or miss (and more often miss from what i've been told by some of the external playtesters ive met). Early books are not often put in context of later books internally, and if a book in between an early book and a "current" book has a power skew it sets a trend for the subsequent books. Sometimes this results in a few books being relatively underpowered vs the books that came before, rather than overpowered, as "creep" is not truly a linear process in the direction of being increasingly overpowered but fluctuates over time a bit. Oh, and the quarterly balance updates and bi-annual points updates they do screw everything up too, as the first couple books released after one of those updates are not typically playtested in the context of those updates, lead-times being what they are.
leopard wrote: think campaigns, in any game, have a huge problem,, the need to have a group who can meet up and play them on a regular basis and players who won't lose interest if they are not on a winning streak.
it is interesting how the gameplay gets very different when preserving you own force and minimising casualties becomes a further objective (which is why the why Flame of War scores normal games is interesting). This also creates side missions regardless of the game system, e.g. the desire to splat that hard to replace unit and a willingness to take casualties to do it
Yeah the biggest potential issue I have found in both leagues and campaigns is not limiting games per week. People who can only play once a week feel there's zero reason to bother because the guy who can play 3+ times a week just keeps getting ahead. Even if it's a Crusade or narrative and there's no prize, people tend to lose interest if it feels like they can't "win" just due to not having the time. Even in a system like Crusade which, I'm pretty sure, has ways to give a bonus to someone who is playing with a less experienced force against someone with more, it's the fact of "he can play more than me so he's going to be just better".
I think this is a very solvable problem for Crusade though. They basically just need to make the "rubber band" rules more potent for when one player has significantly more Crusade Points than their opponent. Off the top of my head:
* Mission-specific benefits/special strats that you unlock by being at a big enough disadvantage.
* As above, but tied to faction instead of mission.
* Make accumulating scars more impactful so that your high XP units are also carrying around some built-in drawbacks.
* Have players track their recent wins/losses as part of their Crusade force's stats. Grant opponents increasing advantages based on how many wins you've had recently.
* Maybe just give opponents even more bonus CP and take off the limits on how many times they can use strats each phase/turn if there's enough of a CruP difference.
chaos0xomega wrote:So when they first presented crusade as a concept, they kind of advertised it as a one-man campaign system. As in you didn't have to play it with just one group or in a league format, but instead you could link your narrative games with all your different opponents together and have your army progress and level up, etc. regardless of whether or not your opponents were all tracking to the same group and whatnot. And that sounded cool, and if it worked that way it would be great, and in theory if it was an app-enabled system and/or functioned like the D&D adventurers league it could actually work.
But thats not... not how it works. Not how I've seen anyone actually use it anyway.
I'm sort of trying to transition to playing games this way. The biggest hurdle for me is just feeling comfortable asking my opponent to play Crusade instead of a "normal" game.
Tyran wrote:
VladimirHerzog wrote: Theres a local group that plays it, i tried it for a few games and it's just more bookkeeping. And being "stuck" playing the exact same list isn't something i enjoy that much.
A nice house rule around that is to start with bigger Order of Battle than the games you are planning to play.
I'm really surprised that GW hasn't been releasing more Crusade support in the form of different styles of campaigning. For instance, a system where you start with a larger OoB and then lose units more easily over time to represent a diminishing veteran force seems obvious. Plus, I'm still waiting for a good mechanical reason to not use my same, strongest veteran units over and over. Rules like that would be awesome to see in a codex or even as a separate supplement that covers all factions.
vict0988 wrote: The more random the inputs the more statistical bias, that's why I said it's a problem.
So why do all statistics that are worth anything at all randomise the people they question as much as possible from their datapoint in a specific set of people ? Even when it is a specific field and therefore the subset of questioned people get's restricted?
That's different, it's to remove bias and get a representative sample. If you want to know whether 40k players like the Tau Empire faction you would have to ask a random subset of 40k players, if you asked a random subset of Tau Empire players you would instead be finding out whether Tau Empire players like the Tau Empire faction.
If you give me two normal distributions A and B.
A (10 numbers, mean of 10, standard deviation 1, less random): 9.23, 9.37, 9.93, 10, 10.09, 10.09, 10.26, 10.35, 10.98, 12.08.
B (10 numbers, mean of 10, standard deviation 2, more random): 6.8, 7.53, 8.37, 9.23, 10.78, 10.88, 11.27, 12.23, 12.77, 13.15
I would be able to more accurately guess the next number in A. Playing with random dragon attacks that cause Death Guard to beat Eldar once in a while will make it harder to guess the true mean win rate (more like B) instead of ITC missions where every mission is basically the same and only the core game mechanics and faction randomness plays a role will make the data closer to 1.
I think it's fun to have randomness play a role in games and be on your toes seeing what's going to happen next, but it's not fun for me to lose a competitive game because of that randomness. The solution is simple, have multiple mission sets, the competitive one will be the most balanced, the casual and narrative missions will be less balanced but randomness will even things out (Orks might be gak in Tempest but they can win if they get a bit lucky with the missions) and if you are playing casually or narratively winning the game becomes less important.
Ro3 was a Bandaid solution to units that were a problem in the ITC sphere but a lot of these weren't an issue in non ITC standardised formats. It didn't help that we are talking about GW for which 3+ Veterans = 3+ Badmoons planes. Something that would've been more than obvious to GW if it had actually sat down and tested the far less restricted detachment system with any ammount of it. feths sake it was obvious from merely reading the rules.
The cultist nerf was: because in ITC standardised formats you saw only cultists in 8th -9th instead of CSM for comp CSM lists. So clearly Cultists were a problem, except they weren't their mainline competitor that was even better, was picked plentifully and the endresult was that a comparative worse unit got a higher Pts pricetag. Whilest they still pushed CSM out due to opportunity cost provoked by internal factors thanks to a fethed up wound table and doubleshooting nonsenery.
Just looking at the ITC system hasn't done realistically anyhting, it merely highlights which units in which factions perform good enough in these circumstances, and those are far too small due to the pool of terrain and mission design to be accurate enough to solely square balance on it. Indeed the lack of list variety provoked by that small specific set of missions is the key reason as to why it is a problem to draw data from it exclusivly as is done, because GW is lazy.
Arguably a lot of wrong takes from it would be avoidable if GW had better internal and more flexible testing in it's forces and built the balance from there, instead of post release on the fly adaptation from an overly specific subset of the player population that is the issue.
For the record, i still think competition data is worth more than casual data, however, we can't ignore that the current competitive data pool comes from a specific set dictated by specific parameters that differ far too much to draw deciscive conclusion out of it in many cases.
I don't believe for a second that spam wasn't a problem in non-ITC games, not to mention it looks bad and feels bad to play against regardless of the mission set. I don't know where I'd go to find competitive early 8th edition non-ITC lists.
I don't think Cultists were OP in ITC maybe at certain times, they've been nerfed a lot of times I feel like, I also don't think people were building the kinds of lists GW wanted them to build in other formats were they? Wouldn't Cultists be even more of a problem in other formats?
9th saw a tonne of list diversity despite the missions being very similar, a lot of lists also didn't even include 3 copies of units, just 1-2. I don't see how mission diversity promotes list diversity, it might make certain lists garbage because of a certain roulette mission making horde lists unviable or might make psykers mandatory for factions that can include them for another roulette mission, but that's the opposite of promoting diversity.
Why most people in the US preferred ITC doesn't matter, most people preferred it, there was no silent majority wanting to play UK Frankenmissions. If you want a loud minority to actually decide then there needs to be a silent majority that disagrees.
Of course it matters. If it becomes the de-facto game format in your store, it doesn't make it your preferred game method, it makes the only one you have assured access to. The efforts GW have gone through to bake those preferences/habits into the game are directly impacting the "soul" as described repeatedly over the last few pages.
We get it, you like ITC mission, you don't like randomness in your games. It sounds like GW has moved the game forwards towards your preferences. But I'd also take stock of the fact you are the vocal minority in this thread at this point.
Timmy enters store gets told to be a big boy and play ITC despite it being very complex, Timmy sucks it up and learns to play but has a rather bad time of it because this is not what he hoped 40k would be. Friendly dude Facundo tells him "psst, ever heard of Tempest of War?" Timmy gives it a shot because it might improve on his bad experience with the game. Tempest of War is exciting and fun. While Timmy still mainly plays ITC he and Facundo play Tempest of War together once in a while and over time get a couple of others to join them in the fun.
Spike enters store gets told to be a big boy and play ITC and immediately dives into it and loves the complexity. Victor tells him "psst, ever heard of Tempest of War?" Spike says he's not interested in that type of game because he wants complexity and doesn't like the randomness in the mission set. Victor approaches him several more times and eventually Spike agrees, Spike doesn't like Tempest of War, Victor is shocked and claims Spike has been brainwashed by the evil ITC Youtubers but Spike is not Timmy, they have different tastes, regardless of what Youtubers or club members say. Of course, it'd be harder if one club was open to trying everything once and the other club was on board the Crusade hate train, but the ITC has never supported hating on other game modes and you can find tonnes of competitive Youtubers doing casual content half the time because casual and competitive is a Venn-diagram with a lot of overlap in the 40k community.
chaos0xomega wrote: So when they first presented crusade as a concept, they kind of advertised it as a one-man campaign system. As in you didn't have to play it with just one group or in a league format, but instead you could link your narrative games with all your different opponents together and have your army progress and level up, etc. regardless of whether or not your opponents were all tracking to the same group and whatnot. And that sounded cool, and if it worked that way it would be great, and in theory if it was an app-enabled system and/or functioned like the D&D adventurers league it could actually work.
But thats not... not how it works. Not how I've seen anyone actually use it anyway.
see that would have been really cool. What's funny is they actually had a campaign thing like that in a white dwarf for bone reapers in AOS. It was a campaign narrative for your army but had a note that basically said you could play against anyone whether or not they were also doing a narrative thing. You just had to track what you did for your story but it didn't matter if you were playing in a path to glory or a matched play game.
It was a really neat idea. So of course they never did it again. Although I'm pretty sure that's something maybe it was path to glory has a section where it says you can play against people not doing it just obviously you can't use any of the special stuff you get unless they are also playing it
vict0988 wrote: The more random the inputs the more statistical bias, that's why I said it's a problem.
So why do all statistics that are worth anything at all randomise the people they question as much as possible from their datapoint in a specific set of people ? Even when it is a specific field and therefore the subset of questioned people get's restricted?
That's different, it's to remove bias and get a representative sample. If you want to know whether 40k players like the Tau Empire faction you would have to ask a random subset of 40k players, if you asked a random subset of Tau Empire players you would instead be finding out whether Tau Empire players like the Tau Empire faction.
If you give me two normal distributions A and B.
A (10 numbers, mean of 10, standard deviation 1, less random): 9.23, 9.37, 9.93, 10, 10.09, 10.09, 10.26, 10.35, 10.98, 12.08.
B (10 numbers, mean of 10, standard deviation 2, more random): 6.8, 7.53, 8.37, 9.23, 10.78, 10.88, 11.27, 12.23, 12.77, 13.15
I would be able to more accurately guess the next number in A. Playing with random dragon attacks that cause Death Guard to beat Eldar once in a while will make it harder to guess the true mean win rate (more like B) instead of ITC missions where every mission is basically the same and only the core game mechanics and faction randomness plays a role will make the data closer to 1.
I think it's fun to have randomness play a role in games and be on your toes seeing what's going to happen next, but it's not fun for me to lose a competitive game because of that randomness. The solution is simple, have multiple mission sets, the competitive one will be the most balanced, the casual and narrative missions will be less balanced but randomness will even things out (Orks might be gak in Tempest but they can win if they get a bit lucky with the missions) and if you are playing casually or narratively winning the game becomes less important.
But that is a misnomer because A is a specific controlled environment that overall can be considered as far less representative as a B, which if we take our exemple here, being Tables + mission structure aka ITC for A which is not representative of a "semi comp" game that is a normal table or normal missions on an ITC table, which is far removed from actual game environments of 40k. That is my argument.
I don't believe for a second that spam wasn't a problem in non-ITC games, not to mention it looks bad and feels bad to play against regardless of the mission set. I don't know where I'd go to find competitive early 8th edition non-ITC lists.
I don't think Cultists were OP in ITC maybe at certain times, they've been nerfed a lot of times I feel like, I also don't think people were building the kinds of lists GW wanted them to build in other formats were they? Wouldn't Cultists be even more of a problem in other formats?
9th saw a tonne of list diversity despite the missions being very similar, a lot of lists also didn't even include 3 copies of units, just 1-2. I don't see how mission diversity promotes list diversity, it might make certain lists garbage because of a certain roulette mission making horde lists unviable or might make psykers mandatory for factions that can include them for another roulette mission, but that's the opposite of promoting diversity.
Spam was always a problem but became more pressing due to a combination of issues not least of which are found in the core rules, the aftermentioned to wound table being chief among them. The issue with cultists was that they got nerfed undeservedly in many ways since it was a worse guardsmen after the nerfs costing more than a guardsmen. Which dind't solve the issue of seeing no CSM in CSM armies at all.
9th saw also a lot of variety because GW decided to intervene heavily multiple times and because the meta had to react to the permanent releases of GW: So list diversity is saying preciscly zilch because GW also had a rather fascinanting power creep issue overall in 9th..
Spam became a problem because you got an incredibly permissive FOC. Want to take 10 of the same option? Well now you can. Arguably this was an issue before 8th - see lists with 5 flying dakka Hive Tyrants, or all Reaver Jetbike DE lists - but said the factions taking advantage of it were bad, so it didn't seem as much of a problem.
GW not unreasonably recognised they were increasing the rosters - and a not great system of "you can take 3 of the 4 HS choices" broke down completely when it became "you can take 3 of 10". Unfortunately they never imagined people would go "okay, here's 5 Stormravens, or all Hive Tyrants/Tau Commanders/Assassins" etc.
I mean the Ro3 came in just before the DE 8th edition book, but give 3 buffed up Dissie Ravagers could table Marine armies in a few turns, I'd have loved to have seen what 12-13~ would have done.
10th feels like it has more soul than most editions to be honest. There's a lot more of the iconic weaponry in things and everything has more of that hat on a hat on a hat feel you get from the novels and animations and games and stuff. I'm quite enjoying it overall.
Deadnight wrote: It's also very much a thing that might work at year 0, but considering the current games size - in terms of workload for a design team to simultaneously produce 30 (?) Codices for a simultaneous release, let alone the printing resources for that many well as manufacturing requirements... and try and plug the leaks on this while you're at it...
I'm sure it would be a lot of work. But the point is that you'd be working on it during the previous edition. It's not like the game has to sit in a void between editions.
Hell, you could even do what other companies do and let players test the beta rules and give feedback on them. This could both generate interest/hype for the new edition and also, at the very least, help root out some of the exploits and complete failures of design that the design/playtesting teams are apparently unable to spot even when they're 10-stories tall.
As for printing costs, perhaps GW could check their calander and finally realise that it's not 1990 anymore. Thus, it's possible to release rules on digital media like (horror of horrors) PDFs. They could release all the rules at once in digital formats and then have a staggered release for the physical books (which could focus more on the fluff/hobby side), if they're even needed at all.
Deadnight wrote: ...It's also very much a thing that might work at year 0, but considering the current games size - in terms of workload for a design team to simultaneously produce 30 (?) Codices for a simultaneous release, let alone the printing resources for that many well as manufacturing requirements... and try and plug the leaks on this while you're at it...
Dont get me wrong, its a Nice and fairly feasable idea for a new start and a small game, but its a pipe dream for a mature game with a large roster of things. Even pp abandoned this approach midway through mk3 with a 'codex-esque' approach to new factions and rules
So...how did they do the 8e or 10e Indexes if the game is so big that it's completely infeasible to update everything at once?
Unit A has value A1 in game mode 1 and value A2 in game mode 2. Game mode 1 has less randomness, therefore you can look at stats from game mode 1 and say unit A is very likely good/bad in game mode 1, game mode 2 is more random, therefore if you look at stats from game mode 2 you have less certainty when you say that A2 is somewhat likely good/bad in game mode 2.
But if game mode 2 is more popular than game mode 1 then I can see why you'd say "all this analysis of game mode 1 is unrepresentative garbage". Which to a degree is true, but I think my view is not just looking at game mode 1 and 2, but also game mode 3-7 in a world where nobody really knows the distribution of the different game modes except that most people agree that the combined amount played in 2-7 is larger than that played alone in game mode 1.
Logically we can deduce game mode 1 is the most likely to produce repeatable results which lets us determine the value of A1 and then we can say that with some caveats A1 is roughly equal to A2, A3... A7 because all missions are about a combination of stand there, kill that and push that button and the unit has the same datasheet.
Balance will necessarily be lesser in A2-A7 compared to A1, but not necessarily lesser than in a world where A1 is not analyzed. What we need isn't perfect balance, but anti-tank weapons need to be better at killing tanks than anti-infantry weapons and no unit should be auto-include or a paper-weight and no factions should win much more or than any other faction over all.
I would also argue that sometimes game mode 7 is not meant to be balanced, I might not want you to show up with an armoured column in cityfight missions, I might want the meta of my low gravity rules to focus on mobile units that aren't tracked (so tanks and bikes are bad using the rules). Comparing the rules of 1 and 7 allows players to expect the differences in the battles that will take place using the rules.The only way to get around this is to balance points individually for each mission type, like making armoured columns cheaper in cityfight missions such that the narrative becomes that numerically weak infantry force fights back numerically strong armoured column using cityfight rules to its advantage.
I'm sure it would be a lot of work. But the point is that you'd be working on it during the previous edition. It's not like the game has to sit in a void between editions
Uh huh. In the real world, that's spending the next three years writing for a hypothetical 11th edition game state. Thats a lot of work. Thats a hundred thousand rulebooks and codices to be written, printed and stored - no business would deal with those storage fees. Not even touching the manufacturing requirements for said thirty codices to be simultaneously released or the logistical nightmare that would be a part of getting it out into peoples hands. And again, storage costs. And what happens when some jerk gets in there with a camera?
And in the mean time for tenth, is there anything going on? The game is not 'sitting in a void', as you say so presumably you mean you still need to keep up with the release schedule for the current edition because the simple truth is the constant flow of new releases is what actuslly brings in 90% of the revenue. So who is writing these? Glutting the market with 30 codices at once won't translate to an equivalent 30-codex spike in revenue. People don't have that much money.
I'm.not even gonna touch the possibility that there are errors/issues in all of these codices. Because let's face it.... gw.
Hell, you could even do what other companies do and let players test the beta rules and give feedback on them. This could both generate interest/hype for the new edition and also, at the very least, help root out some of the exploits and complete failures of design that the design/playtesting teams are apparently unable to spot even when they're 10-stories tall.
Interest/hype or just noise?
You describe a unicorn :p i mean, have you met the 40k grumpies and haters in the community? I wouldn't expect what you're hoping for here.
Cheek aside, Pp did what you suggest back in mk2 ( 4 factions, and a much smaller game- i still have the pdfs) and my contacts told me they'd never do it again. Valued player feedback that made it through was miniscule compared against the noise.
In mk3, when they tried the 'living rulebook' model incorporating player feedback (cid) it ultimately went down like a lead balloon. It was hated. Players want a 'fixed' or 'settled' game, not a 'demo' game or a game constantly in flux. And this was for pp. Imagine a community who is orders of magnitude bigger and more obsessive .
As for printing costs, perhaps GW could check their calander and finally realise that it's not 1990 anymore. Thus, it's possible to release rules on digital media like (horror of horrors) PDFs. They could release all the rules at once in digital formats and then have a staggered release for the physical books (which could focus more on the fluff/hobby side), if they're even needed at all.
Sure, it's possible. But not smart if you ask me. Smaller, newer games? Sure, maybe.
Call me skeptical but Digital media isnt necessarily a solution here imo. It souvds like double the workload to me. And Plenty folks play tabletop games to get away from phones and tablets. Dead tree > image on a screen for a lot of people.
Deadnight wrote: Players want a 'fixed' or 'settled' game, not a 'demo' game or a game constantly in flux. And this was for pp. Imagine a community who is orders of magnitude bigger and more obsessive .
The near-universal praise for GW's quarterly balance updates rather than letting factions languish for years like they used to does not suggest that players want a fixed, static, unchanging game.
Corvus Belli has a living rulebook available online along with all the faction rules and an army builder. Catalyst has a Master Unit List for all the units across all the factions in Alpha Strike, and a built-in army builder as well.
This isn't uncharted territory. The digital rules model is well-established at this point. GW's just historically very conservative, and I imagine loathe to give up the profits from print media or the codex release FOMO hype cycle, particularly when there doesn't seem to be much impetus to make a better game.
Deadnight wrote: Players want a 'fixed' or 'settled' game, not a 'demo' game or a game constantly in flux. And this was for pp. Imagine a community who is orders of magnitude bigger and more obsessive .
The near-universal praise for GW's quarterly balance updates rather than letting factions languish for years like they used to does not suggest that players want a fixed, static, unchanging game.
Corvus Belli has a living rulebook available online along with all the faction rules and an army builder. Catalyst has a Master Unit List for all the units across all the factions in Alpha Strike, and a built-in army builder as well.
This isn't uncharted territory. The digital rules model is well-established at this point. GW's just historically very conservative, and I imagine loathe to give up the profits from print media or the codex release FOMO hype cycle, particularly when there doesn't seem to be much impetus to make a better game.
Agreed. Maybe I mispoke. Let me rephrase.
I'm not saying permanently unchanging. Quarterly is ok, twice a year offers better balance imo. But I am still somewhat skeptical. My experience with pp's cid and from those that played it trended negatively for the most part.
But lets not forget we are not talking errata. We are talking beta. That's what I was referring to when I says unsettled. Again, I remember wmh mk2s beta. As much as I enjoyed it, it was a lot of work for pp to manage. And iirc their sales at the time took a hit, a lot of folks stopped playing and stopped buying until they knew the shape of what the meta was going to be.
As you say gw are conservative. From a business pov, they're not likely to think lightly of that
If experimentation isn't viable for a business the size of GW why do they keep burning down their game and starting over with the beta of a new game every three years?
AnomanderRake wrote: If experimentation isn't viable for a business the size of GW why do they keep burning down their game and starting over with the beta of a new game every three years?
That's not experimentation, that's just their business model.
If they really wanted to experiment we would see a complete change to the game, not some rewording and reprinting.
Something like dropping the IGUG turns, adding more than D6s, more layers to turns and more phases would be experimental. Changing how combi-weapons works isn't an experiment.
We all know what correlations are worth (nothing). The shape of the game today is caused by 1. the playerbase having a preference for balanced games over unbalanced games and 2. awful business practices and balancing decisions from GW. Anyone who thinks that the current shape of the game is what tournament players want is simply not involved in the tournament player culture.
it's being blamed for the game turning into what, to some of us, is an ever blander and blander exercise in grinding balls of numbers against each other that doesn't make any concessions to narrative or immersion
You don't have tournament play to blame for that, you have GW balancing to blame for that, because for years GW put out absolutely dogshit rules and then tried to justify those dogshit rules by saying "uhhh 40K is not a competitive game these rules are fine because you should be fOooOrGinG the nArRaTiVe!".
The point that you're missing is that you are conflating the desires of tournament players with the desires of the playerbase as a whole. 8th Edition's slogan was "the most playtested edition", and it completely slaughtered every prior edition and put GW back on the map as the dominant wargame company because the community overall- not just tournament players- was hungering for a more balanced and competitive game. Having people like Reecius, Tabletop Titans and other pros front and center was PR to demonstrate GW's dedication toward making a tighter ruleset.
- - - -
For everyone who asserts that the heckin tourny players are responsible for the state of the game today, I challenge you to explain why games like AoS and Infinity have managed to consistently be more balanced and competitive than 40Kwhile also retaining their narrative depth.
AnomanderRake wrote: If experimentation isn't viable for a business the size of GW why do they keep burning down their game and starting over with the beta of a new game every three years?
You mistake experimental for churned rubbish.
The lure is because these new games/editions that people are buying are Official rules, not experimental.
Don't mistake the power of the draw of the 'official' tag when it comes to ttgs. The dogma is too strong.
BlaxicanX wrote: And my point is that you don't have tournament play to blame for that, you have GW balancing to blame for that, because for years GW put out absolutely dogshit rules and then tried to justify those dogshit rules by saying "uhhh 40K is not a competitive game these rules are fine because you should be fOooOrGinG the nArRaTiVe!".
The point that you're missing is that you are conflating the desires of tournament players with the desires of the playerbase as a whole. 8th Edition's slogan was "the most playtested edition", and it completely slaughtered every prior edition and put GW back on the map as the dominant wargame company because the community overall- not just tournament players- was hungering for a more balanced and competitive game. Having people like Reecius, Tabletop Titans and other pros front and center was PR to demonstrate GW's dedication toward making a tighter ruleset.
For every tournament player there are 5x casual collectors/players. Been all over the US and have witnessed most people who joined from 3rd-5th are very chill and took the "forging a narrative" as the main draw to the game as opposed to cutthroat competitive games like TCG's.
I believe "the most play-tested edition" slogan was for 9th not 8th. It has a stigma among both casual and competitive groups as the "tournament edition" barring a few outspoken dakkanauts here.
IIRC my 40k anecdotal statistic data, most of the current players joined after 5th.
In fact taking my current group as evidence I wouldn't be surprised if most players this days joined during 8th and later.
And while the average casual player is not a cutthroat competitive player, they are also not a "forging the narrative" narrative player. They seem to be more in a middle spot, in that it is a game, not a tournament but also not a wargame, to them.
My biggest issue with Crusade is it isn't actually a narrative system.
I have played in about 6 crusades so far, and in almost all of them, about three people were making narrative choices, writing narratives after games, and really evolving the story of their characters.
The other twenty were furiously playing games to level up as fast as possible so they could win.
"Why is my Imperial Guard fighting the Space Marines? Why, because it was the only game I could try and my character is only 6XP from the Heroic rank."
Crusade feels like an MMO where the non-narrative "grinding" overwhelms the truly narrative battles. It doubles down on this by playing for progression without a world. My daemons and my buddy's daemons are playing the great game... With themselves. Khorne is winning in his, Slaanesh is winning in mine. He wanted to decouple ours because he didn't like being debuffed - and the rules don't even recommend they should be coupled, so of course he declined my house rule suggestion.
My Imperial guard were sorting and planning logistics on a planet the tau had conquered while the Dark Eldar fought Space Marines to advance their territory in Comorragh - and don't forget it was a Sister of Battle who put that Space Marine chaplain in his Dreadnought after the Blood Angels - wait, sorry, red blood-angel cosplaying Ultramarines - orbitally struck her warlord inquisitor off the table. Don't worry, the Inquisitor was fine though - passed the out of action check, so turns out Space Marine Battle Barge Bombardment Cannons just mean you can get up again.
Actually, maybe it is narrative 40k, in the worst way possible: there's lots of gak going on that makes no sense
Well, they called them agendas but it's not that different .
No, but the fact that they have ZERO impact on whether or not you win the game, and instead only contribute to the XP of those who achieve them is a HUGE difference.
I have played in about 6 crusades so far, and in almost all of them, about three people were making narrative choices, writing narratives after games, and really evolving the story of their characters.
But the fact that those three were making narrative choices implies that the system facilitates the ability to make narrative choices. You can't say the game isn't a narrative game- for the people actually doing narrative play, the system gives them tools.
If they choose to ignore the narrative tolls that other players use, how is that the game's fault?
Now sure, I think it's fair to say that with a few additional tweaks, GW could have made it more difficult to avoid using the narrative tools. I also always thought that GW should have published a Big Book of Campaign play that talks about organizing narrative links between games. Certainly we did see this kind of thing in 9th- Octarius was all about multi-player games and tree campaigns, with a shout out to narrative linkages between 40k and Kill Team. The other campaign settings basically just suggested using end-of-phase missions and GM. They could have gone a lot further than they did on that front, and I'll be the first to admit it.
It's also fair to say that some factions didn't get the awesome bespoke content that others got. I like GSC, Sisters, Nids, Tau, and Drukhari, all of whom had awesome next-level Crusade content. Marines kinda got shafted for Crusade content- other than the injured becoming dreads, they didn't really have a lot of cool stuff.
AnomanderRake wrote: If experimentation isn't viable for a business the size of GW why do they keep burning down their game and starting over with the beta of a new game every three years?
That's not experimentation, that's just their business model.
If they really wanted to experiment we would see a complete change to the game, not some rewording and reprinting.
Something like dropping the IGUG turns, adding more than D6s, more layers to turns and more phases would be experimental. Changing how combi-weapons works isn't an experiment.
So...adding and then deleting a "psychic phase", changing whole resolution steps for every attack in the game, drastically altering how unit types work or if unit types exist, rewriting the terrain rules, rewriting the win conditions of the game...?
Whether or not GW does your pet changes or not they're still keeping their game in perpetual beta by making massive core rules changes to their game on a regular basis.
Unit1126PLL wrote: My biggest issue with Crusade is it isn't actually a narrative system.
:snip:
Actually, maybe it is narrative 40k, in the worst way possible: there's lots of gak going on that makes no sense
Yes, very much so.
I was really excited for crusade when it was launched. But as soon as I read the rules and realized it was a progression system for the sole purpose of winning I was immediately turned off.
You know I wonder how much of 8th edition putting GW back on the map was due to their smoke and mirrors marketing approach. Since it very clearly was all lies since they really didn't learn anything and the game is right back in the dumpster. New GW my ass. Same gw but the head isn't in the sand.
Yet I recall the waning days of 7th when GW was actually declining And then all of a sudden eighth comes and everyone magically forgets
Unit1126PLL wrote: My biggest issue with Crusade is it isn't actually a narrative system.
:snip:
Actually, maybe it is narrative 40k, in the worst way possible: there's lots of gak going on that makes no sense
Yes, very much so.
I was really excited for crusade when it was launched. But as soon as I read the rules and realized it was a progression system for the sole purpose of winning I was immediately turned off.
yeah that's definitely a problem. Like I was expecting an actual narrative campaign framework.
What's really funny is AOS seems to have done this properly with path to glory. Or at least better
Unit1126PLL wrote: My biggest issue with Crusade is it isn't actually a narrative system.
:snip:
Actually, maybe it is narrative 40k, in the worst way possible: there's lots of gak going on that makes no sense
Yes, very much so.
I was really excited for crusade when it was launched. But as soon as I read the rules and realized it was a progression system for the sole purpose of winning I was immediately turned off.
I've never played a game of Crusade to win. I've only ever played to achieve a goal (Penance and Redemption for Repentia if I was playing Sisters, Territories in Commorragh if I was Drukhari, System control if I was Tau, Insurrection when I was GSC and Consumption of Biomass when I was Nids). Winnning or losing a particular game was always the least of my priorities.
The few times when winning DID cross my mind, it was because all of our games were also part of a map-based campaign, and there were a few times that a controlling particular territory made it more important to the narrative to win than completing Agendas.
Crusade facilitates this by disconnecting many of the advancement mechanics from victory conditions and linking them instead to Agendas instead. If you focus only on winning a Crusade game, typically only one unit grows (as a result of being marked for greatness). Now if a player chooses to mark the same unit for greatness in order to get an advance whether or not they actually distinguished themselves in the battle, well that's not the fault of the rules.
Nor is taking a prestige class in 3.5 ed D&D just for power without linking it to the characters story the fault of D&D rules, but that happened all the time. Difference is people didn't expect the rules to bend over backwards to make powergaming impossible. Instead, when someone powergamed, we said "That dude is a douche" rather than "This game sucks".
Wayniac wrote: You know I wonder how much of 8th edition putting GW back on the map was due to their smoke and mirrors marketing approach. Since it very clearly was all lies since they really didn't learn anything and the game is right back in the dumpster. New GW my ass. Same gw but the head isn't in the sand.
Yet I recall the waning days of 7th when GW was actually declining And then all of a sudden eighth comes and everyone magically forgets
Unit1126PLL wrote: My biggest issue with Crusade is it isn't actually a narrative system.
:snip:
Actually, maybe it is narrative 40k, in the worst way possible: there's lots of gak going on that makes no sense
Yes, very much so.
I was really excited for crusade when it was launched. But as soon as I read the rules and realized it was a progression system for the sole purpose of winning I was immediately turned off.
yeah that's definitely a problem. Like I was expecting an actual narrative campaign framework.
What's really funny is AOS seems to have done this properly with path to glory. Or at least better
No, the AoS PTG is not better. And it's definitely not done properly. The raw idea is there. But it's execution....
Completing the quests are 100% non-reliant upon anything going on in a game (including W/L). If you win? You'll complete your chosen quest more quickly. If you lose? It'll just take you longer.
And depending upon what type of force you're looking to play you're virtually locked into selecting certain quests.
All it turns into is a bunch of fiddly paperwork to eventually play the force you want.
Late to the party but I'll add my post to the count. My gaming group is cooked. 10th edition killed the desire to brew and play. Sadly I doubt they will "go backwards" on many of the changes so I have just moved on although I'll check in here at times. I'd be open to some games of 9th or even earlier editions if we could dredge up the desire but currently the interest is not there.
Regarding dakka negativity I feel it's an accurate sentiment towards the game. I believe the only sites that are truly positive towards the state of the game are those that profit from this mess. Goon and their gang for example..
Smoke and mirrors marketing as someone else stated.
Honestly I hope GW goes under with this economy and everyone returns to an earlier edition. Selfish as that sounds. Good day.
dominuschao wrote: Late to the party but I'll add my post to the count. My gaming group is cooked. 10th edition killed the desire to brew and play. Sadly I doubt they will "go backwards" on many of the changes so I have just moved on although I'll check in here at times. I'd be open to some games of 9th or even earlier editions if we could dredge up the desire but currently the interest is not there.
Regarding dakka negativity I feel it's an accurate sentiment towards the game. I believe the only sites that are truly positive towards the state of the game are those that profit from this mess. Goon and their gang for example..
Smoke and mirrors marketing as someone else stated.
Honestly I hope GW goes under with this economy and everyone returns to an earlier edition. Selfish as that sounds. Good day.
I don't get it.
1) If you & yours don't like 10th, why is that stopping you from just continuing playing whatever edition you did like?
2) What's stopping you from seeking out & playing with different people?
3) If you've moved on to other games/companies, why would you hope GW goes out of business? So they made an edition of 40k you don't like? So what?It's not your problem anymore. Meanwhile there ARE people who like current 40k - and other games they produce. It'd also be really inconvenient for alot of our local game shops
I believe the only sites that are truly positive towards the state of the game are those that profit from this mess. Goon and their gang for example..
B&C is a positive first place with no GW affiliations and is also well moderated. They make no money off thile state of the game, they just moderate more than here.
Honestly I hope GW goes under with this economy and everyone returns to an earlier edition. Selfish as that sounds. Good day.
This isn't selfish, it's just stupid.
If they go under there won't be an "everyone" to return to an earlier edition. Moreover why don't you just play that earlier edition now? You say the desire isn't there but is the manufacturer going under suddenly going to give you a nihilistic burst of energy or something?
If they stay in business you get new sculpts to play 5th or whatever with. If they go out of business you'll never get new players in to a dead game where they can't buy the resources and the minis will become scarcer over time.
Never mind the fact you've wished a lot of people become jobless purely so you can do something you can't be arsed to do now but could.
Never mind the fact you've wished a lot of people become jobless purely so you can do something you can't be arsed to do now but could.
Oh no, how will he live with himself.
I don't know, but I hope they don't have unemployment forced/wished upon them due to a strangers laziness.
how about due to continued incompetence? It's not like this song and dance is new.
Also do you really think it's easy to get people to just play old obsolete editions? If it's nearly impossible to get people to play other games it's even worse to get them to play an old version of the game that's no longer supported.
Never mind the fact you've wished a lot of people become jobless purely so you can do something you can't be arsed to do now but could.
Oh no, how will he live with himself.
I don't know, but I hope they don't have unemployment forced/wished upon them due to a strangers laziness.
how about due to continued incompetence? It's not like this song and dance is new.
Also do you really think it's easy to get people to just play old obsolete editions? If it's nearly impossible to get people to play other games it's even worse to get them to play an old version of the game that's no longer supported.
And I suppose it'll be easier once the company closes as postulated?
As absurd as this sounds, these people would probably fluorish under a less olgipolistic market represented by GW's dominance and would have the opportunity to use their skills for competing in it.
The issue is though that GW will shed it's actual workers before the incompetent management that is actually responsible for the nonsense going on. Certainly not the ruleswriters and workers and designers are in favour of a 3 year / edition cicle of constant churn material. AND more importantly the market is completly curbed due to IP law issues, so even with GW going under we wouldn't necesserly be better off.
As absurd as this sounds, these people would probably fluorish under a less olgipolistic market represented by GW's dominance and would have the opportunity to use their skills for competing in it.
The issue is though that GW will shed it's actual workers before the incompetent management that is actually responsible for the nonsense going on.
Certainly not the ruleswriters and workers and designers are in favour of a 3 year / edition cicle of constant churn material. AND more importantly the market is completly curbed due to IP law issues, so even with GW going under we wouldn't necesserly be better off.
There is nothing stopping that group from playing 9th or 2nd ed or whatever they want now, the failure of the company will not make that any more or less likely than they presently have available to them, it'll simply result in increased scarcity and less traction recruiting new players.
I do agree it is 100% the managerial staff who are likely the biggest issue, the corporate bigwigs and woe me middle managers likely doing what they're told for their bonus at the end of the year. But you're right, the people who work there who care and actually deliver the stuff we enjoy (or not) will likely be the first casualties.
The death of GW simply cannot and will not be beneficial to 40k in any short term or even medium term. The only slim chance is that it results in a take-over by a firm that run them better, but that's ignoring a decade long downward spiral of losing players and slower releases that would precede it, then the multi-year takeover and correction period and then the building the brand back up. And that's IF it was bought by someone who could run it better.
Besides that, still never cool to wish people get made redundant because someone is not personally engaged with a product, especially one they visit a forum for due to having an vested interest, enjoyment and/or passion for the game/setting. That's the sort of stereotype that feeds the "dakka is a negative cesspit" reputation.
Wayniac wrote: how about due to continued incompetence? It's not like this song and dance is new.
.
Pfft. Gw make plenty boneheaded decisions but players are just as bad. players moaning and stewing is nothing new either.
Gw's 'incompetence' is still orders of magnitudes more successful in terms of engagement, player base and sales than any of their competitors...
In any case, on the ground, whilst i cant be bothered with mass-battle 40k, kill team is great fun and their modern minis are and will remain outstanding.
Also do you really think it's easy to get people to just play old obsolete editions? If it's nearly impossible to get people to play other games it's even worse to get them to play an old version of the game that's no longer supported.
This sounds a lot less to do with gw and another more to it being a 'your group' problem Wayne.
Take us. Last games we played in the last few months were Firestorm Armada, 40k: kill team, couple of games of mk2 warmachine (they'd never played), bit of 90s-necromunda, more than a few bolt action and currently doing a musket-and-broadsword homebrew that owes a lot to test of honour - I call it clash of clans...men due to the minis being Scottish highlanders/jacobite. Myself and one of the guys also dug out shadespire for a game when it was just us. And two of them have scheduled biweekly painting nights to work through several english civil war factions (royalist and parliament) alongside that. I'd love to join them, but greyhounds to walk...
Well, they called them agendas but it's not that different .
No, but the fact that they have ZERO impact on whether or not you win the game, and instead only contribute to the XP of those who achieve them is a HUGE difference.
I have played in about 6 crusades so far, and in almost all of them, about three people were making narrative choices, writing narratives after games, and really evolving the story of their characters.
But the fact that those three were making narrative choices implies that the system facilitates the ability to make narrative choices. You can't say the game isn't a narrative game- for the people actually doing narrative play, the system gives them tools.
If they choose to ignore the narrative tolls that other players use, how is that the game's fault?
Now sure, I think it's fair to say that with a few additional tweaks, GW could have made it more difficult to avoid using the narrative tools. I also always thought that GW should have published a Big Book of Campaign play that talks about organizing narrative links between games. Certainly we did see this kind of thing in 9th- Octarius was all about multi-player games and tree campaigns, with a shout out to narrative linkages between 40k and Kill Team. The other campaign settings basically just suggested using end-of-phase missions and GM. They could have gone a lot further than they did on that front, and I'll be the first to admit it.
It's also fair to say that some factions didn't get the awesome bespoke content that others got. I like GSC, Sisters, Nids, Tau, and Drukhari, all of whom had awesome next-level Crusade content. Marines kinda got shafted for Crusade content- other than the injured becoming dreads, they didn't really have a lot of cool stuff.
Yeah, so...
1) earlier editions had a progression system
2) earlier editions had more narrative codexes and core rules (in the sense that immersion and verisimilitude - "soul" was higher)
3) earlier editions had campaign frameworks, with descriptions of how to run map, ladder, node-and-spoke, and rolling campaign types.
4) earlier editions had narrative recommendations for battle setup ("why would Grey Knights show up to slaughter Orks?
Then: "3 different reasons suggested"
Now: "shut up and play!")
What makes Crusade especially more narrative than the CAMPAIGNS pages in the 4th edition BRB? Is it because the word "Crusade" is more 40k than the word "Campaigns" or?
I mean here, take this example from the old IG book:
"Doctrine - Xeno Fighters: this regiment is especially experienced in fighting a single kind of enemy. Select one army from orks, Eldar, Tau, etc. and the regiment gets Preferred Enemy against the chosen force. The force *must* have some indication of this - xenos skulls on tanks, teef trophies, etc."
(Paraphrasing of course, but the rules were telling you how to build your minis to fit the narrative. GW releases Steel Legion, whose sergeants literally carried orc heads around in some cases).
Now the modern equivalent:
"Old Grudges Warlord Trait: pick an enemy unit, and units within 6" of the Warlord get +1 to wound against it". What? How many grudges do you HAVE? Why does the force have a grudge against the Space Marine Eliminators one week and the Dark Eldar Tantalus the next, then the Ridgebacks, or wait was it the Hekaton Land Fortress...
For every tournament player there are 5x casual collectors/players. Been all over the US and have witnessed most people who joined from 3rd-5th are very chill and took the "forging a narrative" as the main draw to the game as opposed to cutthroat competitive games like TCG's.
But the fact that those three were making narrative choices implies that the system facilitates the ability to make narrative choices. You can't say the game isn't a narrative game- for the people actually doing narrative play, the system gives them tools.
If they choose to ignore the narrative tolls that other players use, how is that the game's fault?
what tools exactly? Rolling on a chart to get a random buff/debuff?
And it's not the system giving them tools, it's them taking time outside of the actual game to write a backstory that explains all their fights, which is doable with regular 40k too.
Crusade facilitates this by disconnecting many of the advancement mechanics from victory conditions and linking them instead to Agendas instead.
Thats just 9th-ed style secondaries with a different name
Automatically Appended Next Post:
dominuschao wrote: Late to the party but I'll add my post to the count. My gaming group is cooked. 10th edition killed the desire to brew and play. Sadly I doubt they will "go backwards" on many of the changes so I have just moved on although I'll check in here at times. I'd be open to some games of 9th or even earlier editions if we could dredge up the desire but currently the interest is not there.
Regarding dakka negativity I feel it's an accurate sentiment towards the game. I believe the only sites that are truly positive towards the state of the game are those that profit from this mess. Goon and their gang for example..
Smoke and mirrors marketing as someone else stated.
Honestly I hope GW goes under with this economy and everyone returns to an earlier edition. Selfish as that sounds. Good day.
well that was certainly a post of all time, holy moley.
Just play the old editions you want with your playgroup. If your playgroup doesn't want to, it's not because GW failed (in your eyes) with 10th.
For every tournament player there are 5x casual collectors/players. Been all over the US and have witnessed most people who joined from 3rd-5th are very chill and took the "forging a narrative" as the main draw to the game as opposed to cutthroat competitive games like TCG's.
Balance still benefits casual players tho.
Balance benefits people who value balance in high regards. Some place higher value on factors in a game that are direct contrasts to balance (e.g. variance).
I've mentioned before, that I believe the only way GW could truly appease both the competitive crowd, and the narrative crowd is to have two entirely separate systems. I'm not talking about some add-on like crusade or a campaign book either, but a full blow separate game system.
As an example, if they kept this simplified 8th-10th core structure for the competitive crowd, but also released and supported a core ruleset that is based in 3rd-7th (such as the Horus Heresy) and marketed as a pseudo-historical game. Many people I see shelfing their 8th-10th edition armies and favoring HH are doing so because they feel the system provides more immersive gameplay. Vehicle facings, initiative, and WS checks to name a few immersive elements that have been stripped.
EDIT:
I want to iterate, I am aware that GW is likely not capable of managing two systems for the same game. This is just my opinion on the most optimal way to support competitive and narrative crowds.
For every tournament player there are 5x casual collectors/players. Been all over the US and have witnessed most people who joined from 3rd-5th are very chill and took the "forging a narrative" as the main draw to the game as opposed to cutthroat competitive games like TCG's.
Balance still benefits casual players tho.
That depends entirely on the cost.
Balance in terms of units and equipment being appropriately costed (insofar as possible) is great for casual players.
Balance in terms of removing swathes of options, wargear, weapons etc. because "balance are hard" is terrible for casual players.
GW abandoned the former in 9th edition and has instead moved towards the latter, with 10th flooring the accelerator.
Add D1000 pts to each 1k list and you have your variance of stomping and getting stomped. You need a lot of experience to know how to balance two random 2k lists against each other if one is actually worth 3k and the other is worth 1k. So balance should be GW's goal, not at the cost of faithfully representing the lore or making the game fun, but to the degree it's possible without stepping too much on those.
Balance is good all else being equal. Brevity in rules writing is good all else being equal, that does not mean changing a long thematic rule to +1 S on the charge, but +2S on the charge and +1S when not on the charge is bad writing.
The 40k community being split in half or the competitive community getting a containment game would be terrible when number of players is such a huge strength for 40k which gets halved the moment you have 39k and 41k. You also cannot remove the human psychology component of wanting a strong list and wanting to win from most people.
For every tournament player there are 5x casual collectors/players. Been all over the US and have witnessed most people who joined from 3rd-5th are very chill and took the "forging a narrative" as the main draw to the game as opposed to cutthroat competitive games like TCG's.
Balance still benefits casual players tho.
I completely agree.
The problem is that GWisn't doing any better at balancing the game today than they were in, e.g., 7th.
As absurd as this sounds, these people would probably fluorish under a less olgipolistic market represented by GW's dominance and would have the opportunity to use their skills for competing in it.
The issue is though that GW will shed it's actual workers before the incompetent management that is actually responsible for the nonsense going on.
Certainly not the ruleswriters and workers and designers are in favour of a 3 year / edition cicle of constant churn material. AND more importantly the market is completly curbed due to IP law issues, so even with GW going under we wouldn't necesserly be better off.
There is nothing stopping that group from playing 9th or 2nd ed or whatever they want now, the failure of the company will not make that any more or less likely than they presently have available to them, it'll simply result in increased scarcity and less traction recruiting new players.
You forget the cult of officialdom in that regards that has been fostered for 2 reasons (and is really all over any brand that has significant marketshare), A) Insulation of their market share and B) strengthening loyality of the custommer base. It's a religiosisation of marketing (boy i recently listened in to an Apple product stream or whatevs, i mean i am catholic but sheesh) , and it's done all over by "luxus-brands".
Of course the insulation also serves against one of GW's serious main competitors, beeing 3d printers, an issue that they created themselves of having themselves priced out of the area in which a 3d printer is a non consideration into the area in which a 3d printer is a case of concern.
Frankly it's only GW as a miniature company that has such a lively 3d printing scene, not least of which because the math already favours the printers in many cases on a single army already. An issue no other game system had.
I do agree it is 100% the managerial staff who are likely the biggest issue, the corporate bigwigs and woe me middle managers likely doing what they're told for their bonus at the end of the year. But you're right, the people who work there who care and actually deliver the stuff we enjoy (or not) will likely be the first casualties.
The death of GW simply cannot and will not be beneficial to 40k in any short term or even medium term. The only slim chance is that it results in a take-over by a firm that run them better, but that's ignoring a decade long downward spiral of losing players and slower releases that would precede it, then the multi-year takeover and correction period and then the building the brand back up. And that's IF it was bought by someone who could run it better.
The problem is the 40k IP and associated IPs are worth gold, especially to the hollow corpse that is the entertainment industry. It wouldn't get better, unless GW would go tits up in the most cataclysmic way and a breaking appart of the IP would occur.
Besides that, still never cool to wish people get made redundant because someone is not personally engaged with a product, especially one they visit a forum for due to having an vested interest, enjoyment and/or passion for the game/setting. That's the sort of stereotype that feeds the "dakka is a negative cesspit" reputation.
Dakka may be a "negativ cesspit", but enforced positivity is far more sinister in it's mechanics. That said wishing GW would get under pressure to improve isn't irrational or mean from a custommer perspective.
And the reality is, that currently GW doesn't do it's job adequatly for a multi billion dollar company with a stranglehold on the TG scene. In many smaller companies such bad leadership would've been fired but GW has reached the stage at which it's corporate structure insulates it's leadership from consequence. Hence why a wholesale bankrupticy would be required. Because despite being the dominant TG company nobody is going to break it's oligopol with law, it's basically due to the tie in with the IP borderline impossible aswell, which also means that other TG games have to compete with a company on terms that are dictated by them and in which they can't compete.
in a market that already due to community play concerns tends to centralisation and monopolisation far more than f.e. the market of other goods.
That leads to on one hand that the few other "successes" are propperly vetted on the other with the whole cultish marketing, faux hype machine and faux communication is so grating because instead of getting forced into a competiton which would force the company to actually improve (and that would be best for the community) and also lead to more smaller companies and more jobs at often better environments what you see is basically a monolith that can pay low and replace manpower at its leisure. So in a way, it's not so much wishing unemployment but being dissatisfied with the current oligopol and it's massive power.
For every tournament player there are 5x casual collectors/players. Been all over the US and have witnessed most people who joined from 3rd-5th are very chill and took the "forging a narrative" as the main draw to the game as opposed to cutthroat competitive games like TCG's.
Balance still benefits casual players tho.
I completely agree.
The problem is that GWisn't doing any better at balancing the game today than they were in, e.g., 7th.
If youre talking about internal balance, agreed. But external balance is pretty good right now.
For every tournament player there are 5x casual collectors/players. Been all over the US and have witnessed most people who joined from 3rd-5th are very chill and took the "forging a narrative" as the main draw to the game as opposed to cutthroat competitive games like TCG's.
Balance still benefits casual players tho.
I completely agree.
The problem is that GWisn't doing any better at balancing the game today than they were in, e.g., 7th.
If youre talking about internal balance, agreed. But external balance is pretty good right now.
Pardon but didn't we recently still have 70% winrates? Granted in an extremely questionable pool of competitive games but yeah?
The notion that balance benefits everyone is predicated on the idea that balancing for competitive play and balancing for casual play are the same thing, and that just isn't true. They're separate targets with separate concerns.
We've routinely seen units that overperform under specific conditions and with specific combos get nerfed accordingly, with the result being that they're then fair in tournaments, but outside that competitive context they're basically useless. Competitive games tend to focus on quashing overperforming outliers, while casual ones tend to focus more on making every option worth considering, and these can sometimes be opposed.
There are also issues like skill floors/skill ceilings where an army that is weak for most players overperforms in the hands of a pro, disproportionate representation (eg, casual communities have a much higher representation of Marines, which skews what a 'TAC' list looks like), and the lower tendency of casual players to acquire and spam whatever is flavor of the week. These all impact the environment that you're balancing for.
And of course competitive balance does not incorporate many of the concerns- does this match the lore, does this feel fun to play (eg early 8th infantry hordes were effective but decidedly un-fun), is my existing collection still compatible- that are much more important considerations for casual play.
They're not necessarily contradictory goals. They're just not necessarily aligned, and you can have a game that's well-balanced for LVO but a train wreck for garagehammer. And that's without even getting into the tendency for competitive-focused design to strip down player freedom to produce a more constrained and predictable environment.
For every tournament player there are 5x casual collectors/players. Been all over the US and have witnessed most people who joined from 3rd-5th are very chill and took the "forging a narrative" as the main draw to the game as opposed to cutthroat competitive games like TCG's.
Balance still benefits casual players tho.
I completely agree.
The problem is that GWisn't doing any better at balancing the game today than they were in, e.g., 7th.
If youre talking about internal balance, agreed. But external balance is pretty good right now.
Pardon but didn't we recently still have 70% winrates? Granted in an extremely questionable pool of competitive games but yeah?
Yeah, and GW reacted and nerfed the problematic army down to a 55%. Also, 1 outlier doesn't mean the overall balance is terrible either, most games that are played won't include that one faction.
Yeah, and GW reacted and nerfed the problematic army down to a 55%. Also, 1 outlier doesn't mean the overall balance is terrible either, most games that are played won't include that one faction.
But we still got 2 Factions in 60s and Druckari are in the 40s. ... And it is one outlier ALREADY, we both know that the codex cycle will include creep because the GW ink isn't even dry when the next ruleswriter in his silo get's pushed to throw out another 3 factions by XYZ date.
Yeah, and GW reacted and nerfed the problematic army down to a 55%. Also, 1 outlier doesn't mean the overall balance is terrible either, most games that are played won't include that one faction.
But we still got 2 Factions in 60s and Druckari are in the 40s. ... And it is one outlier ALREADY, we both know that the codex cycle will include creep because the GW ink isn't even dry when the next ruleswriter in his silo get's pushed to throw out another 3 factions by XYZ date.
You're looking at the weekend% instead of the winrate since dataslate
Right now, only Aeldari sits at a 56% winrate, with csm at 55%. So there is one problematic army.
If we look at the armies that underperform (which are inherently a smaller issue considering they negatively affect less player, but should still be fixed) we have
Space Marines 44%
Necrons 43%
Custodes 42%
Imperial knights 42%
out of those, marines just got a new codex so the data is kinda insignificant for now.
For every tournament player there are 5x casual collectors/players. Been all over the US and have witnessed most people who joined from 3rd-5th are very chill and took the "forging a narrative" as the main draw to the game as opposed to cutthroat competitive games like TCG's.
Balance still benefits casual players tho.
I completely agree.
The problem is that GWisn't doing any better at balancing the game today than they were in, e.g., 7th.
If youre talking about internal balance, agreed. But external balance is pretty good right now.
Based on tournament winrates. Which brings us back to "8th/9th/10th are built for the competitive playerbase without regard for what would be fun for casual players."
Tournament winrates don't help people who want to use the models they own/like without having to go out and buy all new stuff because when played against the stuff their buddy owns/likes one of them just gets blown off the table in two turns.
Based on tournament winrates. Which brings us back to "8th/9th/10th are built for the competitive playerbase without regard for what would be fun for casual players."
ok but honestly, what the feth other source of data would you use to balance the game? I get that hating competitive players is the trend on here but come on....
And anecdotally, my local community (which IS casual centric) has never had that many games fire up weekly. 10th edition has something that is great for casual players : it's approachable (rules-wise, not money-wise) and simple to play.
Tournament winrates don't help people who want to use the models they own/like without having to go out and buy all new stuff because when played against the stuff their buddy owns/likes one of them just gets blown off the table in two turns.
that doesn't actually happen tho.... if it does, you as a player fethed up somewhere (terrain, or decision-making during the game usually)
The main issue with tournament win rates is when the participation level gets so low that just a few "good players" (or "bad players") skew the % dramatically. This is arguably more true the more balanced the broad meta (i.e. early tournament rounds) happens to be.
Its difficult for instance without lots of checking to consider how the 12 DE players last weekend got a 54% win rate - while the 11 DE players the weekend before last got a 38% win rate. Has the meta shifted so dramatically that DE have gone from trash to almost being OP?
Probably not. The issue is more likely that when the playerbase is so tiny, having 8 "above average" players play DE (that go say 3 wins in 5) that weekend will shove the average up, and having 8 "below average" players (1-2 wins in 5) would shove it down. But trying to account for that is incredibly difficult without doing loads of research. (And frankly, we have seen some people try, and it just provokes "I don't believe you anyway" from various people with axes to grind.)
When Eldar are the most popular faction (itself usually a flag) and scoring a 70% win rate, its kind of obvious they are busted. When Eldar are still (I think?) the most popular tournament faction (90 and 80 players respectively), and floating around 57-59% (so more taking out mirrors etc) then there's probably still a problem - but less of one than before.
CSM are likewise doing well on the same metrics. Plenty of players and a high win%.
A good example of a faction that seems in real trouble is Necrons. Plenty of players, and a low win%.
Based on tournament winrates. Which brings us back to "8th/9th/10th are built for the competitive playerbase without regard for what would be fun for casual players."
ok but honestly, what the feth other source of data would you use to balance the game? I get that hating competitive players is the trend on here but come on....
I think tournament data is absolutely the best starting point for balancing the game. The problem I have with GW's approach is I don't think they really understand the data and I don't think they analyse deeply enough. They've also been dismissive in the past of data that doesn't fit their preconceived ideas. For example, they dismissed low SM win rates as being down to too many casuals playing them at tournaments, which led to a lot of analysis that showed that likely wasn't the case.
I think GW often misses the mark when it comes to why factions are doing well or badly. They've tinkered with Eldar a lot, for example, and made some game-wide changes that have helped reduce the win rates at the top. But they usually don't consider how blanket changes affect less powerful factions. They also miss the core reason many things are broken - in Eldar's case, the faction and detachment rules are both among the best in the game and Eldar will remain very good (verging on broken) while that remains the case.
Fundamentally, we can already see that 10th is suffering from a lack of playtesting. We've had major changes to Towering and Devastating Wounds within the first few months of its existence. That's not the sign of a properly tested system. I suspect we'll continue to see ongoing problems for a long time yet. One positive thing so far is that neither of the Codices released for 10th seem to have broken the game or massively increased the power level of their armies. In the case of SM it may actually have lowered it. I'm not convinced GW can maintain that trend, but so far it looks like a good start.
my gaming group has been loving it. Games almost always seem close and balanced up until the very end. The main missions being a randomized card deck was an excellent idea. Makes the game easy to jump into and get started. My only gripe about the edition is loss of points for various weapon options but honestly its not too big of a deal. I know locally its never been easier to find a game and people are tending to have a great time. I think the most complaining ive heard has been from the competitive players but thats not surprising that those looking to break the game end up breaking it and making themselves miserable
Game balance can be achieved in a variety of ways, and GW's way is just gakky.
Imagine the following:
1) the scenario is one of a very few in a list with a single clear, simple objective for each player, but they are asymmetric
2) all missions can be won in a single way - but not by killing the enemy. Rather, they are won by breaking their force's morale, which is achieved via a variety of means other than killing (in addition to the objectives)
3) boards are not symmetrical
4) players do not have a deployment zone; rather; there is a mini wargame in advance depicting scouting units maneuvering about the space and setting conditions for the battle (frex dueling over critical terrain pieces).
5) only the core of the list (troops and HQ) is set; everything else is paid for based on the mission and terrain *at the table* and based on a random roll for points (as defined by the scenario). Relative force power ratings are used here to achieve balance.
This way, game balance is not a matter of the designer but a matter of a series of player choices made AT THE TABLE as part of the mission. The designer's only way to screw up balance would be to have the force power ratings in step 5 for core units being WAY off, like way way off. Every single other issue is up to the players.
It's also a more narrative system than anything 40k has ever produced :p as far as mission design.
Based on tournament winrates. Which brings us back to "8th/9th/10th are built for the competitive playerbase without regard for what would be fun for casual players."
ok but honestly, what the feth other source of data would you use to balance the game? I get that hating competitive players is the trend on here but come on....
And anecdotally, my local community (which IS casual centric) has never had that many games fire up weekly. 10th edition has something that is great for casual players : it's approachable (rules-wise, not money-wise) and simple to play...
If you wanted to use tournament winrates to balance the game in a way that would meaningfully trickle down to casual play I think you need to start analyzing things like unit pick rates and win rates. You need to realize that balance isn't just about controlling the top few of all possible lists, it's about making sure that all options are worth using. GW can't/won't actually do that, because that would involve putting effort into supporting minis that people already have, rather than trying to get people to buy new armies with the random balance roulette they are using.
Based on tournament winrates. Which brings us back to "8th/9th/10th are built for the competitive playerbase without regard for what would be fun for casual players."
ok but honestly, what the feth other source of data would you use to balance the game? I get that hating competitive players is the trend on here but come on....
And anecdotally, my local community (which IS casual centric) has never had that many games fire up weekly. 10th edition has something that is great for casual players : it's approachable (rules-wise, not money-wise) and simple to play...
If you wanted to use tournament winrates to balance the game in a way that would meaningfully trickle down to casual play I think you need to start analyzing things like unit pick rates and win rates. You need to realize that balance isn't just about controlling the top few of all possible lists, it's about making sure that all options are worth using. GW can't/won't actually do that, because that would involve putting effort into supporting minis that people already have, rather than trying to get people to buy new armies with the random balance roulette they are using.
The AoS team does this, so it's not beyond GW's ability to do nor something that GW doesn't want to do.
The best way to balance a game is have play testers. You know, the folks who try to break your game to show you areas to work on and just generally put it through reps with weird lists while noting bizarre interactions. Then the rules team would read/watch and listen to the play testers and revisions would occur. Instead of stonewalling and relying on a cut of personality so you can go home ASAP at the end of the day. Because honestly, may as well let the community pay to be the play testers. FFS the complete core rules are in 3 separate documents you need to have access to now.
IMO if you reboot a game and as a result you have to recycle your game mission and index cards because proofread = hard. That tells me very clearly the derp has metastasized.
Based on tournament winrates. Which brings us back to "8th/9th/10th are built for the competitive playerbase without regard for what would be fun for casual players."
ok but honestly, what the feth other source of data would you use to balance the game? I get that hating competitive players is the trend on here but come on....
And anecdotally, my local community (which IS casual centric) has never had that many games fire up weekly. 10th edition has something that is great for casual players : it's approachable (rules-wise, not money-wise) and simple to play...
If you wanted to use tournament winrates to balance the game in a way that would meaningfully trickle down to casual play I think you need to start analyzing things like unit pick rates and win rates. You need to realize that balance isn't just about controlling the top few of all possible lists, it's about making sure that all options are worth using. GW can't/won't actually do that, because that would involve putting effort into supporting minis that people already have, rather than trying to get people to buy new armies with the random balance roulette they are using.
The problem with using tournament win rates is that they don't seem to take into account what's actually being used. So if you have six factions and each of them are within an acceptable win rate but all of them only have one build that is seen as viable, is that actually balanced? I would argue no it's not but the tournament data would say it is because the tournament players don't care if half the book is trash as long as there's a meta build which they can use.
That is the biggest problem with what they're using. The data is fine It is the fact that it's not showing the fact that there's only one build keeping the faction afloat
VladimirHerzog wrote:ok, but again: What else than tournament results can GW use to decide what changes to make to armies?
Competent mixed qualitative and quantitative testing through designer testing (see if things work when used as you expect), in-house test teams (see if things work when testers deliberately try to break it), and a volunteer cadre of beta testers (see if things work in the 'real world'). Emphasis on qualitative and quantitative, because both are helpful for getting an accurate picture of the current state of the product.
This is how you test and improve any product, not just tabletop games.
As far as I'm concerned, 9th Ed was proof positive that GW was not playtesting in anything even resembling a representative environment. Too many mechanics that relied on unmanageable cognitive load, seemingly necessary play aids that don't exist, or involve rules spread out in such a disparate way that I can't imagine anyone flipping through their rulebook and then to the designer's commentary and saying 'yes, this is intuitive and playable'. And that's without getting into the obviously broken rules. At least 10th is now written around the use of play aids (stat cards), indicating that GW has finally entered the 21st century, but otherwise I do not believe that any sort of radical paradigm shift has occurred.
If you're designing a family sedan, you don't use drag race performance of last year's model as your sole metric. If you're designing a videogame, you don't use raw win rates in top-tier competitive play as your only data source either. And if you're working on a tabletop game, you really shouldn't only be using tournament results to make changes.
Yes, this is an awful lot harder than just looking at win rates and making coarse adjustments. But it can actually achieve the desired outcome.
Edit: I have an old copy of White Dwarf where Andy Chambers wrote up the entire playtest rules for what would become Battlefleet Gothic, included photocopiable ships, and invited readers to try the game out and send feedback. That was circa, what, 1998? Nowadays with digital distribution it's easier than ever to conduct large-scale testing and collect qualitative results. It's far from directly actionable data, and sorting out the wheat from the chaff is a non-negligible task, but that's why you hire a UX researcher to do that work. GW's taken baby steps in that direction with the community surveys, they just need to bring it into the iterative design process rather than a once-yearly 'how are we doing?' check-in.
Contemporary AI and deep learning sydtems could offer new tools for GW to tackle their "balance" issues with, since it's obvious they dont want to rely on playtesting. I've read AI systems are being used in devising new medicine, and the amount of crunch and combination of variables involved in those calculations is magnitudes higher than what exists in a game such as 40K
But then again, not sure more models would get sold either way so...
Yes- I believe this started in 4th. And these systems were good for their time; we owe them a debt of gratitude. Without them, 4th and 5th might not have been able to keep me playing. But that's about as far as my praise can go. They were single, generic tables of battle honours based on unit type meaning everyone got the same potential battle honours, regarles of whether they were a six-limbed hive-minded beast, a genetically modified superhuman in power armour or a mere human in armour that's pretty much an afterthought. The only reason we thought it was good at the time is that GW hadn't given us anything better yet.
Even worse, the way you earned the XP to get those Battle Honours was the same for every army, and if I recall correctly, it was mostly by winning games or destroying units (without any stipulations on who those units were, why you were destroying them or how). Never once in previous 40k Progression Systems did a generally have to make the hard choice between winning the battle or allowing a unit to achieve its own goal.
2) earlier editions had more narrative codexes and core rules (in the sense that immersion and verisimilitude - "soul" was higher)
All older dexes had better EQUIPMENT options. Won't dispute that- it's patently obvious. This is more true when comparing 10th to pre-8th, but the trend did start in 9th and I won't try to deny that either.
But once you add in subfaction traits (which only SOME armies were lucky enough to get in those previous editions you love so much), bespoke WL Traits, Relics, non-equipment unit upgrades, psychic powers, Crusade battle honours, non-battle-honour upgrades, and long-term campaign based faction goals, many of which did not exist in previous editions, the total number of customization options for EVERY army (more on this later) was far greater in 9th than any other version of 40k I've played (and please remember, I skipped 6th and 7th and so have no capacity to discuss them).
3) earlier editions had campaign frameworks, with descriptions of how to run map, ladder, node-and-spoke, and rolling campaign types.
I agree, and in fact you quoted me saying that Crusade would benefit from these things. You literally quoted me saying it, and then feel compelled to write it here as if I didn't already acknowledge it. Do you read before smashing the quote button? I mean at least edit out the part of my post where I said this so you can score points for taking me out of context like Owl/Bob does. LOL.
But seriously, while I would consider buying such a Big Book of Campaign Systems if one existed, I think GW decided not to produce one for a few reasons: first, campaign systems tend to be edition agnostic- the Map based campaign system that you used in 5th probably still works with 9th, or even 10th; second, if GW did publish their Map-Based Campaign System(tm), many GMs and players would have to tweak it to meet their specific needs anyway, and finally as mentioned in the post you quoted, some campaign systems DID get published in 9th- they were just part of Campaign books.
Personally, my favourite campaign system by GW to date is the Ashes of Faith system for KT- I'm working on adapting it to 40k. But seriously, it slaps. If you didn't get Ashes of Faith, read the Goonhammer review for an idea about how it works- I think you'd really like it. I think HBMC, Blindmage, Smudge, and quite a few other notable Dakkanaughts would too. It's only flaw is that it's so specific to the world on which it occurs that you'd have to tweak and modify to use it in any other context.
Also- caveat: I never got to play Planetary Empires, and I suspect I would have LOVED it.
4) earlier editions had narrative recommendations for battle setup ("why would Grey Knights show up to slaughter Orks?
Then: "3 different reasons suggested"
I also liked this about previous editions, and would have supported more of it in 9th, but did EVERY dex from previous editions have such content, or are you just cherry picking the good ones to try and prove that the edition as a whole was better?
Yeah... You should read the GK Crusade content before you think about how superior having 3 reasons why GK would fight Orks is, but my gues is you haven't. Go to the Goonhammer review, that way you don't need to pay to do it.
What makes Crusade especially more narrative than the CAMPAIGNS pages in the 4th edition BRB? Is it because the word "Crusade" is more 40k than the word "Campaigns" or?
The fact that different factions have different Battle Honours is a big one. Bespoke Requisitions is another. Agendas, both bespoke and generic, especially the fact that they are decoupled from winning/losing, which allows for dynamic tension. And faction based long term goals; I know that your thoughts on this diverge from mine- you think that by defining some long term goals for a faction, you lock a player into using only those. There's a certain amount of validity to that point of view... But I see the long term goals presented by 9th ed Crusade as exemplars, so if my goal for my sisters isn't sainthood, that's fine because I can use the mechanism for achieving sainthood as a guide for creating a mechanism for my sisters to achieve their goal, whatever that may be.
In the previous editions you love so much, there were no long term goals at all, other than winning the campaign, (whether that was map-based, ladder, rolling, etc) or just maxing out your generic Battle Honours.
You may want to complain about your DE not existing in Commorragh, and therefore not benefitting from the Ascendant Lord Crusade rules, and again, there is some validity to that... But your previous editions didn't give you a way to pursue the goals of a space-faring DE Kabal either. At least the Ascendant Lord rules give you a framework. Adapt all of the listed territories to be captured enemy ships and you're good to go. In your previous eds, you'd have to build such a thing from scratch with Zero guidance.
I mean here, take this example from the old IG book:
"Doctrine - Xeno Fighters: this regiment is especially experienced in fighting a single kind of enemy. Select one army from orks, Eldar, Tau, etc. and the regiment gets Preferred Enemy against the chosen force. The force *must* have some indication of this - xenos skulls on tanks, teef trophies, etc."
Now from the same edition as those guard rules come from, find me the awesome equivalent rule from the dexes of the other factions. You'll get them for Marines for sure. I think you'll get them for Chaos and Nids too. The point is, you can cherry pick A good flavourful, fluffy dex or two or three from every ed. And as the Prohammer players do, you can even play this faction's 3rd ed dex against that faction's 5th ed dex and another faction's 7th ed dex... Because that's what you MUST do in order to have an edition where EVERY dex has the kind of flavour you're looking for.
But if you play 9th, you know that EVERY faction is going to have bespoke subfaction traits, WL traits, Relics, Strategems, Battle Honours, Agendas, and campaign goals. Even with all of that, I'll be the first to admit that not all 9th dexes are equally cool- Tau, Sisters, GSC, Drukhari and Nids are far and away the "winners" for bespoke Crusade content. But the point is that 9th at least had a minimum standard "Every dex for every faction must have these things"
Heck, some of the editions you're praising didn't even have a dex for every faction! Think about that dude.
Now the modern equivalent:
"Old Grudges Warlord Trait: pick an enemy unit, and units within 6" of the Warlord get +1 to wound against it". What? How many grudges do you HAVE? Why does the force have a grudge against the Space Marine Eliminators one week and the Dark Eldar Tantalus the next, then the Ridgebacks, or wait was it the Hekaton Land Fortress...
Wait... You're honestly typing with a straight face that the equivalent to a previous edition's doctrine (which affects all <Regiment> units) is a WL Trait (which affects one dude)?
How 'bout we go apples to apples bro. When I have my dex to hand, I'll go through and look at guard subfaction traits, both the bespoke ones and the build your own regiment ones and see if there isn't something that would be at least somewhat comparable. If I don't find it there, I'll check Battle Honours (both bespoke and generic). If I don't find it there, I'll check my campaign books. If I don't find it there, I'll check my WD Flashpoints.
In the edition you cite, xeno hunter is great if that suits my dudes. One of the other regiment traits might suit them better if xeno hunter doesn't. If not, I might be able to make them what I want them to be by changing their loadout. If that doesn't work, my last resort is battlehonours, but there's only going to be six possibilities there, and they will be the same six possibilities that every other faction has access to. That's pretty much it. The Cityfight edition might have had some goodies too, but I can't say for sure.
Now read again the sources I can draw upon in 9th to make them my dudes. It's WAY more than picking from a list of regiment traits, an equipment list and six universal battle honours. Some people call it Spam, but I call it options.
It depends upon what data is being harvested, and how it’s being analysed.
For instance, a 56% win rate isn’t, in itself, terribly worrying. It’s pretty close to 50/50, and so needs greater analysis.
Is it overperforming with Really Similar Lists? If so, what is making those lists good. Now player skill not withstanding, is there an odd rule interaction allowing it to do things others just cannot counter.
And how well is it represented amongst all the entrant factions. If it’s say, 10% of all factions at the events, then it’s over performing compared to being 25% of all lists at the events.
Are the opponents skewing things? For instance, did the overall winner get an easy ride in the early rounds, and a favourable match ups in the later ones?
Example. Purely for arguments sake, let’s say I’ve skewed all my Heavy and Special type weapons into slaughtering infantry. If at a given event my luck is in, and I just don’t come up against armoured columns or mechanised infantry, then my win rate could be misleading. Because a single game against say, Knights, and I may have been squished.
Also, what is leading to the wins? Is it kicking out so much damage I have a significant advantage after a couple of turns, or do I happen to be really good at secondaries etc, and said secondaries benefit me against a prevailing meta.
We then have the question of whether Tournaments, the best source of this info (because so much of it is reasonably verifiable), provide enough raw data, which will be linked to number of tournaments and number of participants in each, and how many rounds each has.
I mean, if you’re monitoring 5 Tournies, with 100 slots and 4 rounds each? That’s….2,000 games of info. But, if it’s 20 tournaments, with 150 slots and 5 rounds each? That’s…erm…15,000 games of info, and so a much richer source of data.
Tyran wrote: I'm unsure how relevant playtesting and balance is to the overal topic.
After all GW has historically sucked at both, so balance has never been part of 40k's "soul" (whatever that is supposed to be).
That's because it was originally not the intent in the manner we speak of it currently.
If we go back to 90s when Andy, Rick and the boys were making what would become classic 40K they used points and a framework to set up games between 2 players. the points tended to be about internal balance in a codex as in how important is this unit/war gear to your army. not to how it balances out against a different factions army.
Because the game started out as a parody of WHFBs with a bit of epic story telling that morphed into a skirmish game with tighter rules in 2nd and then to an army game in 3rd the concept of external balance was not the goal. the goal was epic thematic battles in the setting. one has but to look at the old 3rd and 4th ed codexes and to a lesser extent some of 5ths to see the focus mostly on in universe lore about how each faction fights with rules to promote that play style. there are also loads of retrospect articles we can go through where the design team was at odds with the sales team over rules VS sales.
It is also an era where building a good army list was not as important as how you used that army (generalship) on the table, taking advantages of terrain, objectives, army strengths/weaknesses, maneuver etc... there was also much focus put in the actually books at the time reminding players of the spirit of the game/community is that this is a game where BOTH players are trying to have an enjoyable time and you should play accordingly. not seal clubbing, not power gaming etc.... things like reminding players-talk with your opponent and see if they are ok with x,y, or z that you want to try out especially if it is something rare...like named characters, flyers or superheavies etc...
The reason why 10th is so bland is because the focus switched from fun social play to tournament meta play with an obsession with cross faction "balance". you effectively end up with chess were both forces are effectively the same. a bit harder to do with 40K now since they have added so many units and factions. but the effect is currently the same. and any time one faction seems to get a little bit ahead it has to be pushed back down for the sake of balance.
that is why for many people who were around prior to 8th still love going back and playing the game when it was a different experience.
catbarf wrote: At least 10th is now written around the use of play aids (stat cards), indicating that GW has finally entered the 21st century, but otherwise I do not believe that any sort of radical paradigm shift has occurred.
You know that AoS has had these unit stat cards for two editions now, right?
catbarf wrote: At least 10th is now written around the use of play aids (stat cards), indicating that GW has finally entered the 21st century, but otherwise I do not believe that any sort of radical paradigm shift has occurred.
You know that AoS has had these unit stat cards for two editions now, right?
Yeah, as do most of the modern Specialist Games. I meant specifically 40K, which is perpetually behind the curve at GW, let alone as far as wargames in general.
Tyran wrote: I'm unsure how relevant playtesting and balance is to the overal topic.
After all GW has historically sucked at both, so balance has never been part of 40k's "soul" (whatever that is supposed to be).
That's because it was originally not the intent in the manner we speak of it currently.
If we go back to 90s when Andy, Rick and the boys were making what would become classic 40K they used points and a framework to set up games between 2 players. the points tended to be about internal balance in a codex as in how important is this unit/war gear to your army. not to how it balances out against a different factions army.
Because the game started out as a parody of WHFBs with a bit of epic story telling that morphed into a skirmish game with tighter rules in 2nd and then to an army game in 3rd the concept of external balance was not the goal. the goal was epic thematic battles in the setting. one has but to look at the old 3rd and 4th ed codexes and to a lesser extent some of 5ths to see the focus mostly on in universe lore about how each faction fights with rules to promote that play style. there are also loads of retrospect articles we can go through where the design team was at odds with the sales team over rules VS sales.
It is also an era where building a good army list was not as important as how you used that army (generalship) on the table, taking advantages of terrain, objectives, army strengths/weaknesses, maneuver etc... there was also much focus put in the actually books at the time reminding players of the spirit of the game/community is that this is a game where BOTH players are trying to have an enjoyable time and you should play accordingly. not seal clubbing, not power gaming etc.... things like reminding players-talk with your opponent and see if they are ok with x,y, or z that you want to try out especially if it is something rare...like named characters, flyers or superheavies etc...
The reason why 10th is so bland is because the focus switched from fun social play to tournament meta play with an obsession with cross faction "balance". you effectively end up with chess were both forces are effectively the same. a bit harder to do with 40K now since they have added so many units and factions. but the effect is currently the same. and any time one faction seems to get a little bit ahead it has to be pushed back down for the sake of balance.
that is why for many people who were around prior to 8th still love going back and playing the game when it was a different experience.
The issue isn't really the game though. The issue is that the community has massively changed since those days. The economic and social context is different, the available technology is different, the expectations are different.
I don't believe we can say that 10th or 9th or 8th has drained anything, but rather that they changed to reflect a different community. After all if the community was the same we would all still be playing 3rd/4th/5th, which was what happened in communities like the RTS and Grand Strategy Games in which the community has been playing the same 20 year old games (e.g. AoEII is still one of the most played RTS).
Did it really change though or is it just a drawback of a culture based on social media where people feel if they're popular they have a majority voice. I don't think it's a coincidence that the majority of content creators and such also happen to be tournament players and pushing competitive play over everything else.
That alone seems to indicate that because of these people and their inevitable cult following their voices are elevated above the rest because they are looked to as having influence or authority, and the fact that a lot of their followers and people who think similarly tend to just drown out the opposite opinion doesn't help.
Also let's not pretend that Edition changes didn't happen specifically to shake things up and require you to repurchase things that you are already bought. So that's been a problem forever but it definitely feels that the past few editions GW has decided to try their hand leading the opposite direction. In 7th they basically told competitive players the game isn't meant for you and rather than accept that they basically said well I'll go make my own game with blackjack and hookers and we got ITC Edition. Now it seems like they're going the opposite way and trying to see if appeasing the competitive players and letting everyone else just deal with it will work. While I can't deny that some things may be improved by that I think it will in the end strip away everything that made the game good. This game has never been meant for being a serious cutthroat tournament game and it's entirely the fault of the players for wanting to corrupt it into being that rather than accept it for what it is. The editions of the past show That tournament play was still possible because there have been grand tournaments since 2nd edition.
VladimirHerzog wrote: ok, but again: What else than tournament results can GW use to decide what changes to make to armies?
If only there was like... some software that you could download onto a personal computational device. You know, something small, like that could fit in your pocket, and which most people carried around with them and had available to them at all times. And this piece of software could let you build army lists in it, and then when you played a game it would let you sync with your opponent to keep track of your objectives and scoring, CP points, etc. and let you track your damage on your units, etc. And when you were done you could submit your game data to GW, and they could analyze it not just by faction but also by detachment and unit and hell even the whole army list and what strategems were used, etc....
...but that would be impossible, no such technology exists, no sir, it can't be done.
VladimirHerzog wrote: ok, but again: What else than tournament results can GW use to decide what changes to make to armies?
If only there was like... some software that you could download onto a personal computational device. You know, something small, like that could fit in your pocket, and which most people carried around with them and had available to them at all times. And this piece of software could let you build army lists in it, and then when you played a game it would let you sync with your opponent to keep track of your objectives and scoring, CP points, etc. and let you track your damage on your units, etc. And when you were done you could submit your game data to GW, and they could analyze it not just by faction but also by detachment and unit and hell even the whole army list and what strategems were used, etc....
...but that would be impossible, no such technology exists, no sir, it can't be done.
Maybe it’s my career, but you’re putting a lot of faith in people being far more honest than people actually are with that.
We’ve all played against bad losers, who’ll blame everything but their own decisions and competence. Not just in the game but in life.
Tournaments results are considerably more verifiable. Put such an app out into the wild? You’ve no way to strip out dishonesty from the submitted results. At all.
Wayniac wrote: Did it really change though or is it just a drawback of a culture based on social media where people feel if they're popular they have a majority voice. I don't think it's a coincidence that the majority of content creators and such also happen to be tournament players and pushing competitive play over everything else.
I mean, social media has real and measurable social impact, so either way it did change.
But it isn't also just social media. It is also the issue that young people these days rarely have the space and/or time to hold games and depend on FLG for games. Moreover society, for several reasons, is far more atomized. Those two situations means having a tight group of close friends to garage hammer is mostly a thing of the past, and narrative based play is very dependent on garage hammer being a thing.
In addition it is trivial to google up a tourney list and thus to know what to buy if you want to win, it is very easy to start an escalating plastic arms race these days.
And lastly, the community is simply much larger, with many players being introduced in 8th and later and thus having a very different expectations.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Maybe it’s my career, but you’re putting a lot of faith in people being far more honest than people actually are with that.
We’ve all played against bad losers, who’ll blame everything but their own decisions and competence. Not just in the game but in life.
Tournaments results are considerably more verifiable. Put such an app out into the wild? You’ve no way to strip out dishonesty from the submitted results. At all.
Let me quote myself from another thread regarding this topic:
- Make a proper list building app and website, so you have exact unit configuration saved while providing an incentive for the user to do it.
- The app could assist during the game so you can keep track of the overall score and all secondaries.
- Submit the result at the end of the game to a server for parsing.
- The app could assign a "MMR" to you which gets higher if you win against other people of the same or higher MMR than you and gets lower if you lose, or stays the same if you continuously play against the same people.
... there is simply no way of preventing any malicious use while keeping it accessable enough. You could, however, do something like this:
- After you submit your battle data, generate a (QR) code for the other player to enter, so the result gets confirmed and the armies get paired.
- Introduce different kind of "trust levels" by which you can filter the results. Something like "Garagehammer (only confirmed by participating players)", "Bunker alliance" for games taking place in affiliated clubs and stores and finally "Tournament and Warhammer shops confirmed". So for Bunker and Tournament you need something like a third party confirmation that the game did indeed happen like this.
Wayniac wrote: Did it really change though or is it just a drawback of a culture based on social media where people feel if they're popular they have a majority voice. I don't think it's a coincidence that the majority of content creators and such also happen to be tournament players and pushing competitive play over everything else.
I mean, social media has real and measurable social impact, so either way it did change.
But it isn't also just social media. It is also the issue that young people these days rarely have the space and/or time to hold games and depend on FLG for games. Moreover society, for several reasons, is far more atomized. Those two situations means having a tight group of close friends to garage hammer is mostly a thing of the past, and narrative based play is very dependent on garage hammer being a thing.
Because no one has ever run a campaign or narrative game down at the local shop....
- Make a proper list building app and website, so you have exact unit configuration saved while providing an incentive for the user to do it.
- The app could assist during the game so you can keep track of the overall score and all secondaries.
- Submit the result at the end of the game to a server for parsing.
- The app could assign a "MMR" to you which gets higher if you win against other people of the same or higher MMR than you and gets lower if you lose, or stays the same if you continuously play against the same people.
... there is simply no way of preventing any malicious use while keeping it accessable enough. You could, however, do something like this:
- After you submit your battle data, generate a (QR) code for the other player to enter, so the result gets confirmed and the armies get paired.
- Introduce different kind of "trust levels" by which you can filter the results. Something like "Garagehammer (only confirmed by participating players)", "Bunker alliance" for games taking place in affiliated clubs and stores and finally "Tournament and Warhammer shops confirmed". So for Bunker and Tournament you need something like a third party confirmation that the game did indeed happen like this.
So your solution is to make people do paperwork after they do their hobby? Paperwork that is easily manipulated because it's an open-ended system where a few people could ruin the system with thousands of fake results?
Sounds like a great idea. /s
"Tournament data is the only way to balance things!" might be the next brain-bug after "Symmetrical terrain is needed for balance!".
We know - we know - that their playtesting efforts are massively insufficient and the methodology for creating Codices is flawed (sequential development rather than parallel, at least as an edition goes along after the initial release flurry). The former means that books come out with glaring bone-headed and flagrantly obvious mistakes that most of us pick up on a first readthrough, the latter leads to mid-edition paradigm shifts where suddenly every Codex after a certain point changes its structure or emphasis, often as a knee-jerk reaction to what's happening in 40k at the start of its development.
If they weren't so obsessively secretive about things, they could have a thriving playtest network that irons out as many of the bugs (not all, that's impossible) as they can before these things to go print.
"But people will leak things! We've already seen that happen in 9th!"
And? So? But? Therefore? If GW wasn't so secretive with everything*, the impetuous to leak things wouldn't be so high. If they said they were doing Codices X, Y and Z next year, and playtesting is ongoing, and perhaps used some of the stories of that playtesting to fill pages in their damned monthly magazine (an incentive to buy it for those interested in the game's development!), then the mad dash to leak and find things out wouldn't be as strong.
This sort of change requires an attitude adjustment from GW, one I doubt they'd ever take despite the obvious benefits it could yield.
*Remember the 8th Ed Sisters Codex? Remember how quite a number of the units didn't have photos in the book because they weren't released at the same time as the Codex, meaning that for units like Repentia, Archos and Seraphim the only pictures in the book were the mono-pose ones from the preview box? Yeah. That's the kind of insane secrecy we're talking about.
Tournaments are probably the only way to produce large amounts of verifiable and usable data, so naturally should make the core aspect of balance.
It shouldn't be the only data and GW should have an actual playtesting team, but at the end of the day tournament data will still be better. Playtesting is more for detecting and fixing bugs and edge cases than actual balance.
And tournnament data isn't just win rate. Army composition, missions, terrain, etc. You can get pretty much everything as long as you are willing to use that data.
Tyran wrote: And tournnament data isn't just win rate.
Tell that to GW.
They see 50% and go "Job's a good 'un!" and move onto something else without factoring in what's causing that 50% win rate, or what units are never being taken (or always being taken).
This is what I mean when I talk about Metawatch articles being Dunning Kruger articles. They talk the talk, but I don't think they have any real understanding of what they're talking about.
Tyran wrote: And tournnament data isn't just win rate.
Tell that to GW.
They see 50% and go "Job's a good 'un!" and move onto something else without factoring in what's causing that 50% win rate, or what units are never being taken (or always being taken).
This is what I mean when I talk about Metawatch articles being Dunning Kruger articles. They talk the talk, but I don't think they have any real understanding of what they're talking about.
That right there is the problem. Yes the tournament data is better than nothing because it's the most generic type of data you can get since you obviously can't poll individual groups.
But the way they look at that data seems to indicate that they have no clue what they're actually looking at or what the actual problems might be because win rate is a terrible metric since it doesn't take into account what's being used
To borrow from Discworld? In my own way, I’m a Sam Vimes. I don’t consider myself a child born outside of wedlock, but boy, do I know how to think like a child born outside of wedlock
The App suggestions are solid. But.
They’re never gonna be verifiable. Sure, I could log my army list. We could log turn by turn events. But at all points there, with no oversight, you’re relying on people being honest.
And being a Sam Vimesian sort, 11 years into a career of dealing with liars? People just aren’t that honest.
Tyran wrote: And tournnament data isn't just win rate.
Tell that to GW.
They see 50% and go "Job's a good 'un!" and move onto something else without factoring in what's causing that 50% win rate, or what units are never being taken (or always being taken).
This is what I mean when I talk about Metawatch articles being Dunning Kruger articles. They talk the talk, but I don't think they have any real understanding of what they're talking about.
As a prime example, that DW 51% number is because they had a single player hitting top-level tables, which is honestly damning to the state of the faction if there's only one player in their dataset, a Mr. Travis Gibson, who went 4-1, and literally the only one this last period. Not to mention the recent stealth-update of the indexes show that the Fortis Kill-team, the one looking most likely to take top spot among the teams, does not benefit from the strats, as the Heavy Bolter and Heavy Bolt rifles are apparently, not bolt weapons.
Tyran wrote: And tournnament data isn't just win rate.
Tell that to GW.
They see 50% and go "Job's a good 'un!" and move onto something else without factoring in what's causing that 50% win rate, or what units are never being taken (or always being taken).
This is what I mean when I talk about Metawatch articles being Dunning Kruger articles. They talk the talk, but I don't think they have any real understanding of what they're talking about.
That right there is the problem. Yes the tournament data is better than nothing because it's the most generic type of data you can get since you obviously can't poll individual groups.
But the way they look at that data seems to indicate that they have no clue what they're actually looking at or what the actual problems might be because win rate is a terrible metric since it doesn't take into account what's being used
Which then brings us back to the lackluster playtesting in an oversaturated staggered release cycle and too short of an edition.
If everyone shows up with the same net list, using the same 8-10 units out of a book that has 40+ options, and everyone gets an even number of wins in... wow! 50% win rate. Verified! But also meaningless.
H.B.M.C. wrote: Verifiable yes, but what validity does it hold?
If everyone shows up with the same net list, using the same 8-10 units out of a book that has 40+ options, and everyone gets an even number of wins in... wow! 50% win rate. Verified! But also meaningless.
Nvm that the most data producing Set of tournament results is a format that has ... Issues as has been discussed.
Tourney/verifiable data gets to be a control group. "In the wild data" from public participants is another, less reliable, set of data. Then you should also have a number of trusted playtesters creating their own dataset, potentially with a higher level of granularity. Then you get three different sets of data to run any analyses against, two "trusted", and one "wild", and you can use the trusted sets to help check the "wild" data against.
VladimirHerzog wrote: ok, but again: What else than tournament results can GW use to decide what changes to make to armies?
If only there was like... some software that you could download onto a personal computational device. You know, something small, like that could fit in your pocket, and which most people carried around with them and had available to them at all times. And this piece of software could let you build army lists in it, and then when you played a game it would let you sync with your opponent to keep track of your objectives and scoring, CP points, etc. and let you track your damage on your units, etc. And when you were done you could submit your game data to GW, and they could analyze it not just by faction but also by detachment and unit and hell even the whole army list and what strategems were used, etc....
...but that would be impossible, no such technology exists, no sir, it can't be done.
ok, let me just log 2000 games where Khorne demons go 100-0 just so GW can nerf them.
VladimirHerzog wrote: ok, but again: What else than tournament results can GW use to decide what changes to make to armies?
If only there was like... some software that you could download onto a personal computational device. You know, something small, like that could fit in your pocket, and which most people carried around with them and had available to them at all times. And this piece of software could let you build army lists in it, and then when you played a game it would let you sync with your opponent to keep track of your objectives and scoring, CP points, etc. and let you track your damage on your units, etc. And when you were done you could submit your game data to GW, and they could analyze it not just by faction but also by detachment and unit and hell even the whole army list and what strategems were used, etc....
...but that would be impossible, no such technology exists, no sir, it can't be done.
ok, let me just log 2000 games where Khorne demons go 100-0 just so GW can nerf them.
People would make programs that falsify the logs, and GW probably wouldn't realize that Khorne Demons having over a trillion logged victories is probably not physically possible.
Tyran wrote: People would make programs that falsify the logs, and GW probably wouldn't realize that Khorne Demons having over a trillion logged victories is probably not physically possible.
probably would say how popular it must be to have logged one million games this month alone or some crap
So i don't know if anyone remembers the13th black crusade campaign, but GW did exactly that, they got people to register and log their victories on a special website.
But then they had to have your opponent also log their defeat, or the value of your victory was less.
But even then the sheer number of spurious victory claims made the whole thing a bit of a wash.
People were also just getting their friends to act as their opponent and record a loss to help influence the outcome.
VladimirHerzog wrote: ok, let me just log 2000 games where Khorne demons go 100-0 just so GW can nerf them.
You guys know that bad actor data is something you can detect and purge, right? Like, any company that does user satisfaction surveys has to do this already.
As with so many other discussions relating to 40K, I feel like this is a solved problem being presented as something new and insurmountable.
If GW really did want to push the envelope, they could digitize their games (a la Tabletop Simulator) and use that virtual environment to relay game telemetry. Even just as a private testing tool and not released to the unwashed masses, it would provide all sorts of data that conventional playtesting doesn't. But failing that, soliciting playtesting feedback from a curated group of beta testers and using that to inform development is hardly rocket science.
There's a million and one solutions to the problem. Tie valid accounts to warhammer + subs to prevent abuse and require verification from an opponent, cap each player to one submitted game per week to prevent spam, etc.
GW can afford to hire a halfway decent data scientist to figure this out, it's not hard.
Crusade is a significant game mode and it's impossible to balance because it has victory and advancement on two different vectors so a player might focus on one thing at the detriment of another. Just like the game shouldn't be balanced based on painting scores, not even partially.
Players not playing to win is another issue that makes casual unsuited for data analysis, while I think it's wrong to throw the game for entertainment purposes, many casual gamers disagree.
Everyone in tournaments does not show up with the same netlist and GW regularly buff underperforming units and nerf overperforming ones, while the times where they attack with the bone saw instead of the scalpel is annoying, that doesn't mean they never use the scalpel. The thing to always keep in mind is that unlike what some posters claim the 40k game designers are garbage at what they do. Management at times being awful is unfortunate, but waiting for monkeys with typewriters to write the next Mozart is silly.
vict0988 wrote: Everyone in tournaments does not show up with the same netlist and GW regularly buff underperforming units and nerf overperforming ones, while the times where they attack with the bone saw instead of the scalpel is annoying, that doesn't mean they never use the scalpel. The thing to always keep in mind is that unlike what some posters claim the 40k game designers are garbage at what they do. Management at times being awful is unfortunate, but waiting for monkeys with typewriters to write the next Mozart is silly.
They also nerf units that have already been nerfed because they were powerful in the previous edition (or several editions ago), and I'm not sure they have a bone saw and a scalpel. I think they have one blade that they don't know how to use very well, meaning that sometimes they get it right, and sometimes they don't. Broken clock syndrome, really.
And this is made all the worse by the fact that it shouldn't be this way. It's the 10th Edition of the game.
Their problems with iteration vs throwing the baby out with the bath water are infuriating, and their knee-jerk reactions to win rates at tournaments are infantile (the game isn't even 6 months old and they're already messing with core rules with "balance dataslates" that are anything but!).
After all if the community was the same we would all still be playing 3rd/4th/5th, which was what happened in communities like the RTS and Grand Strategy Games in which the community has been playing the same 20 year old games (e.g. AoEII is still one of the most played RTS).
*Looks over at my huge battle tech collection that i play nearly every weekend with the same basic rules and core mechanics i was using when i started in 1987*
I also like to point out that the current community is often ignorant of what came before, and once i teach them a previous edition or a specialist game no longer supported i tend to get many positive responses.
Gert wrote: So your solution is to make people do paperwork after they do their hobby? Paperwork that is easily manipulated because it's an open-ended system where a few people could ruin the system with thousands of fake results?
Sounds like a great idea. /s
I assume you and most other people prepare their army list in some form before a game, so there would not be any additional "paperwork" to just use the official app for it. Pairing is as easy as scanning a QR code with your mobile phone. Fraud prevention comes from different trust tiers. Have you even read the whole post before you started typing your /s remark?
But if you play 9th, you know that EVERY faction is going to have bespoke subfaction traits, WL traits, Relics, Strategems, Battle Honours, Agendas, and campaign goals.
It's nice that every faction gets those options . . .
WL traits are an option for one model.
Relics are an option for one model.
Stratagems often seem like something that should just be an inherent ability of a unit (looking at you, Auto Launchers).
and then I compare that to a legendary old set of options:
And I think, yeah, there was a lot more 'soul' back then.
Battle Honours, Agendas and Campaign Goals are not something I've ever played with, as I don't play Crusade.
Yeah, part of the reason I didn't reply to the total of PenitentJake's post is it misses the forest for the trees.
Like yes, every army is guaranteed to get Crusade rules, subtraction traits, relics, WLTs, etc...
...but those aren't *good* and they pale in comparison to the past. You didn't NEED subfaction traits, relics, or warlord traits to have your characters be different and unique.
You didn't NEED bespoke progression, because progression was a sideshow to the rest of the narrative (the whole 'progression systems are not the same as narrative systems' argument).
And nitpicking about whether or not a given codex did or did not get certain rules or entries, in a time when GW didn't even publish an army's CODEX for the whole edition (rip crons, imperial guard, and DE) is just hysterical. Like I am advocating a return to exactly that method without improvement or change, because the only options are: explode the game every 3 years and suck out the soul (but at least there's bespoke progression) or freeze it circa 2007 and do nothing ever.
It's such a chore to respond to a take that is listening to reply, not to understand.
The Chaos Lord options (or lack of options) are almost comical.
But I would not blame this fully onto the new edition. This is all due to GWs stupid 'no model, no rule' thing, that they cant even follow up on themselves (Chaos Marines still only come with a Heavy Bolter in their kit for example).
The Chaos Marine range has been severely cut down and as far as I can see the only Lord you can buy from GW at the moment is a push-fit dude with a hammer and no helmet, zero options. Amazing.
But if you play 9th, you know that EVERY faction is going to have bespoke subfaction traits, WL traits, Relics, Strategems, Battle Honours, Agendas, and campaign goals.
It's nice that every faction gets those options . . .
WL traits are an option for one model.
Relics are an option for one model.
Stratagems often seem like something that should just be an inherent ability of a unit (looking at you, Auto Launchers).
and then I compare that to a legendary old set of options:
And I think, yeah, there was a lot more 'soul' back then.
Right, but as per the part of my post you quoted, look at all the other dexes from the same edition and tell me they had a consistent number of options. They didn't. If an edition has an option-rich dex for chaos, marines and guard, but every other dex screws the pooch or even just doesn't hold to the standard, that does not make it a good edition- it means the edition was good for those factions. There's a difference.
You have to remember, my primary army is sisters; they had good dexes in 2, 3, late 8, and 9. From a Sisters point of view, EVERY OTHER EDITION SUCKED. My secondary army is GSC... You see where I'm going with this?
Furthermore, your comparisons are disingenuous: your old ed list shows things that aren't equipment; your 9th list shows only equipment. In order to get a true comparison between your old ed list and 9th Crusade, you'd also have to list at least every subfaction trait, every battle honour, every requisition strat; and while only characters can take relics and WL traits, your old ed list is the options for Chaos Lords, which means you'd also have to add every WL Trait and Relic to the 9th ed list for a fair comparison too.
Non-requisition strats are single use, so I don't insist on them being added to the list for comparison sake, but in Crusade, Requisition strats grant permanent abilities. And some of them are abilities that undo your claims about relics and WL traits: some Req Strats allow additional characters to have relics or WL Traits; some allow squad sargeants to choose from a more limited selection of Relics as well.
And again, the primary point, which you yourself quoted, is that EVERY army in 9th has access to roughly the same number of options, not just the lucky few.
Did the edition from which you took your chaos list even have dexes for every faction? I mean, barring GSC, Custodes, and Votann, which wouldn't have even existed. What did a Harlequin list look like in your preferred edition? There was certainly little to no difference between a sister from the Sacred Rose and another from the Valorous Heart.
Battle Honours, Agendas and Campaign Goals are not something I've ever played with, as I don't play Crusade.
And that's fine, but you can't say options don't exist because you choose not to use them. And in your preferred edition, you wouldn't even have the option.
Ironically, you say sisters got a 3e codex and that was a good edition. I agree. I like 4th because it was 3e but improved.
The book he showed the options from was 3e.
The book I like for IG is 3e. I prefer 4e rules because the core rules are better, and the 3e books work just fine (and I argue are better than the 4e books).
I can show you the armory the Sororitas get from the exact same era - though a few of the options were Inquisitors Only (since at the time the Sorotitas were the Chamber Militant of the Ordo Hereticus as well as the military wing of the Ecclesiarchy).
And, as you yourself point out in the same post, you DO have the option
You just take it in raw points, rather than having it tied to a progression system - because for most military forces in the setting, a progression system that intricate makes very little sense!
Gert wrote: So your solution is to make people do paperwork after they do their hobby? Paperwork that is easily manipulated because it's an open-ended system where a few people could ruin the system with thousands of fake results?
Sounds like a great idea. /s
I assume you and most other people prepare their army list in some form before a game, so there would not be any additional "paperwork" to just use the official app for it. Pairing is as easy as scanning a QR code with your mobile phone. Fraud prevention comes from different trust tiers. Have you even read the whole post before you started typing your /s remark?
On top of the fact that usage of the app is essentially optional, so its not like anyone is being forced to use it. I'm willing to bet enough people would use it on a purely optional basis that GW would still be able to collect solid data from it.
But if you play 9th, you know that EVERY faction is going to have bespoke subfaction traits, WL traits, Relics, Strategems, Battle Honours, Agendas, and campaign goals.
It's nice that every faction gets those options . . .
WL traits are an option for one model.
Relics are an option for one model.
Stratagems often seem like something that should just be an inherent ability of a unit (looking at you, Auto Launchers).
and then I compare that to a legendary old set of options:
And I think, yeah, there was a lot more 'soul' back then.
Battle Honours, Agendas and Campaign Goals are not something I've ever played with, as I don't play Crusade.
Thing is, the vast majority of players never used more than a handful of upgrades taken from that list, and the vast majority of the upgrades that did get used were basically identical/consistent from player to player. There is such thing as too many options, and all the possible permutations of options that one could select from that list were impossible to effectively balance, which is why that book enabled 2 or 3 of the most OP builds of that era.
Thing is, the vast majority of players never used more than a handful of upgrades taken from that list, and the vast majority of the upgrades that did get used were basically identical/consistent from player to player. There is such thing as too many options, and all the possible permutations of options that one could select from that list were impossible to effectively balance, which is why that book enabled 2 or 3 of the most OP builds of that era.
This is unprovable and all I have is anecdotes to counter:
My friend had 9 Chaos Lords every one kitted out differently back in the 3.5e dex.
Another friend had 6 space marine captains kitted out differently.
I had at least as many Warbosses / Nobs with different loadouts.
But if you play 9th, you know that EVERY faction is going to have bespoke subfaction traits, WL traits, Relics, Strategems, Battle Honours, Agendas, and campaign goals.
It's nice that every faction gets those options . . .
WL traits are an option for one model.
Relics are an option for one model.
Stratagems often seem like something that should just be an inherent ability of a unit (looking at you, Auto Launchers).
Were you loading up your characters with 4-5 items from the list?
Can you explain why bionics and spiky bits should be upgrades available to a Chaos Lord? I'm considering writing 9th edition fandexes and I'd be very minimalist. I think the relic and WL trait combination achieves so much in terms of customization potential with incredibly few broken or useless options and combos. I can see a bionics and spiky bits relic having a place, but those dinky 5 pt upgrades I don't see why we need, part of why I'm okay with free relics, it means that every relic is the same 25ish pts. I'd add smoke launchers, melta bombs and mounts but almost certainly not veteran skills.
9th edition also had marks if I recall correctly and tonnes of psychic powers, like the list for a Thousand Sons Sorcerer in 3,5 vs 9th should be an easy 9th ed win.
But if you play 9th, you know that EVERY faction is going to have bespoke subfaction traits, WL traits, Relics, Strategems, Battle Honours, Agendas, and campaign goals.
It's nice that every faction gets those options . . .
WL traits are an option for one model.
Relics are an option for one model.
Stratagems often seem like something that should just be an inherent ability of a unit (looking at you, Auto Launchers).
and then I compare that to a legendary old set of options:
And I think, yeah, there was a lot more 'soul' back then.
Battle Honours, Agendas and Campaign Goals are not something I've ever played with, as I don't play Crusade.
honestly, as much as i like customisation, thats too many options for the current scale of 40k. The game needs to scale back down if i'm gonna have a RPG player sheet for every unit.
VladimirHerzog wrote: honestly, as much as i like customisation, thats too many options for the current scale of 40k. The game needs to scale back down if i'm gonna have a RPG player sheet for every unit.
It's 2023. They could have an online listbuilder where you pick your options, hit 'save', and it spits out a compiled datasheet including all the stat changes and wargear you've assigned. Fit multiple datasheets on each page, hit print, and now you have a hardcopy quick reference.
VladimirHerzog wrote: honestly, as much as i like customisation, thats too many options for the current scale of 40k. The game needs to scale back down if i'm gonna have a RPG player sheet for every unit.
It's 2023. They could have an online listbuilder where you pick your options, hit 'save', and it spits out a compiled datasheet including all the stat changes and wargear you've assigned. Fit multiple datasheets on each page, hit print, and now you have a hardcopy quick reference.
OPR has it and that's, like, two guys in a shed.
I think you're both right? It is 2023 and in 40k that means there will be an "optimal" build that gets spammed and a lot of filler options that people say "never take those" when you ask them. Which you then need a detailed unit profile to have to monitor (since this also applies to every squad leader), which shouldn't be utter rocket science for the app.
I wouldn't mind going back to that level of sheer stuff for HQ's but the 3.5 chaos book is like the holy grail of character building. Nothing has been that broad or special since and I do agree that 9ths space marine layered sandwich probably covered the same volume of sheer stuff, but in a more restrictive manner.
The bits I miss are the "after X points become a daemon prince" type stuff, or the option for a random hound to accompany John Wick style. It's also nice to have multiple weapon relics alongside buff/game effect relics/items.
But if you play 9th, you know that EVERY faction is going to have bespoke subfaction traits, WL traits, Relics, Strategems, Battle Honours, Agendas, and campaign goals.
It's nice that every faction gets those options . . .
WL traits are an option for one model.
Relics are an option for one model.
Stratagems often seem like something that should just be an inherent ability of a unit (looking at you, Auto Launchers).
and then I compare that to a legendary old set of options:
And I think, yeah, there was a lot more 'soul' back then.
Battle Honours, Agendas and Campaign Goals are not something I've ever played with, as I don't play Crusade.
honestly, as much as i like customisation, thats too many options for the current scale of 40k. The game needs to scale back down if i'm gonna have a RPG player sheet for every unit.
To be fair, a good chunk of these are primarily for the "build your own Daemon prince!" angle they went with for the dex. So In a way you were kinda building your own Chaos RPG character.
VladimirHerzog wrote: honestly, as much as i like customisation, thats too many options for the current scale of 40k. The game needs to scale back down if i'm gonna have a RPG player sheet for every unit.
It's 2023. They could have an online listbuilder where you pick your options, hit 'save', and it spits out a compiled datasheet including all the stat changes and wargear you've assigned. Fit multiple datasheets on each page, hit print, and now you have a hardcopy quick reference.
OPR has it and that's, like, two guys in a shed.
OPR doesnt have nearly as many options as that tho. Thats my point.
It's not about the end result where you have a lord with 2-3 options selected, it's about listbuilding, where you need to be aware of all these options and all their interactions. This is the part i'm saying is like an RPG player sheet.
VladimirHerzog wrote: honestly, as much as i like customisation, thats too many options for the current scale of 40k. The game needs to scale back down if i'm gonna have a RPG player sheet for every unit.
That wargear list covered multiple different armies. I don't see how it's too many, and it's nothing at all like an RPG player sheet.
PenitentJake wrote: Furthermore, your comparisons are disingenuous: your old ed list shows things that aren't equipment; your 9th list shows only equipment. In order to get a true comparison between your old ed list and 9th Crusade, you'd also have to list at least every subfaction trait, every battle honour, every requisition strat; and while only characters can take relics and WL traits, your old ed list is the options for Chaos Lords, which means you'd also have to add every WL Trait and Relic to the 9th ed list for a fair comparison too.
If you want a fair comparison then you shouldn't count anything in Crusade because many people don't play Crusade and are thus limited to the non-Crusade options.
Meanwhile, the options in the old codex are available regardless of whether you're playing a standard game or a campaign. That's a vast improvement.
PenitentJake wrote: Furthermore, your comparisons are disingenuous: your old ed list shows things that aren't equipment; your 9th list shows only equipment. In order to get a true comparison between your old ed list and 9th Crusade, you'd also have to list at least every subfaction trait, every battle honour, every requisition strat; and while only characters can take relics and WL traits, your old ed list is the options for Chaos Lords, which means you'd also have to add every WL Trait and Relic to the 9th ed list for a fair comparison too.
If you want a fair comparison then you shouldn't count anything in Crusade because many people don't play Crusade and are thus limited to the non-Crusade options.
Meanwhile, the options in the old codex are available regardless of whether you're playing a standard game or a campaign. That's a vast improvement.
VladimirHerzog wrote: honestly, as much as i like customisation, thats too many options for the current scale of 40k. The game needs to scale back down if i'm gonna have a RPG player sheet for every unit.
That wargear list covered multiple different armies. I don't see how it's too many, and it's nothing at all like an RPG player sheet.
Was there restrictions on how many things of each categories you could bring? And which armies did that cover? Because this all seems very CSM-specific
But if you play 9th, you know that EVERY faction is going to have bespoke subfaction traits, WL traits, Relics, Strategems, Battle Honours, Agendas, and campaign goals.
It's nice that every faction gets those options . . .
WL traits are an option for one model.
Relics are an option for one model.
Stratagems often seem like something that should just be an inherent ability of a unit (looking at you, Auto Launchers).
Were you loading up your characters with 4-5 items from the list?
Can you explain why bionics and spiky bits should be upgrades available to a Chaos Lord? I'm considering writing 9th edition fandexes and I'd be very minimalist. I think the relic and WL trait combination achieves so much in terms of customization potential with incredibly few broken or useless options and combos. I can see a bionics and spiky bits relic having a place, but those dinky 5 pt upgrades I don't see why we need, part of why I'm okay with free relics, it means that every relic is the same 25ish pts. I'd add smoke launchers, melta bombs and mounts but almost certainly not veteran skills.
9th edition also had marks if I recall correctly and tonnes of psychic powers, like the list for a Thousand Sons Sorcerer in 3,5 vs 9th should be an easy 9th ed win.
Bionics should be available because Iron Warriors exist, and if Bionics are available to a random IG sergeant, then they absolutely should be available to a Chaos Lord.
Spikey Bits are a way to make your Chaos Lord better at combat than other Chaos Lords - it's +1 attack, the rough equivalent (though not identical) to loyalist SM with Terminator Honors. Flavor wise, not all Chaos forces were of the "spikey bit" variety (e.g., again, Iron Warriors who actively despise Chaos).
VladimirHerzog wrote: honestly, as much as i like customisation, thats too many options for the current scale of 40k. The game needs to scale back down if i'm gonna have a RPG player sheet for every unit.
That wargear list covered multiple different armies. I don't see how it's too many, and it's nothing at all like an RPG player sheet.
Was there restrictions on how many things of each categories you could bring? And which armies did that cover? Because this all seems very CSM-specific
Just a points limit you can see in the bottom left and I seem to think there was a limit on number of 1h and 2h weapons although that maybe came later? My memory from 20 years ago isn't great. It looks very CSM-Specific because it is really. The book served to cover all chaos legions, marked and undivided warbands and daemons. But the upgrades shown there were only for the characters and champions iirc. So 1 army that can be played many ways with no loss of character is the best way to look at it and that's the reason this book is considered the peak of codex design for chaos.
Black Legion, Night Lords, Alpha Legion, Word Bearers, Iron Warriors, Deathguard, Thousand Sons, World Eaters and Emperor's Children.
Other than Black Legion, each of these armies had their own organisational structure, restrictions, rules changes, and in the case of the four God-specific armies, unique Wargear lists. This book had to cover for each type of Chaos army one could play (outside of Lost & The Damned, which would come later in the Eye of Terror Codex). It was flexible as the rules covered pretty much all eventualities.
VladimirHerzog wrote: honestly, as much as i like customisation, thats too many options for the current scale of 40k. The game needs to scale back down if i'm gonna have a RPG player sheet for every unit.
That wargear list covered multiple different armies. I don't see how it's too many, and it's nothing at all like an RPG player sheet.
Was there restrictions on how many things of each categories you could bring? And which armies did that cover? Because this all seems very CSM-specific
Just a points limit you can see in the bottom left and I seem to think there was a limit on number of 1h and 2h weapons although that maybe came later? My memory from 20 years ago isn't great. It looks very CSM-Specific because it is really. The book served to cover all chaos legions, marked and undivided warbands and daemons. But the upgrades shown there were only for the characters and champions iirc. So 1 army that can be played many ways with no loss of character is the best way to look at it and that's the reason this book is considered the peak of codex design for chaos.
Amen. What made the 3.5 book so great was that it let you completely customize your force. Word Bearers played differently to Night Lords who played differently to Alpha Legion who played differently to Your Dudes Renegades. Nothing before or since has ever captured that feeling.
VladimirHerzog wrote: honestly, as much as i like customisation, thats too many options for the current scale of 40k. The game needs to scale back down if i'm gonna have a RPG player sheet for every unit.
That wargear list covered multiple different armies. I don't see how it's too many, and it's nothing at all like an RPG player sheet.
Was there restrictions on how many things of each categories you could bring? And which armies did that cover? Because this all seems very CSM-specific
Just a points limit you can see in the bottom left and I seem to think there was a limit on number of 1h and 2h weapons although that maybe came later? My memory from 20 years ago isn't great. It looks very CSM-Specific because it is really. The book served to cover all chaos legions, marked and undivided warbands and daemons. But the upgrades shown there were only for the characters and champions iirc. So 1 army that can be played many ways with no loss of character is the best way to look at it and that's the reason this book is considered the peak of codex design for chaos.
Amen. What made the 3.5 book so great was that it let you completely customize your force. Word Bearers played differently to Night Lords who played differently to Alpha Legion who played differently to Your Dudes Renegades. Nothing before or since has ever captured that feeling.
Which I'd probably add is why it's such a bs example to use to contrast against a 9th ed wargear section, you won't find a bigger contrast and it shouldn't be played off that this is a normal comparison as was the case. Whilst options have been reduced, they've not been hit as heavily for other armies as a whole in comparison. That's ignoring that codex is now actually 5 fully fledged separate books now.
That was all down to what was basically a prototype for the current detachment system though, except more far reaching because it modified what you could take as troops choices (and in some cases added additional choices to your army list, like Iron Warriors being able to field basilisks).
But if you play 9th, you know that EVERY faction is going to have bespoke subfaction traits, WL traits, Relics, Strategems, Battle Honours, Agendas, and campaign goals.
It's nice that every faction gets those options . . .
WL traits are an option for one model.
Relics are an option for one model.
Stratagems often seem like something that should just be an inherent ability of a unit (looking at you, Auto Launchers).
Were you loading up your characters with 4-5 items from the list?
Can you explain why bionics and spiky bits should be upgrades available to a Chaos Lord? I'm considering writing 9th edition fandexes and I'd be very minimalist. I think the relic and WL trait combination achieves so much in terms of customization potential with incredibly few broken or useless options and combos. I can see a bionics and spiky bits relic having a place, but those dinky 5 pt upgrades I don't see why we need, part of why I'm okay with free relics, it means that every relic is the same 25ish pts. I'd add smoke launchers, melta bombs and mounts but almost certainly not veteran skills.
9th edition also had marks if I recall correctly and tonnes of psychic powers, like the list for a Thousand Sons Sorcerer in 3,5 vs 9th should be an easy 9th ed win.
Bionics should be available because Iron Warriors exist, and if Bionics are available to a random IG sergeant, then they absolutely should be available to a Chaos Lord.
Spikey Bits are a way to make your Chaos Lord better at combat than other Chaos Lords - it's +1 attack, the rough equivalent (though not identical) to loyalist SM with Terminator Honors. Flavor wise, not all Chaos forces were of the "spikey bit" variety (e.g., again, Iron Warriors who actively despise Chaos).
I'm still not understanding about the spikes and I'm not sure what will make me understand. Would you take an Iron Warriors Chaos Lord with a lightning claw and then not give him spikes because you felt it out was out of flavour to add it despite it making mathematical sense to add the upgrade when you're already spending 25 on the claw? Would you add the spikes to a World Eaters Chaos Lord with a chainsword even though the extra attack with the chainsword didn't add much?
I'm still not understanding about the spikes and I'm not sure what will make me understand. Would you take an Iron Warriors Chaos Lord with a lightning claw and then not give him spikes because you felt it out was out of flavour to add it despite it making mathematical sense to add the upgrade when you're already spending 25 on the claw? Would you add the spikes to a World Eaters Chaos Lord with a chainsword even though the extra attack with the chainsword didn't add much?
according to the overall tone of this thread, yes and yes. I think the main issue with 10th people on here have is the loss of fluff support in options, they're not the kind of player that focuses on making the "mathematically correct" choice
) and has propagated like a disease. 
), it still worked well in removing the worst excesses of the 7th edition magic system. However, 10th then slapped it into the ground for no discernible reason.
