So, a close friend of mine just started 40k, he tells me he's been watching GW for a while, and they have made vast improvements over the last year, in terms of more customer friendly policies, and better balance. I'm highly skeptical, GW was Riding the nuke down waving their cowboy hat when I last checked. Has anything actually changed?

i hear the CEO was replaced by an actual gamer, and that balance is better, and that GW has acknowledged thier problems and are starting to correct them, bringing back tournaments, etc.. Is this all wishful thinking? Is balance still decided by dart board and codex creep? Do they still intentionally churn and burn new customers just to get cash? Still invalidate armies and army options in order to force you to buy new versions? etc?

Is there any hope?

Who's on top balance wise? Are there any actual tactics to the game now? or still just throw buckets of dice with shooting and hope to go first?

If they have made improvements, what have they- are they doing?

They've managed to start turning things around. I wouldn't say it's back to being great, rather they've made some good steps to get it going the right way at least.

There is a thread raging in the Dakka discussions about GW policies and improvements in general. Take a look.
Some people think that the improvements are superficial, other have more hope. My personal opinion is that "the new CEO is better" is just a meme, but other will bring different arguments.

For the balance of 40k, is all over the place. The game is riddled with unnecessary rules, some faction is pumped up because the designer plays it or just cannot do math. Some other faction is nerfed or just ignored. They do not re-write codices, they just add layers of new rules and see what sticks. It took 7 books for a reasonable improvement of Chaos Space Marines.

Still, the main problem of 40k is the design team. These people brought WHFB to its knees, and they are slowly doing the same with 40k.

As always, it depends from the gaming group if you can enjoy something from this mess.

As Kaiyanwang said, huge discussion in another area about whether things have really changed.

Personally, it did seem like initially they were starting to turn the corner, but it's beginning to look like smoke and mirrors - things are still stupidly expensive, there's not even an attempt at rules balance and GW still believes anything they shovel will be consumed as if it were gold, no matter how shoddy the enclosed rules are.

If you were thinking of getting into 40K, I'd wait to see what 8th brings. For Age of Sigmar, plenty of better (and cheaper!) options available.

Things do look up in a numerous ways compared to last year and before.

GW as been more in touch with their fanbase and are making efforts to be more "friendly" towards them.

Now the balance of the game, is not something that they can correct like this unfortunatly, there is still gaps between armies.

Problem comes from the lack of external playtesting.

Because ironicly, GW Studio sucks at their own game, for them its unthinkable why someone would want 3 times the same exact unit in an army instead of other things, thats why you end up with 2/3x Grav centurions or Drakes or other bullcrap.

its become more apparent when they did a Live game on Twitch, where it was apparent that neither of the guys playing had a solid grasp of the rules or even common battle tactics.

And its not news that their battle reports are riddeled with mistakes, errors and other things that doesn't make sense.

Ironicaly, they are too casual, to make a balanced game.

The drop of 8th edition will likely prove where they're heading with things. Some want a more simplistic game, others want things to stay the same, and even more complain about it all but give no constructive advice other than "it should be balanced better" or "OP pls nerf". I personally would like them to cut things back big time: on decurions (the formations that give free stuff), but that's unlikely to happen as it definitely sells models. Free razorbacks for your whole army if you play this specific setup sells a load of razorbacks. On all the new MCs and superheavies, they keep adding bigger and bigger models that have completely changed the way the game plays because they can charge an arm and a leg for the stuff. On the fact that some armies are spread between several different books (chaos, skitarii/admech, all the formations that require you to buy $50 books even if all you want is a page of rules from it).

They have done a better job with FAQs, they've been doing more with tournaments and the community in general, they've started releasing a lot of get started boxes that, while they won't exactly get you started, are a good bargain. So we'll see where things go. If you're really unsure I'd wait to see what 8th edition does.

There is too much gunk to clear out for the game to get fixed by the generally slow update cycle 40k. If the game is getting fixed it's going to be when 8ed drops and they rewrite all the codexes simultaneously.

 Slayer le boucher wrote:


Because ironicly, GW Studio sucks at their own game, for them its unthinkable why someone would want 3 times the same exact unit in an army instead of other things, thats why you end up with 2/3x Grav centurions or Drakes or other bullcrap.

The design team is composed by bumbling buffoons, but I fail to understand this sentence. They constantly write rules for formations pushing us to buy 2-4 copies of the same unit to make it barely functional.

Indeed, they got better but not good enough. I'd stay away from the game and enter something different.
Or I'd wait for the new edition which should come by midst of this year. Then you will see if things are getting really better.

 Kaiyanwang wrote:

 Slayer le boucher wrote:


Because ironicly, GW Studio sucks at their own game, for them its unthinkable why someone would want 3 times the same exact unit in an army instead of other things, thats why you end up with 2/3x Grav centurions or Drakes or other bullcrap.

The design team is composed by bumbling buffoons, but I fail to understand this sentence. They constantly write rules for formations pushing us to buy 2-4 copies of the same unit to make it barely functional.

And to make matters worse, "oh, if you run a bunch of this fairly powerful unit it gets all these buffs that make it even more powerful than it already was", creating even more internal balance issues with codices.

Maybe they are casual because, you know, 40k IS a casual game ?
I never understood why some people try to play it "competitively", when the only interests of this game are the miniatures and the background, and then complaint because it is "unbalanced".

 godardc wrote:
Maybe they are casual because, you know, 40k IS a casual game ?
I never understood why some people try to play it "competitively", when the only interests of this game are the miniatures and the background, and then complaint because it is "unbalanced".

Because a game is competitive because the players make it competitive. You think the inventor of chess intended planned for ELO rating, FIDE, and Grandmaster rank? The nature of the game has nothing to do with competitive play

A game would likely only be able to be purely casual if there were no competition or potential of competition to it. So probably a single player game with no scores, like an open sandbox story telling game and also with no room for creating content to avoid players being able to create anything in which they might be able to compete or otherwise interact with other players.

But, because of human nature and because it's a game of 2 or more people, where one wins and one loses, it's rather impossible for it to never become competitive.

 godardc wrote:
Maybe they are casual because, you know, 40k IS a casual game ?
I never understood why some people try to play it "competitively", when the only interests of this game are the miniatures and the background, and then complaint because it is "unbalanced".

Some level of competition is enjoyable, plus you never know when "oh that model looks cool" or "wow, some of these formations seem pretty fluffy and fun" turns into "holy crap this stuff is way stronger than your fluffy army".

 n0t_u wrote:
A game would likely only be able to be purely casual if there were no competition or potential of competition to it. So probably a single player game with no scores, like an open sandbox story telling game and also with no room for creating content to avoid players being able to create anything in which they might be able to compete or otherwise interact with other players.

Actually there is a competitive scene for those (and all) video games and it's called Speedrunning and you compete on being able to complete videos games in the fastest time possible.

In fact there is a massive 7 day speed running marathon being streamed on twitch to raise money for charity RIGHT NOW.

Nope prices are still stupidly high, rules still suck the "positive" changes are purely cosmetic.

 CrownAxe wrote:

 n0t_u wrote:
A game would likely only be able to be purely casual if there were no competition or potential of competition to it. So probably a single player game with no scores, like an open sandbox story telling game and also with no room for creating content to avoid players being able to create anything in which they might be able to compete or otherwise interact with other players.

Actually there is a competitive scene for those (and all) video games and it's called Speedrunning and you compete on being able to complete videos games in the fastest time possible.

In fact there is a massive 7 day speed running marathon being streamed on twitch to raise money for charity RIGHT NOW.

I'll admit it's extremely hard to think of a game or activity that's impossible for someone to make competitive.

They have turned around their customer interaction and parts of their marketing. More content for customers about the hobby aswell.

Somehow people mix these with being the same as "change everything."

Which ofcourse, it is not. The balance and pricing is still somewhat same.

The new edition is coming, and it's taking some time. It can be a good thing it is taking time; having it being done in 2 weeks would almost automatically mean a bad end result. There's just so much content that needs a fix that I doubt there will be a fix of that magnitude. Some simplifying and small fixes here and there, maybe a few of the absolute worst offenders nerfed is what I expect but not much more.

One can of course interpret this as "nothing has changed" - not that it makes any sense though since obviously a lot has when looked at objectively.

godardc wrote:Maybe they are casual because, you know, 40k IS a casual game ?
I never understood why some people try to play it "competitively", when the only interests of this game are the miniatures and the background, and then complaint because it is "unbalanced".

Because much like a 'semi-casual' dress code, everyone's perception and expectation of what actually constitutes a 'casual game' is going to be very different. Moreover, being a casual player doesn't exclude someone from playing to win.

Runic wrote: having it being done in 2 weeks would almost automatically mean a bad end result. There's just so much content that needs a fix that I doubt there will be a fix of that magnitude.

Just give us 5th ed with reworked wound allocation and vehicle damage and call it a day. Maybe toss in allies because that seems inevitable anyway.

 godardc wrote:
Maybe they are casual because, you know, 40k IS a casual game ?
I never understood why some people try to play it "competitively", when the only interests of this game are the miniatures and the background, and then complaint because it is "unbalanced".

I see myself as a causal player. Never played cutthroat and played since 3rd. Nonetheless, we have reached a point in which there are armies almost unbeatable for other armies. A full windrider Eldar army is a completely fluffy army based on the BG of a specific craftworld. But such "fluffy" army means tons of scatterbike. There are fluffy options, or option based on model preference (say a full riptide/stormsurge tau army) that can be really frustrating to play against. No game will be fully balanced; even chess has white always starting first and the queen bein OP compared to other pieces.

But following the game since 3rd I think that we reached a ridiculous level.

Speaking as someone who started in 5th? Well, the balance is definitely better than it was in 6th ed. It's difficult to compare to 5th, both because I wasn't very good at the game back then, so my relative understanding will be biased, and because it was a while ago, but I think the rules as they currently stand are about as balanced as they were in 5th, if in a different way.

There are still much better armies and much worse armies, just like in 5th, but unlike in 5th there's less of a 'The newest codex trounces all the old ones' vibe, it's more of a matter of arranging formations, psykers, and allies in the right way to stack buffs onto units.

However, like I said, it's still better than the clusterFun! that was 6th edition, especially early 6th edition, when the answer to fliers was a shrug and maybe an Aegis line. (Because four S7 shots was really going to scare a Helldrake. Or Four Helldrakes. Or a half dozen Necron Croissants.)

Psykers are still really powerful, but also in a different way. Instead of spamming in Psykers in order to get access to free re-rolls without any downsides, there's at least a *little* more tactical flexibility to it. Taking more than one Psyker has diminishing returns, because they share a Warp Charge pool that gets spread thin quickly, but it means that spamming cheap Psykers does allow for a lot of shenanigans that still can't be countered directly. Shutting down Psyker-powered Deathstars is easier than it was, but it's still not a cakewalk.

I started in 4th and played in a chunk of 5th and skipped 6th and a lot of 7th. 7th is not as balanced as 5th and not by a long shot. I'll admit back then guard were top tier but as a dark eldar player facing tau just watch a game of it. It's just a monster mash with the tau and dark eldar basically get tabled after only taking a few small models away. It's absolutely BS. Sad thing is with gargantuans or riptides banned from play tau would be very balanced alongside dark eldar. It's when they spam the cheese like riptides, stormsurge and ghostkeels in a formation that just kills the game.

Basically the balance is still garbage but it'll take time to fix if they can even do so.

I also don't care if 40k isn't made to be competitive. Anything can be competitive. I mean on the subject of single-player being competitive think about not just speed runs but achievements and playing using certain characters or with certain restrictions. I almost feel like the healers and support classes in a game can be made competitive which is just odd to me.

Of course i'm not saying being ultra-competitive is a good thing. I hate blizzard games and counter strike for that reason but that's because i wasn't a big fan of them. When warhammer fantasy died however i was super p***ed. We spent a lot of money only to be crapped on by GW. Thank god they fired the old company head's stupid ***. He totally deserved it for screwing over Fantasy players so badly. We can't even play a game we bought anymore at a local GW we bought it from for christ's sake. How horrible is that? It's probably the first time i've ever thought of boycotting a company and no nothing they've done to 40k is equal to that even with formations and awful balance. Sad bit is Fantasy was more balanced than 40k but they still didn't save it.

The core rules are as competent as they always were. The supplementary materials are as inconsistent as ever, except they're now far more numerous and include Forgeworld nonsense as well as everything else. Expect to pay upwards of £300 for a full set of game rules including the rules for all the armies, plus all the other game-legal gak. I'm not convinced Codex creep is an issue, since the top armies (Eldar, Tau, Daemons) are all using relatively old Codexes.

In terms of character I think the fatigue and disinterest in GW creative is starting to show. They're defaulting to Spess Mehrens a lot more than they used to; they've always been the stars of the setting, but now they seem to have gone from hyper-competent elites to the backbone of the Imperium's military. it sucks.

Well, I think the pricing has definately improved in most cases. More often than not I had anticipated higher prices than they actually charged. And I was really baffled by their Arcanites of Tzeentch for AoS. 20 models (they are bigger than normal humans I think) for only 40 euros. I can't remember the last time you were able to buy models for 2 euros a piece.

Of course, they are still expensive and some stuff is definately overcharged (i.e. Kharn), but overall the new prices are better than in the past. Especially the many new boxed sets/games that provide heavy discounts. Sure, the had battleforces before with similiar discounts, but now you just have way more choice and also good discounts in the boxes with double digit retail prices. The old battleforces have all been 150 -180 euro IIRC

I think the balance also got better. Of course, Eldar and SM are still OP, but IIRC no release since then has been labeled as OP. Most new books have been strong and useful but not OP (GSC, legions, deathwatch)

Overall I would say GW is way better than 2 years ago, but I would wait until summer to get more info on 8th edition before I would fully commit back.

Right now it's all smoke and mirrors. Like I said in the other thread if GW got better. GW is like a bully. He would call you names, beat you up and take your lunch money. Well now GW dresses up nicely. They wear a suit now. They may not punch us anymore and call us names, but they still take our lunch money. Does that make them better?

40K is a mess. You need the main rule book of course, but need to go to page 30, then page 74, then back to page 34 to see how one rule works in full. That is if you are lucky. Then you might need this codex, then that supplement and this other supplement, and free dataslate. So to see how one rule works, that is a lot of books/data slates and page flipping to see how one rule works. It's a mess.

As for the CEO being a gamer. It could be true. Just because someone said it, it seems to be have taken as fact. There is no proof of this. They don't even know what this supposed army is that the CEO loves so much. So him being a gamer doesn't make a difference at all.

I say right now after seeing 2016, it's all smoke and mirrors. I have bought so much GW product last year than I have in like the last 5 years combined. So while it is all smoke an mirrors it got me to buy more. Thing is, GW is even worse than it was before. While we have "starter" boxes that are awesome value, when you want to buy something that is not in a "value" box you are still paying an insane price. Look at Betrayal of Calth from last year. Great box set value. Then GW decided to sell the minis individually. The prices were even more than what they would have sold regularly I believe and are just insane for what GW is working.

Also as I said, the rules are a mess. So the important thing that matters the most is, price and rules. Both are worse than ever before. So while GW looks prettier, don't bash their customers in public anymore (who knows what they think of us behind closed doors) they have "social media" now. You still can't comment on YouTube and they basically still control what is said and will delete comments that GW doesn't like.

So outside of "stater" boxes, GW is still very anti consumer polices and balance.

So while GW looks different, they are still same old same old when it comes to rules and price.

Im a an old 5th ed player.

I quit i 5th, because my space wolves sucked ass, and i got wrecked hard usually... I just lost interest, i had no options and i couldnt play the units/models i liked because they were point waste.

Now i can take units i like, and then add in some: allies, formation, detachment, forgeworld. To make up for my Terminator spam (wich sucks nowadays)

I dont play hard, i play so both can have a game, and IF players have the mindset for that...Then its a GREAT game. If they like to win win win and you dont share view of the game... Well, then its a piece of gak game, and might aswell go elsewere. I have nice freinds and family to play against. So i love it

Terminators always sucked.

 BBAP wrote:
The core rules are as competent as they always were.

With the current rules, is easier to Snipe with a Mortar than with a Sniper Rifle. Also, Salvo. Psychic Phase. Random rolls everywhere.

The Codices break the game, but the core is far from being good.

40k is both better and worse balanced than it was before.

It's better in the sense that, most factions have at least one, if not multiple, optimized competitive lists that have a decent chance of getting to the top tournament tables. This is better than the days where there was a clear winner that wouldn't be toppled for months.

Its worse in the sense that the distance between a 'standard' / fluffy / take a bit of everything list and an optimised tournament list is wider than it ever has been. In 5th edition that may have looked like AAA vs college, but now its more like AAA vs little league.

It's still not really balanced. 7th edition has been one big mess.

I would wait until 8th edition. While you can't fault GW's commitment to interacting with the community more and making it more accessible, the core rules and external balance between codices is so startling that you can make separate tiers between factions.

Now, you can make it a good experience for both of you. But this requires a mutual mindset and a mutual understanding of house rules and whether you want a competitive match, or just a beer and pretzels scenario. But the fact that the players themselves have to initiate this themselves, shows there is something wrong with the functioning of the game itself.

Another thing I should add about accessibility - yes, bundle boxes are available, but it's still easily one of the most expensive hobbies out there - just to get the rules, unless you're borrowing/getting from illegal sources, costs £80 minimum. A full, painted army will easily set you over £500, maybe even double that depending on how you build it.

 godardc wrote:
Maybe they are casual because, you know, 40k IS a casual game ?
I never understood why some people try to play it "competitively", when the only interests of this game are the miniatures and the background, and then complaint because it is "unbalanced".

There's a big difference between casual and shoddy rules. You're mixing the two up.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BBAP wrote:
The core rules are as competent as they always were. The supplementary materials are as inconsistent as ever, except they're now far more numerous and include Forgeworld nonsense as well as everything else. Expect to pay upwards of £300 for a full set of game rules including the rules for all the armies, plus all the other game-legal gak. I'm not convinced Codex creep is an issue, since the top armies (Eldar, Tau, Daemons) are all using relatively old Codexes.

In terms of character I think the fatigue and disinterest in GW creative is starting to show. They're defaulting to Spess Mehrens a lot more than they used to; they've always been the stars of the setting, but now they seem to have gone from hyper-competent elites to the backbone of the Imperium's military. it sucks.

Forgeworld: "if you really want to win you can pay 4 times as much $$$ for units that are more powerful in every way." Forgeworld is the most obvious pay to win scheme ever.

 GreaterGood? wrote:
So, a close friend of mine just started 40k, he tells me he's been watching GW for a while, and they have made vast improvements over the last year, in terms of more customer friendly policies, and better balance. I'm highly skeptical, GW was Riding the nuke down waving their cowboy hat when I last checked. Has anything actually changed?

i hear the CEO was replaced by an actual gamer, and that balance is better, and that GW has acknowledged thier problems and are starting to correct them, bringing back tournaments, etc.. Is this all wishful thinking? Is balance still decided by dart board and codex creep? Do they still intentionally churn and burn new customers just to get cash? Still invalidate armies and army options in order to force you to buy new versions? etc?

Is there any hope?

Who's on top balance wise? Are there any actual tactics to the game now? or still just throw buckets of dice with shooting and hope to go first?

If they have made improvements, what have they- are they doing?

Policies are better, balance is worse. If you're just building a new force, buy and paint till 8th.

So, do they still prohibit other companies from selling their products online? Is Finecast still a thing? Do people still need to houserule what you can and cannot play in tournaments?

It sounds like they are still the GW I remember. Especially if a new edition is coming, and they haven't actually made any public announcements or apologies.

7th edition predates Roundtree, it falling apart into the convoluted mess it is now predates him as well. It is not reasonable to expect anything GW had spent so much time doing to just stop, change or switch tac the moment he came to power, it has a bit of a turning radius.

I don't believe I've heard he was a gamer before... but we do know Roundtree has a marketing background and that that much has been reflected in the changes we've seen in GW since he came to power:

Before: Webstore exclusive bundles that cost the same as the model boxes bought separately. The 'deal' being they put them in one spot for you.
Now: New bundles with different unit combinations with price differences that are easy for store staff to illustrate to a customer. (Typically in a "And you effectively get those guys on that part of the picture for free!" sort of way)

Before: Reacting to alienation of the consumer base by cutting off avenues of contact. Not releasing FAQs, avoiding social media presence, allegedly not doing market research at all.
Now: Actively promoting their products outside of the existing consumer base, communicating to their fanbase via social media and backing it up by initiating an FAQ collection campaign and following through. They set the community on fire by making a funny little video of a guy hiding in a garbage bin saying he'd found plastic sisters of battle inside.

Before: generally disregarding the tabletop games and the manner in which they were developing. Famously captured in the claim that the hobby was 'buying Games Workshop models'
Now: Actively engaging in the development of the games driving the model range and the hobby, thus far, between the general's handbook, the 40k-ish way they handle relics in faction books, and overall the content of those books, it's clear they're trying to take corrective action on AoS and give it the legs it needs to last, while on the 40k side they're riding out the bloated mess of 7th edition with a big campaign event - to what end, who knows...

Broadly, I would say yeah, GW has gotten better, in a distinct and measurable way. It's not great, but it is getting better,and I attribute that to Roundtree.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 GreaterGood? wrote:
So, do they still prohibit other companies from selling their products online?

No idea, probably?

 GreaterGood? wrote:
Is Finecast still a thing?

Yes and no, they've gotten better at it, but they've recognized that the Finecast brand was a disaster and only call it resin now, they don't seem to be making new models for it anymore, and high-profile ones like the Tau commander were completely redone in plastic.

 GreaterGood? wrote:
Do people still need to houserule what you can and cannot play in tournaments?

They always have and always will. We do have a huge collection of general and faction specific rule corrections though.

Some things are better. Some are the same. Some are worse. Different people will have different opinions on each item.

Online prohibition? Yes. Unless you buy something on eBay or Amazon, then you can totally buy them online. Or you can buy something online from several more stores, if you're willing to use email and paypal. So, no, they don't prohibit people from online sales. Except they do.

Finecast? Nothing new is coming out in Finecast, but there are still Finecast kits. It's considerably better than it used to be, about on par with Forge World, but Forge World isn't all that stellar either. So, I don't know, maybe Finecast is a thing? (Oh, one exception. The new Sister of Battle model, Canoness Veridyan, came out as a resin kit, not metal or plastic.)

Yes, there are still additional rules for 40k in tournaments. Then again, when I played in an Infinity tournament it had special rules. Magic: The Gathering has several sets of tournament-specific rule additions. I think the Blood Bowl tournament I had a few special rules.

So, really, it depends on what 'the same' means to you. Or 'better'. There are still plenty of people that will never get their undies untwisted about Games Workshop. Some people never stopped liking them. I had gotten fed up with them, but I'm mostly okay with them now. That said, I'm not a terribly competitive or cut-throat player and I have more hobby money than hobby time, so the switch from 'Kinda dicks' to 'Mostly friendly' is about all that it took to bring me back.

 GreaterGood? wrote:
So, a close friend of mine just started 40k, he tells me he's been watching GW for a while, and they have made vast improvements over the last year, in terms of more customer friendly policies, and better balance. I'm highly skeptical, GW was Riding the nuke down waving their cowboy hat when I last checked. Has anything actually changed?

i hear the CEO was replaced by an actual gamer, and that balance is better, and that GW has acknowledged thier problems and are starting to correct them, bringing back tournaments, etc.. Is this all wishful thinking? Is balance still decided by dart board and codex creep? Do they still intentionally churn and burn new customers just to get cash? Still invalidate armies and army options in order to force you to buy new versions? etc?

Is there any hope?

Who's on top balance wise? Are there any actual tactics to the game now? or still just throw buckets of dice with shooting and hope to go first?

If they have made improvements, what have they- are they doing?

In terms of balance the game is dramatically worse in 7E, probably worse than ever. Every tournament is having to run a mini-rulebook of changes, houserules, FAQ, etc that wasn't anywhere near as necessary in older editions. Everything from Titans dripping with D weaponry to armies of Eldar summoning Slaanesh Daemons allied with Orks are perfectly legal and far worse, and its every bit the mess it would seem.

We'll see for 8E, but no, 7E is a mess that takes all of the issues you quit over and has ramped them up to 11.

My big concern regarding houserules is that I want to play the same game regardless of who i'm playing with, or what store I happen to go to. I got real sick of playing joes version of 40k on friday, and then bob's version at the saturday tournament.

For reference I left for a game that can be played that way, warmachine. If a game can't be played competitively I have literally zero interest in it. There are too many good, fun well balanced mini's games on the market right now for me to settle. I'll play guildball, or warmachine, or xwing, etc.

I just wanted to check in since I haven't heard anything in over 4 years, and my friend is convinced that everything has changed. I even went halfsies with him on the Killteam box... I'm already regretting that.. I looks liek I need to go out and buy the tau codex to actually play is that right? That seems fairly typical of GW too me.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vaktathi wrote:
In terms of balance the game is dramatically worse in 7E, probably worse than ever. Every tournament is having to run a mini-rulebook of changes, houserules, FAQ, etc that wasn't anywhere near as necessary in older editions. Everything from Titans dripping with D weaponry to armies of Eldar summoning Slaanesh Daemons allied with Orks are perfectly legal and far worse, and its every bit the mess it would seem.

We'll see for 8E, but no, 7E is a mess that takes all of the issues you quit over and has ramped them up to 11.

Thanks, that's sad to hear actually.. Maybe one day GW will become a game company again.

Are they still treating the shops and distributors like the enemy?

 GreaterGood? wrote:
My big concern regarding houserules is that I want to play the same game regardless of who i'm playing with, or what store I happen to go to. I got real sick of playing joes version of 40k on friday, and then bob's version at the saturday tournament.

For reference I left for a game that can be played that way, warmachine. If a game can't be played competitively I have literally zero interest in it. There are too many good, fun well balanced mini's games on the market right now for me to settle. I'll play guildball, or warmachine, or xwing, etc.

I just wanted to check in since I haven't heard anything in over 4 years, and my friend is convinced that everything has changed. I even went halfsies with him on the Killteam box... I'm already regretting that.. I looks liek I need to go out and buy the tau codex to actually play is that right? That seems fairly typical of GW too me.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vaktathi wrote:
In terms of balance the game is dramatically worse in 7E, probably worse than ever. Every tournament is having to run a mini-rulebook of changes, houserules, FAQ, etc that wasn't anywhere near as necessary in older editions. Everything from Titans dripping with D weaponry to armies of Eldar summoning Slaanesh Daemons allied with Orks are perfectly legal and far worse, and its every bit the mess it would seem.

We'll see for 8E, but no, 7E is a mess that takes all of the issues you quit over and has ramped them up to 11.

Thanks, that's sad to hear actually.. Maybe one day GW will become a game company again.

Essentially they don't see themselves as a game company, the see themselves as a company that makes high end models for hobby enthusiasts, not a game development studio, and they say as much in their yearly shareholder reports. They're in it for making expensive models, not for making games.

Literally 7 of us started recently, having never played 40k before. It was 6, we just recruited another friend.

1. You can get started for cheap. Get started boxes can be obtained on amazon or ebay for half of the retail price. So, for $40 (not including model tools like cutters/paint/glue) you can get a roughly 500 point army in pretty much any faction. Or, if you wanted 2 armies you could buy dark vengeance, and it comes with a rulebook. This is also cheap. Most of the "get started" or "battleforce" boxes end up saving you a LOT of money if you were to buy things individually. Additionally there are other ways to acquire units for cheap that aren't a force or an army. Two of us recently split "faith and heresy" because I wanted a stormtalon and the other wanted the helldrake. We saved a good $30 and that's paying games workshop retail.

2. There will always be imbalances in any game. After doing some research I found a way to create a nigh-invincible captain for very cheap, which would be a fantastic human shield for my most powerful units. I'm not running it. Why? Because that's broken. Just because something is broken doesn't mean you should use it. Do you have people you like, that you can play with, where playing is more important than winning? That right there means the balance doesn't matter.

3. There's a lot of supplements. We're ignoring most of them. Angels of Death? Nah. BRB + base codex is enough to play; and if you know the rules well enough you don't even need a BRB, although you can get it for like $30 as an ebook. I use my ipad as my BRB. You do need to buy a codex though, although they're not exactly hard to find.

4. If you're a competitive, tournament style player, and you want a totally balanced game, learn chess, and bring painted miniatures as the chess pieces. 40k is not balanced, and it never will be. There will *always* be a most efficient way to spend your points. That is the nature of these games. Generally games like these are only as good as the people you play with, anyway.

5. Ignore the general attitude of hopeless negativism. You will read about problems on here that you'll probably never experience.

Cheers!

 Marmatag wrote:

2. There will always be imbalances in any game. After doing some research I found a way to create a nigh-invincible captain for very cheap, which would be a fantastic human shield for my most powerful units. I'm not running it. Why? Because that's broken. Just because something is broken doesn't mean you should use it. Do you have people you like, that you can play with, where playing is more important than winning? That right there means the balance doesn't matter.

Thank you for your response. Really, It's very helpful. This statement is what I had come to expect from 40k players. It's fine you guys want to play a game that you need to self correct the rules of. I don't. I want to take any legal option and have it be fine to play with or against anyone. The people I play with are more important than any game, but since I'm playing a game it has to meet certain basic standards. Sounds like nothing about 40k or the the expectations of the community have really changed.

If I'm playing with someone and they start complaining to me about how broken something is, it means one of two things. We're playing a bad game, or they are being a sore loser. I avoid the sore losers, and I don't play bad games.

While there are imbalances in any game, good games have a very close ratio of balance between different factions. One army will better at one thing, but worse at another, and then you exploit that weakness.

I'm not a fluffy casual gamer, never have been, never will be. I do thank you for your advice though, it tells me a lot about how things are probably the same as when I left.

Well, yes, if you play with a small like minded group of people who run with a large array of house rules and restrictions (implicit or explicit), the game can work. But then, you're also playing your own version of 40k at that point.

If you don't have such a group, and rely more on pickup games or your group just has a much wider array of personalities into different things or the only gaming you can get in is store leagues and tournaments or play in many different places and locations, then it doesn't work. It never worked perfectly for these things, but it's a whole lot worse if you have to deal with these things than it used to be in say, 4E or 5E.

 GreaterGood? wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:

2. There will always be imbalances in any game. After doing some research I found a way to create a nigh-invincible captain for very cheap, which would be a fantastic human shield for my most powerful units. I'm not running it. Why? Because that's broken. Just because something is broken doesn't mean you should use it. Do you have people you like, that you can play with, where playing is more important than winning? That right there means the balance doesn't matter.

Thank you for your response. Really, It's very helpful. This statement is what I had come to expect from 40k players. It's fine you guys want to play a game that you need to self correct the rules of. I don't. I want to take any legal option and have it be fine to play with or against anyone. The people I play with are more important than any game, but since I'm playing a game it has to meet certain basic standards. Sounds like nothing about 40k or the the expectations of the community have really changed.

If I'm playing with someone and they start complaining to me about how broken something is, it means one of two things. We're playing a bad game, or they are being a sore loser. I avoid the sore losers, and I don't play bad games.

While there are imbalances in any game, good games have a very close ratio of balance between different factions. One army will better at one thing, but worse at another, and then you exploit that weakness.

I'm not a fluffy casual gamer, never have been, never will be. I do thank you for your advice though, it tells me a lot about how things are probably the same as when I left.

Well, glad I could help.

Hope you find a good game for you!

 Vaktathi wrote:
Well, yes, if you play with a small like minded group of people who run with a large array of house rules and restrictions (implicit or explicit), the game can work. But then, you're also playing your own version of 40k at that point.

If you don't have such a group, and rely more on pickup games or your group just has a much wider array of personalities into different things or the only gaming you can get in is store leagues and tournaments or play in many different places and locations, then it doesn't work. It never worked perfectly for these things, but it's a whole lot worse if you have to deal with these things than it used to be in say, 4E or 5E.

This makes total sense. I can't imagine showing up to a tournament and having a guy sitting there across from me with 5 books and 2 supplements with an army that's been cheesed to the max.

And for reference the captain i mentioned would have required the angels of death supplement, and i'm fairly certain that's not ITC legal anyway.

If i was going to sponsor a tournament will a small store credit prize, i'd make it base codex + BRB only, no forgeworld, 1000 points, with a 250 point side board. There's still some broken or imbalanced stuff, but it's much more difficult to be broken at 1000 points with those restrictions.

 Brutallica wrote:
Im a an old 5th ed player.

I quit i 5th, because my space wolves sucked ass, and i got wrecked hard usually... I just lost interest, i had no options and i couldnt play the units/models i liked because they were point waste.

Now i can take units i like, and then add in some: allies, formation, detachment, forgeworld. To make up for my Terminator spam (wich sucks nowadays)

I dont play hard, i play so both can have a game, and IF players have the mindset for that...Then its a GREAT game. If they like to win win win and you dont share view of the game... Well, then its a piece of gak game, and might aswell go elsewere. I have nice freinds and family to play against. So i love it

I read that correctly? Space Wolves sucked? I thought they were top tier army in 5th edition.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

GreaterGood? wrote:So, do they still prohibit other companies from selling their products online? Is Finecast still a thing? Do people still need to houserule what you can and cannot play in tournaments?

It sounds like they are still the GW I remember. Especially if a new edition is coming, and they haven't actually made any public announcements or apologies.

It has actually gotten worse 2 years ago with the restrictions that GW did. Mind you that was under Kirby's regime. I don't recall with the new CEO Kevin Roundtree changing it, so they are still in effect. Maybe game store owners can comment if it has gotten better or not.

Fenrir Kitsune wrote:Are they still treating the shops and distributors like the enemy?

Said it above. I believe so.

Marmatag wrote:5. Ignore the general attitude of hopeless negativism. You will read about problems on here that you'll probably never experience.

Yes ignore the stuff that he is asking for, we say it's still around but ignore us because we are being negative? I still buy GW products. How am I being negative? We are not being negative. We are telling the truth. Yes GW has done a lot of good, but when it comes to it, money, rules, balance and GW attitude, there is nothing being negative here. I don't think anyone in this thread is being negative and saying anything false.

Just because you think differently than us, don't say we are being negative. We are not. Just telling the truth. I guess the truth hurts eh? Please don't give false hope when this is not what he wants.

Davor wrote:

Marmatag wrote:5. Ignore the general attitude of hopeless negativism. You will read about problems on here that you'll probably never experience.

Yes ignore the stuff that he is asking for, we say it's still around but ignore us because we are being negative? I still buy GW products. How am I being negative? We are not being negative. We are telling the truth. Yes GW has done a lot of good, but when it comes to it, money, rules, balance and GW attitude, there is nothing being negative here. I don't think anyone in this thread is being negative and saying anything false.

Just because you think differently than us, don't say we are being negative. We are not. Just telling the truth. I guess the truth hurts eh? Please don't give false hope when this is not what he wants.

I was referring to comments made outside this thread, such as "the game is dying," or "just compare lists and decide the winner."

I respect your opinion and everyone else who values a competitive landscape. While I do believe you can achieve that in 40k, it's just not there as low hanging fruit. You'll notice I acknowledge in a follow up that the game is most likely not for him.

 Marmatag wrote:
I was referring to comments made outside this thread, such as "the game is dying," or "just compare lists and decide the winner."

I respect your opinion and everyone else who values a competitive landscape. While I do believe you can achieve that in 40k, it's just not there as low hanging fruit. You'll notice I acknowledge in a follow up that the game is most likely not for him.

My apologies, I missed the part where you said it wasn't for him. I do agree, while 40K is a huge mess, with the right people or play group 40K can still be fun.

 Kaiyanwang wrote:

 BBAP wrote:
The core rules are as competent as they always were.

With the current rules, is easier to Snipe with a Mortar than with a Sniper Rifle.

So what? It's easier to kill a huge tank in CC than it is with shooting. Unrealistic doesn't mean bad.

Also, Salvo. Psychic Phase.

Don't see a problem with Salvo myself. The increased prominence of psykers is also horses for courses; I don't mind it, partly because there are counters and partly because it's random.

Random rolls everywhere.

Charge and Run distances, Warlord traits, psychic powers and Warp dice pools are the only random rolls in the core rules. Move distance rolls I could live without but they hardly ruin the game, Warlord traits are irrelevant 90% of the time, and the psychic stuff being random is fine.

Davor wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
I was referring to comments made outside this thread, such as "the game is dying," or "just compare lists and decide the winner."

I respect your opinion and everyone else who values a competitive landscape. While I do believe you can achieve that in 40k, it's just not there as low hanging fruit. You'll notice I acknowledge in a follow up that the game is most likely not for him.

My apologies, I missed the part where you said it wasn't for him. I do agree, while 40K is a huge mess, with the right people or play group 40K can still be fun.

Cheers mate! same page here i think

 BBAP wrote:

 Kaiyanwang wrote:

 BBAP wrote:
The core rules are as competent as they always were.

With the current rules, is easier to Snipe with a Mortar than with a Sniper Rifle.

So what? It's easier to kill a huge tank in CC than it is with shooting. Unrealistic doesn't mean bad.

Hrm, in most of these cases however, they are bad, particularly as many of these kinds of things are unintentional by byproducts of other mechanics (such as mortars attempting to represent a blast landing around a unit as opposed to direct fire coming from a specific direction).

I know this goes against the competitive landscape, but I like psychic powers being random.

You have tools in your bag that you might not always take. It is built in variance. If you could pick them, wouldn't you get tired of seeing invisibility, gate, etc every game?

Marmatag wrote:I know this goes against the competitive landscape, but I like psychic powers being random.

You have tools in your bag that you might not always take. It is built in variance. If you could pick them, wouldn't you get tired of seeing invisibility, gate, etc every game?

While I agree, another side of me, disagrees. For me, it's another reason why to get rid of allies then. Reason we had bad units in a codex was to compensate for the great units in a codex. Now we can just cherry pick what units you want. If going this way, we should go all out then. We should be able to choose our psychic powers as well.

Too many dice rolls and way to many random rolls in the game. For me it's not adding fun at all.

 Marmatag wrote:
I know this goes against the competitive landscape, but I like psychic powers being random.

You have tools in your bag that you might not always take. It is built in variance. If you could pick them, wouldn't you get tired of seeing invisibility, gate, etc every game?

The issue here is not the variety of the tools but their usefulness. If better balance was designed into the abilities you wouldn't always see the same ones being used. So to compensate for sub-par rules, GW makes it 'fair' by forcing a random element.

Which is lousy game design.

From a balance perspective there are 7 competitive factions, which is more than I remember at any time in the past. Power creep peaked at Tau and eldar (late 2015 early 2016), and with new factions (death watch and GSC) being more in line with the general 40k population. The best gauge as to how you will feel about this editions balance scheme will depend on how you feel about formations, with the people that think this edition is the worst firmly in the Hate camp.

The rules are in a rough spot, as rules bloat has made the game ponderous, even more than usual. I saw a quote I believe that said the FAQ for the main 40K rulebook has more pages than there are pages of rules in the entire warmachine rule book.

 Marmatag wrote:
I know this goes against the competitive landscape, but I like psychic powers being random.

You have tools in your bag that you might not always take. It is built in variance. If you could pick them, wouldn't you get tired of seeing invisibility, gate, etc every game?

If different abilities were actually thoughtfully developed to be worth taking, you wouldn't have to get tired of invisibility and gate, since they wouldn't be the only ones people actually sought to use.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Hrm, in most of these cases however, they are bad, particularly as many of these kinds of things are unintentional by byproducts of other mechanics (such as mortars attempting to represent a blast landing around a unit as opposed to direct fire coming from a specific direction).

I agree it's a pretty egregious case of unrealistic representation, which is bad for immersion, but its overall effect on game balance and flow is nil. Mortars aren't suddenly awesome because you can snipe with them, and sniper rifles aren't suddenly useless because they're not as good at sniping as mortars are.

 BBAP wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Hrm, in most of these cases however, they are bad, particularly as many of these kinds of things are unintentional by byproducts of other mechanics (such as mortars attempting to represent a blast landing around a unit as opposed to direct fire coming from a specific direction).

I agree it's a pretty egregious case of unrealistic representation, which is bad for immersion, but its overall effect on game balance and flow is nil. Mortars aren't suddenly awesome because you can snipe with them, and sniper rifles aren't suddenly useless because they're not as good at sniping as mortars are.

In those examples, sure, the issues are pretty minimal and I'd take sniper rifles over mortars most of the time, but when we get into things like Wyverns, Thunderfire Cannons, Thudd Guns, artillery batteries, etc vs entire squads of snipers, the issues become very noticeable indeed, which kinda dovetails into the whole scale issue 40k has going on as well.

I actually think MOST Forgeworld isn't too bad. But things like the Tau Super Suits or Eldar Anything are of course broken. But none of my Necron stuff is, and you don't see anyone running most Forgeworld stuff but when I do run into it, it's almost always the most broken things.

 Vaktathi wrote:
In those examples, sure, the issues are pretty minimal and I'd take sniper rifles over mortars most of the time, but when we get into things like Wyverns, Thunderfire Cannons, Thudd Guns, artillery batteries, etc vs entire squads of snipers, the issues become very noticeable indeed, which kinda dovetails into the whole scale issue 40k has going on as well.

... but again, the overall effect on the game system is negligible. Nobody's complaining about OP Wyverns sniping their characters or lamenting the obsolescence of snipers.

FireSkullz2 wrote:
I actually think MOST Forgeworld isn't too bad. But things like the Tau Super Suits or Eldar Anything are of course broken. But none of my Necron stuff is, and you don't see anyone running most Forgeworld stuff but when I do run into it, it's almost always the most broken things.

Most of the Forgeworld stuff I've seen isn't broken. Almost all of it was designed by a prurient fanboy munchkin trying to wishlist up the most "ossom" unit ever. They're largely noobhammers - but the thing about noobhammers is they're very powerful when people aren't prepared to face them or don't know what they can do, which brings us to the real problem I have with Forgeworld stuff in the core game. It costs something like 250 quid to buy all the supplementary FW materials, which you need to do if you want to get a handle on how FW units operate. If you don't, then someone can drop a FW unit on you and smash you with it purely because you've never seen it before, and now the gak is game-legal there's nothing you can do about it except refuse to play against that person in the first place. Given that so few people play this game, turning down challenges to avoid ass-pull bs seems like a bad place to be at.

The anti-consumer GW policies GW ran (under Kirby) all peaked with the killing of warhammer fantasy and the introduction of Age of Sigmar. They basically had us all play and pay a couple hundred dollars for a campaign where the plot advanced and characters were dying left and right. Then they murdered the whole world and everybody in it. The more hopeful among us thought that we'd get to play slightly before the world ended even though it had. Then after months later with teasers of 'age of sigmar' with 'it's coming!' we thought this was 9th edition. Turns out they were about to screw us over in the most insane way possible alienating a whole bunch of Fantasy players and treating us as bad guys. Considering the 2 armies that died even with Roundtree turning things around i have trouble seeing this game as being more popular than Fantasy. I think the end result of the death of Fantasy and rise of AoS saw Kirby being canned. You can tell just how bad it was with that event alone.

Now did roundtree turn things around with this? Not for Fantasy players. We still can't play Warhammer Fantasy in their stores. They won't allow it anymore in a lot of them. I heard it's up to the store manager and of the 2 stores in my state the local one says no. Dunno what the other store owner says but i don't want to go out that far just to find out with the local one being a few minutes away.

Honestly most of the GW complaints to me were peanuts until they killed our game and released AoS instead which at the time compared to children's humor and just garbage. It was specifically a 40k player's game and most Fantasy players left. Roundtree at least added basic rules to the game (4 page rules are you kidding) and added some semblance of order but i still can't stand it. I tried it and was disgusted with it. Fantasy wasn't perfect in 8th and was too complicated but it's not our fault GW don't know how to make games and products anymore.

------

Now honestly i'm sorta hopeful but only a bit. They brought back blood bowl and specialist games as well as some new sisters of battle models. He even added the General's Handbook for AoS to add a semblance of balance to the game whereas before there was no points system and only a "don't be a ****" as the one balancing rule as if that ever stopped people in 40k or Fantasy. Sure the prices are nuts but at least they're listening more to the customer base.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Essentially they don't see themselves as a game company, the see themselves as a company that makes high end models for hobby enthusiasts, not a game development studio, and they say as much in their yearly shareholder reports. They're in it for making expensive models, not for making games.

I've never understood this logic. Its entirely in Games Workshop's best interest to make the rules for the tabletop as balanced/competitive as possible, yet they keep acting as if it has no impact on sales. Perhaps my inner circle and community isn't indicative of the 40k community at large but the power creep has gotten so out of control that pickup games are basically impossible at this point. 1/2 the armies aren't even viable in a competitive format. Point cost disparities between codices have been ignored entirely while there has been a push towards "formations" which have not resolved any of the balance issues but in most cases have made them worse.

I've said this for years but...I don't understand why they can't just hire an outside gaming company or elite players within the community and come up with a balanced/competitive ruleset. I'm not talking about AoSing 40k, but just going through the main rulebook eliminating redundancy/bloat and then going through every single codex, creating some sort of formula for point costs and then plugging in every unit into said formula to determine what everything should cost.

 BBAP wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
In those examples, sure, the issues are pretty minimal and I'd take sniper rifles over mortars most of the time, but when we get into things like Wyverns, Thunderfire Cannons, Thudd Guns, artillery batteries, etc vs entire squads of snipers, the issues become very noticeable indeed, which kinda dovetails into the whole scale issue 40k has going on as well.

... but again, the overall effect on the game system is negligible. Nobody's complaining about OP Wyverns sniping their characters or lamenting the obsolescence of snipers.

FireSkullz2 wrote:
I actually think MOST Forgeworld isn't too bad. But things like the Tau Super Suits or Eldar Anything are of course broken. But none of my Necron stuff is, and you don't see anyone running most Forgeworld stuff but when I do run into it, it's almost always the most broken things.

Most of the Forgeworld stuff I've seen isn't broken. Almost all of it was designed by a prurient fanboy munchkin trying to wishlist up the most "ossom" unit ever. They're largely noobhammers - but the thing about noobhammers is they're very powerful when people aren't prepared to face them or don't know what they can do, which brings us to the real problem I have with Forgeworld stuff in the core game. It costs something like 250 quid to buy all the supplementary FW materials, which you need to do if you want to get a handle on how FW units operate. If you don't, then someone can drop a FW unit on you and smash you with it purely because you never seen it before, and now the gak is game-legal there's nothing you can do about it except refuse to play against that person in the first place. Given that so few people play this game, turning down challenges to avoid ass-pull bs seems like a bad place to be at.

I take it you've never been in the receiving end of Eldar Warp Hunters.... they're meta defining, forgeworld D barrage.

Fireskullz is right. The vast majority of Imperial Forgeworld is meh. The Eldar (corsair bikes, hornets and warp hunters) & Tau (supersuits) and renegades stuff is bonkers.

 GreaterGood? wrote:
So, a close friend of mine just started 40k, he tells me he's been watching GW for a while, and they have made vast improvements over the last year, in terms of more customer friendly policies, and better balance. I'm highly skeptical, GW was Riding the nuke down waving their cowboy hat when I last checked. Has anything actually changed?

i hear the CEO was replaced by an actual gamer, and that balance is better, and that GW has acknowledged thier problems and are starting to correct them, bringing back tournaments, etc.. Is this all wishful thinking? Is balance still decided by dart board and codex creep? Do they still intentionally churn and burn new customers just to get cash? Still invalidate armies and army options in order to force you to buy new versions? etc?

Is there any hope?

Who's on top balance wise? Are there any actual tactics to the game now? or still just throw buckets of dice with shooting and hope to go first?

If they have made improvements, what have they- are they doing?

Don't its all smoke and mirrors the rules they have been putting out are half assed in the case of every army except you know which one. The models are high quality and that is it. Your big clue will be when 8th drops because im pretty sure that is when the other shoe will drop anything good CSM recently got will be made useless or so expensive points wise it wont be worth taking or have special rules gutted.

Trasvi wrote:
I take it you've never been in the receiving end of Eldar Warp Hunters.... they're meta defining, forgeworld D barrage.

How's that more broken than a Shadowsword? If they're "meta defining" then why are there so few in the BoK list repository? They're not carrying the Eldar to victory after victory, and there's no easy answer to a D-blast in the base game. Even in those lisst where they do appear they're hardly providing a decisive advantage.

I'm not sold.

 Marmatag wrote:
I know this goes against the competitive landscape, but I like psychic powers being random.

You have tools in your bag that you might not always take. It is built in variance. If you could pick them, wouldn't you get tired of seeing invisibility, gate, etc every game?

Not so random when you have a bunch of psychers for getting the power you need 98% of the time and manifesting on 2+ with re-rolls.

 Marmatag wrote:


2. There will always be imbalances in any game. After doing some research I found a way to create a nigh-invincible captain for very cheap, which would be a fantastic human shield for my most powerful units. I'm not running it. Why? Because that's broken. Just because something is broken doesn't mean you should use it. Do you have people you like, that you can play with, where playing is more important than winning? That right there means the balance doesn't matter.

4. If you're a competitive, tournament style player, and you want a totally balanced game, learn chess, and bring painted miniatures as the chess pieces. 40k is not balanced, and it never will be. There will *always* be a most efficient way to spend your points. That is the nature of these games. Generally games like these are only as good as the people you play with, anyway.

This is not an excuse. Even chess are imbalanced - externally, because White always starts first, and internally, because the Queen is clearly OP

But there is a MEASURE of imbalance that is tolerated (I get a weaker, perhaps fluffy list, I have an uphill battle that is potentially rewarding) and an intolerable imbalance (entire army shot out of the board turn 2). Nobody askes a chess level balance, but say "learn chess" is disingenuous, at best, because other producers of similar hobby/games put better effort into balancing their games because the design team is not composed by buffoons.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BBAP wrote:


So what? It's easier to kill a huge tank in CC than it is with shooting. Unrealistic doesn't mean bad.

If a system fails to simulate the gameworld, is bad. Fullstop.

Don't see a problem with Salvo myself.

Salvo is crippling if used as intended and used only by relentless platform that ignore its limitations. How can be this good game design, I ask.

The increased prominence of psykers is also horses for courses; I don't mind it, partly because there are counters and partly because it's random.

They introduced the problems with magic in WHFB into 40k. Was unneeded and unnecessary. Furthermore, psyker now is go big or go home, helps to build armies more on stupid gimmicks, adds roll and time consumptions, adds random. Is a design disaster and frankly if is ok for you I can understand why you don't see problems. If this is for you good game design, anything is.

Charge and Run distances, Warlord traits, psychic powers and Warp dice pools are the only random rolls in the core rules. Move distance rolls I could live without but they hardly ruin the game, Warlord traits are irrelevant 90% of the time, and the psychic stuff being random is fine.

There are more outside the core: Kelly built CSM originally thinking that his random boon table was the new hotness. Now, ignoring the delusions of Phil Kelly about being an actual game designer and not a fraudulent hack, the mere fact that run and charge are random rolls adds up to th fatc that models are moved several time during the game. On paper, rolling here and there does look innocuous, but the final, cumulative effect is a lot of agency removed from the players and a lot of time consumed.

How this is not obvious, is beyond me.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 koooaei wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
I know this goes against the competitive landscape, but I like psychic powers being random.

You have tools in your bag that you might not always take. It is built in variance. If you could pick them, wouldn't you get tired of seeing invisibility, gate, etc every game?

Not so random when you have a bunch of psychers for getting the power you need 98% of the time and manifesting on 2+ with re-rolls.

That's the ridiculousness. They added a LOLRANDOM system, that is time consuming and forces you to go big or go home. THEN they added rules and rules to make it work for specific special snowflakes because the core rules of such system are garbage.

You should either decide, as a designer:

A) Psychic is unreliable for everybody
B) Psychic is reliable, but at this point instead of designing a system that is unreliable and then add fixes, you just keep the good old Leadeshipt test, and call it a day.

But no. What they did was to add combos, rules and bookeping to correct their stupid system they added to fix what was not broken.
Is pathetic. They are not even able to stick with one design principle in a given edition. These people are severely incoherent and unprofessional.

Balance is better than ever, we've enjoyed a state of top dog + 4 competitive armies for a long while now, compared to older days where it was top dog, second and then garbage.

From 6th edition Eldar to now, there has been a strong Eldar 1st position, which at times weakened, and since the new Space Marines Powers, it's Space Marines all the way.

What I call balance however, is the fact that the other 4 of the 5 superfriends (Tau, Necron, Eldar (or SM) and Daemons) have had win ratios against each other of about 50% on average most of the time.

Some codices are still a bit weak, the only really terrible one would be Dark Eldar.

Don't listen to the whiners, and come back to the game, it's better than ever - 8th will probably be even better, just as 7th was much better than 6th.

morgoth wrote:

Don't listen to the whiners, and come back to the game, it's better than ever - 8th will probably be even better, just as 7th was much better than 6th.

Damn straight. Empty forums make for excellent echo chambers...

morgoth wrote:
Balance is better than ever, we've enjoyed a state of top dog + 4 competitive armies for a long while now, compared to older days where it was top dog, second and then garbage.

From 6th edition Eldar to now, there has been a strong Eldar 1st position, which at times weakened, and since the new Space Marines Powers, it's Space Marines all the way.

What I call balance however, is the fact that the other 4 of the 5 superfriends (Tau, Necron, Eldar (or SM) and Daemons) have had win ratios against each other of about 50% on average most of the time.

Some codices are still a bit weak, the only really terrible one would be Dark Eldar.

Don't listen to the whiners, and come back to the game, it's better than ever - 8th will probably be even better, just as 7th was much better than 6th.

5th edition had some serious issues, but it was a lot more balanced than what you suggest.

By the end of its run, you had IG armored division/alpha strike/mechvets/valkvets, BA mech, Spacewolves longfang spam (and just about everything else in the book, really), DA mech, GK mechanized purifier spam, and Necron gimmicky bs all as top tier contenders. Orkz, Eldar, DA and SM were all viable as well, if outclassed. Things only started to get really stupid once flyers became a thing (back to that Necron gimmicky bs again). Internal codex balance may have always been crap, but the centralization of power to a specific has definitely become much more condensed. Contained within its own generation (in addition to Orkz and Daemons, which were written with 5th edition in mind), 5th edition saw probably the best balance in the game's history, with the main issue being the outdated codecies of previous editions.

While I've yet to play a game of 7th, focusing on researching the massive glut of information and painting right now, that research has me already seeing some very easily identifiable problems that end up crushing any potential attempts at balance. With all the new flashy weaponry, models are taken off of the table sooner and sooner (while the process of actually doing it is taking longer and longer, thanks to the glut of super special rules). Really, things should be moving in the exact opposite direction. Turns should move faster, with the games themselves being paced over a longer period of turns as the focus for development. Nothing should have ever come to surpass plasma in general purpose killy-ness, it just makes everything die far too quickly.

Trasvi wrote:
Fireskullz is right. The vast majority of Imperial Forgeworld is meh. The Eldar (corsair bikes, hornets and warp hunters) & Tau (supersuits) and renegades stuff is bonkers.

But is it more broken than GW proper?

Put in tournament where ONLY FW stuff is allowed. Is it more broken than GW only?

With crap GW puts out there's hardly need for FW models if you want to game it. Hyper expensive alternative. Very bad price/worth ratio at the best of times.

 GreaterGood? wrote:
So, a close friend of mine just started 40k, he tells me he's been watching GW for a while, and they have made vast improvements over the last year, in terms of more customer friendly policies, and better balance. I'm highly skeptical, GW was Riding the nuke down waving their cowboy hat when I last checked. Has anything actually changed?

i hear the CEO was replaced by an actual gamer, and that balance is better, and that GW has acknowledged thier problems and are starting to correct them, bringing back tournaments, etc.. Is this all wishful thinking? Is balance still decided by dart board and codex creep? Do they still intentionally churn and burn new customers just to get cash? Still invalidate armies and army options in order to force you to buy new versions? etc?

Is there any hope?

Who's on top balance wise? Are there any actual tactics to the game now? or still just throw buckets of dice with shooting and hope to go first?

If they have made improvements, what have they- are they doing?

Check out the price of the new Khorne model, check out how many books you need to play a chaos space marine army and read the latest Eldar codex...

...

...and I think that you'll understand everything that you need to know.

Yes, 40k is still terrible.

check out how many books you need to play a chaos space marine army

Exactly one.

Just because Chaos now has many possible sources to build armies from (which was something players wanted forever by the way) doesn't mean you have to buy and use them all. But if you want to be negative about this kind of stuff you can make up some ridiculous scenarios for sure.

Now is a pretty good time to start again, there are tons of starter boxes and army deals with big discounts that make it quite cheap to build up an army, especially if you play <1500 points. If you like 40k aesthetic the new models are amazing, and building army lists is more fun than ever.

I like to think of psychic powers like pulling cards from a deck. In MTG you could fill your deck with some spells, more useful than others. For instance, in counter-burn I ran four Force of Wills for a 0mana or turn0 counter. But, if I never drew them, I didn't have that ability. It's like it wasn't even in my deck.

I do understand that it's nice to be able to plan in advance to what you'll have. And, I will concede that some psychic powers are lolbad. But that doesn't mean that the random system is inherently flawed. Psychic powers should be strong - because they're a) risky and b) potentially countered by anyone even those without psykers in their army - but not game breaking.

If they made it so you could pay points to pick a psychic power, what point total would be fair for such an ability?

On a totally different note I really like the psychic phase of the game. I think it is well designed.

 Marmatag wrote:

If they made it so you could pay points to pick a psychic power, what point total would be fair for such an ability?

Alternatively, each psychic power could have a points cost associated with it specifically reflecting how useful/powerful it is. You want Invisibility, you can shell out the points for it.

Invis would have to be 200 pts as written. Immortality is expensive.

biggest problem is pricing, in my opinion, any new player is almost immediately shut down if you have dreams of playing a tau army, be ready to pay 40 dollars for a fire squad, and dont get me STARTED on the skitarii, 36 usd for one guy?! its simply too expensive for anyone that just wants to play casually

(however I am a relatively new player so maybe it's just me)

 Kaiyanwang wrote:
If a system fails to simulate the gameworld, is bad. Fullstop.

For a given value of "bad". It's not a faithful representation of the capabilities of real-world rifles and mortars - but the "game world" has malign entities that crawl through holes in reality and a galaxy-spanning steampunk empire that runs on prayers. I can forgive a few inconsistencies, provided they don't unduly shaft the game. This one doesn't. it is a non-issue.

Salvo is crippling if used as intended and used only by relentless platform that ignore its limitations. How can be this good game design, I ask.

You'd rather they just did away with the first profile and made them all Assault X weapons, so everyone can use them to full effect? They could make them all Heavy X, but that wouldn't fix the issue of Relentless platforms using Salvo weapons to full effect and would instead cark the ability of non-Relentless models to get any value out of them. Would that be good game design?

They introduced the problems with magic in WHFB into 40k. Was unneeded and unnecessary.

I don't disagree that it was unneeded and unnecessary, but that doesn't mean it's detrimental. I don't think it is.

Furthermore, psyker now is go big or go home,

... or don't bother. Lots of armies manage fine without them. Lots of armies win plenty without them too.

helps to build armies more on stupid gimmicks

Bad ones.

adds roll and time consumptions

If you play with indecisive, claw-fingered mutants I suppose it does. Maybe I'm just lucky.

adds random.

A tolerable amount.

Is a design disaster and frankly if is ok for you I can understand why you don't see problems. If this is for you good game design, anything is.

I'm not saying it couldn't be better - I'm saying it's not as bad as whiners like you make it out to be.

There are more outside the core:

I know that. I said as much in my reply. I'm not interested in "outside the core" here.

How this is not obvious, is beyond me.

It is. Read for comprehension.

Ushtarador wrote:

check out how many books you need to play a chaos space marine army

Exactly one.

Just because Chaos now has many possible sources to build armies from (which was something players wanted forever by the way) doesn't mean you have to buy and use them all. But if you want to be negative about this kind of stuff you can make up some ridiculous scenarios for sure.

Now is a pretty good time to start again, there are tons of starter boxes and army deals with big discounts that make it quite cheap to build up an army, especially if you play <1500 points. If you like 40k aesthetic the new models are amazing, and building army lists is more fun than ever.

That feels a bit pedantic to me. For example, If I want to play Eldar I want to know what all of my options are, where would I find that out? what books and non books have the eldar rules? It's reasonable to want to know what your options are.

Martel732 wrote:
Invis would have to be 200 pts as written. Immortality is expensive.

This post should make it plain to see why it's difficult to balance a game like this... 200 points is absolutely insane.

No offense, that's just a crazy amount of points for one power that can be denied every time, and also can flat out kill your psyker.

 Marmatag wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Invis would have to be 200 pts as written. Immortality is expensive.

This post should make it plain to see why it's difficult to balance a game like this... 200 points is absolutely insane.

No offense, that's just a crazy amount of points for one power that can be denied every time, and also can flat out kill your psyker.

50 points seemed fairer to me. With other powers being less than that (haven't really followed the SM powers).

I do like the concept of paying for powers though. Just...not obscene. Should a Librarian with Invisibility cost 30 points less than a Wraithknight?

...probably not.

 Marmatag wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Invis would have to be 200 pts as written. Immortality is expensive.

This post should make it plain to see why it's difficult to balance a game like this... 200 points is absolutely insane.

No offense, that's just a crazy amount of points for one power that can be denied every time, and also can flat out kill your psyker.

But it does reflect on the exact problem with invisibility:it's value depends on the target.

If Apoc players were donkey-caves, we'd all be rocking one invisibility caster per titan, because being immune to blasts in a game where every single D-shot is a blast or almost... sort of helps.



Basically, spells like invisibility can *never* be balanced, because all it takes is a bigger and better target to make them more powerful.

 Marmatag wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Invis would have to be 200 pts as written. Immortality is expensive.

This post should make it plain to see why it's difficult to balance a game like this... 200 points is absolutely insane.

No offense, that's just a crazy amount of points for one power that can be denied every time, and also can flat out kill your psyker.

It's insane until you realize what it can be cast upon. Unkillable super friends that wreck everything they touch? Totally worth 200 pts.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Frozocrone wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Invis would have to be 200 pts as written. Immortality is expensive.

This post should make it plain to see why it's difficult to balance a game like this... 200 points is absolutely insane.

No offense, that's just a crazy amount of points for one power that can be denied every time, and also can flat out kill your psyker.

50 points seemed fairer to me. With other powers being less than that (haven't really followed the SM powers).

I do like the concept of paying for powers though. Just...not obscene. Should a Librarian with Invisibility cost 30 points less than a Wraithknight?

...probably not.

Wraithknights are 400+ pt models. Maybe 500. Not 295. They make IKs look like a bad joke.

That is not how you balance a game. knee jerk reactions would be the worst thing GW could do.

 Marmatag wrote:
That is not how you balance a game. knee jerk reactions would be the worst thing GW could do.

It's closer to being balanced than what GW vomits forth. I've seen WKs a LOT. They are totally worth 400+ pts.

Martel732 wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
That is not how you balance a game. knee jerk reactions would be the worst thing GW could do.

It's closer to being balanced than what GW vomits forth. I've seen WKs a LOT. They are totally worth 400+ pts.

You need a better argument than this to merit a 50+% increase in points.

Martel732 wrote:
Wraithknights are 400+ pt models. Maybe 500. Not 295. They make IKs look like a bad joke.

Maybe. But that's not what the current rules say.

I'm for making them more expensive or decreasing their stats to be balanced but right now they're 295pts. Making Psykers get within that boundary is ludicrous, since all it does it paint an even bigger target on their back, except they don't have the luxury of the Wraithknight's defensive stats to survive.

Of course, another option is just changing how Invisibility works, or removing it all together.

 Marmatag wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
That is not how you balance a game. knee jerk reactions would be the worst thing GW could do.

It's closer to being balanced than what GW vomits forth. I've seen WKs a LOT. They are totally worth 400+ pts.

You need a better argument than this to merit a 50+% increase in points.

They can suck up an entire 1850 pt army's worth of shooting and live. That's worth more than 295 pts. They can also one shot any vehicle or MC in the game from 36" away. Worth more than 295 pts. Can out punch nearly any CC unit in the game. Worth more than 295 pts. Did that need to be spelled out?

 GreaterGood? wrote:

Ushtarador wrote:

check out how many books you need to play a chaos space marine army

Exactly one.

Just because Chaos now has many possible sources to build armies from (which was something players wanted forever by the way) doesn't mean you have to buy and use them all. But if you want to be negative about this kind of stuff you can make up some ridiculous scenarios for sure.

Now is a pretty good time to start again, there are tons of starter boxes and army deals with big discounts that make it quite cheap to build up an army, especially if you play <1500 points. If you like 40k aesthetic the new models are amazing, and building army lists is more fun than ever.

That feels a bit pedantic to me. For example, If I want to play Eldar I want to know what all of my options are, where would I find that out? what books and non books have the eldar rules? It's reasonable to want to know what your options are.

To put it in another light however, would you prefer that GW didn't release supplements? To me that's a little tricky, as I feel that a more continuous stream of updates for any given army is preferable to getting a new codex every 4-6 years instead. It's easy to want a single source and just stick with that, but keeping an army "live" with extras definitely has its merits too.

Or to put yet another spin on it, if you wanted to play Space Marines, which books do you want? There are 6+? of them for all the ranging chapters, right? Some of the Chaos books fall into the same category, Khorne Daemonkin is a completely stand alone book, not unlike the current Blood Angles and Grey Knights codexes. Crimson Slaughter is more like the old expansion format, when Space Wolves etc. were essentially a supplement book to the basic Space Marine book in 3rd Edition. You need both books to play.

To play Chaos you can get by on one book, depending on how you want to play it. For most people however, I think the Legions book has become a must-have supplement. Personally I have three books, the two I just mentioned and then the Daemons book, which is itself another stand-alone army. It's only used by my Chaos Space Marine army if I take a Sorcerer and start summoning daemons, so it's pretty optional. So far I haven't used it as an adjunct to my CSM since the Legions book came out.

 Frozocrone wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Wraithknights are 400+ pt models. Maybe 500. Not 295. They make IKs look like a bad joke.

Maybe. But that's not what the current rules say.

I'm for making them more expensive or decreasing their stats to be balanced but right now they're 295pts. Making Psykers get within that boundary is ludicrous, since all it does it paint an even bigger target on their back, except they don't have the luxury of the Wraithknight's defensive stats to survive.

Of course, another option is just changing how Invisibility works, or removing it all together.

I'd be fine with that too.

 BBAP wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
In those examples, sure, the issues are pretty minimal and I'd take sniper rifles over mortars most of the time, but when we get into things like Wyverns, Thunderfire Cannons, Thudd Guns, artillery batteries, etc vs entire squads of snipers, the issues become very noticeable indeed, which kinda dovetails into the whole scale issue 40k has going on as well.

... but again, the overall effect on the game system is negligible. Nobody's complaining about OP Wyverns sniping their characters or lamenting the obsolescence of snipers.

well, not right now, mostly because other stuff has gotten even worse. There was mighty gnashing of teeth a couple years ago in 6th over IG Thudd Gun lists sniping characters and over the Wyvern until Necrons came out in 7E and reversed the power leveling that 2014 had been pushing kicked the whole power paradigm up 6 notches

And, to be fair, I cannot recall the last time I saw stuff like Ratlings on a table or Scouts/Rangers used as anything but minimum sized backfield scoring units, and nobody is taking sniper rifles as options when available elsewhere generally. Theyre pretty forgotten in my experience.

Commissar Benny wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Essentially they don't see themselves as a game company, the see themselves as a company that makes high end models for hobby enthusiasts, not a game development studio, and they say as much in their yearly shareholder reports. They're in it for making expensive models, not for making games.

I've never understood this logic. Its entirely in Games Workshop's best interest to make the rules for the tabletop as balanced/competitive as possible, yet they keep acting as if it has no impact on sales. Perhaps my inner circle and community isn't indicative of the 40k community at large but the power creep has gotten so out of control that pickup games are basically impossible at this point. 1/2 the armies aren't even viable in a competitive format. Point cost disparities between codices have been ignored entirely while there has been a push towards "formations" which have not resolved any of the balance issues but in most cases have made them worse.

I've said this for years but...I don't understand why they can't just hire an outside gaming company or elite players within the community and come up with a balanced/competitive ruleset. I'm not talking about AoSing 40k, but just going through the main rulebook eliminating redundancy/bloat and then going through every single codex, creating some sort of formula for point costs and then plugging in every unit into said formula to determine what everything should cost.

One might think, but its just not a concern of theirs apparently. They make pretty models, rules are just a vehicle to move sales, and there still seem to be people who trip over themselves to spend money on awful rules, therr are many who think 40k is just fine, and GW has no immediate and painful incentive to change even if it might otherwise improve future endeavors.

Commissar Benny wrote:
I don't understand why they can't just hire an outside gaming company or elite players within the community and come up with a balanced/competitive ruleset.

They are not that reliable. Just look at how a lot of people still complain about ITC or the old Dakka FAQs. While they did a lot of good, they still had a bit bad. So hiring a community is not reliable. If they were, they would have made a ruleset by now. Since the "community" didn't make a rule set that everyone can agree to, they will never make a rule set that the community will agree too.

Also look at the Generals Handbook. It was made by a "community of gamers" and while it's been applauded a lot, there are still a lot of people who will not accept it either. So again, the community is not the answer.

The community can't handle balance because most people are biased and frankly they don't collect data on a larger scale.

And if you listen to the community, whatever becomes popular or at the top of the meta will get nerfed.

If i was GW, I would:

1. Hire people to playtest the game.
2. Have all tournament lists be entered digitally and collect the results digitally as well.

These two things would allow them to easily report on major battle influencers, and actually test out what people are bringing into tournaments.

As a casual gamer I don't really care a whole lot if some stuff is imbalanced, but I can see how that would drive competitive people crazy. If you can't do #1, #2 should be easy and you could have your game design team review it. Also they should keep in mind most balance changes should be minor, and not sweeping like the community would call for. (For instance, "invisibility should cost 200 points!" versus "invisibility should just subtract 2 from hit rolls against the unit, with 6s always hitting")

Finally, digitize all the codexes properly.

morgoth wrote:

But it does reflect on the exact problem with invisibility:it's value depends on the target.

If Apoc players were donkey-caves, we'd all be rocking one invisibility caster per titan, because being immune to blasts in a game where every single D-shot is a blast or almost... sort of helps.



Basically, spells like invisibility can *never* be balanced, because all it takes is a bigger and better target to make them more powerful.

Actually...

FW Titans as of Taghmata can never be affected by psychic powers except witchfires - as written this includes blessings. If there was a way to both scale and disqualify invisibility, for example +1 warp charge per unit affected, LOW, Superheavy,GMC cannot be affected it could at least be *salvagable*.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Marmatag wrote:

I do understand that it's nice to be able to plan in advance to what you'll have. And, I will concede that some psychic powers are lolbad. But that doesn't mean that the random system is inherently flawed. Psychic powers should be strong - because they're a) risky and b) potentially countered by anyone even those without psykers in their army - but not game breaking.

But when psyker heavy races can reduce or even nulify both the risk and the capacity to counter in their army, whilst at no point reducing the investment on a massively disproportionate subject that receives a positive effect (ye olde deathe starre), they nudge against game breaking.

That and there are mono codexes that simply have nothing to deal with Psykers.

Yeah deathstars are a huge problem right now in the ITC and one of the most OP armies and naturally the best list is superfriends space marine list.

 Marmatag wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
That is not how you balance a game. knee jerk reactions would be the worst thing GW could do.

It's closer to being balanced than what GW vomits forth. I've seen WKs a LOT. They are totally worth 400+ pts.

You need a better argument than this to merit a 50+% increase in points.

1.) easy access to str D in addition to other weapons, including Str D Ranged (2x 36" at that). It's offensive ability is unmatched outside of forgeworld. It can pop an imperial knight in a round of shooting.
2.) Insane CC stats, for instance initiative 5 allows it to destroy knights, terminators, wraiths, just about anything that ins't a bloodthirster or a special character before they can attack back.
3.) armor save + FNP + a toughness value makes it much more tough than vehicle equivalents (eg imperial knights).
4.) in army synergy, it's a buff magnet, benefitting from invis, forewarning, etc. This is where I add the bit about defensive buffs being multiplicative, a wraith knight is already stupid tough, add invis and it's invincible.

How I'd fix it, drop it to intiave 4 and make it so that it can't benefit from psychic powers or formations abilities. Boom fixed.

Marmatag wrote:The community can't handle balance because most people are biased and frankly they don't collect data on a larger scale.

And if you listen to the community, whatever becomes popular or at the top of the meta will get nerfed.

If i was GW, I would:

1. Hire people to playtest the game.
2. Have all tournament lists be entered digitally and collect the results digitally as well.

These two things would allow them to easily report on major battle influencers, and actually test out what people are bringing into tournaments.

As a casual gamer I don't really care a whole lot if some stuff is imbalanced, but I can see how that would drive competitive people crazy. If you can't do #1, #2 should be easy and you could have your game design team review it. Also they should keep in mind most balance changes should be minor, and not sweeping like the community would call for. (For instance, "invisibility should cost 200 points!" versus "invisibility should just subtract 2 from hit rolls against the unit, with 6s always hitting")

Finally, digitize all the codexes properly.

I am not saying you are wrong here. The question is, how is this system you suggested going to make a publicly traded company money year after year? I mean once the rules are "fixed" how do you get people to buy new minis and or start a new army if not relying on "codex creep". I guess I am so use to GW stance on this way of business I can't see or think of another way of doing it now.

Davor wrote:

Marmatag wrote:The community can't handle balance because most people are biased and frankly they don't collect data on a larger scale.

And if you listen to the community, whatever becomes popular or at the top of the meta will get nerfed.

If i was GW, I would:

1. Hire people to playtest the game.
2. Have all tournament lists be entered digitally and collect the results digitally as well.

These two things would allow them to easily report on major battle influencers, and actually test out what people are bringing into tournaments.

As a casual gamer I don't really care a whole lot if some stuff is imbalanced, but I can see how that would drive competitive people crazy. If you can't do #1, #2 should be easy and you could have your game design team review it. Also they should keep in mind most balance changes should be minor, and not sweeping like the community would call for. (For instance, "invisibility should cost 200 points!" versus "invisibility should just subtract 2 from hit rolls against the unit, with 6s always hitting")

Finally, digitize all the codexes properly.

I am not saying you are wrong here. The question is, how is this system you suggested going to make a publicly traded company money year after year? I mean once the rules are "fixed" how do you get people to buy new minis and or start a new army if not relying on "codex creep". I guess I am so use to GW stance on this way of business I can't see or think of another way of doing it now.

Well I'm assuming that an increase in tournament play and competitive interest would lead to more sales.

Of course, it's entirely possible that their math doesn't support this, and it's just a case of the squeaky wheels getting all the grease.

And, making all of the codex information available to everyone would definitely increase sales. People would be more likely to try out more stuff if they could read about it in advance.

 Grimgold wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
That is not how you balance a game. knee jerk reactions would be the worst thing GW could do.

It's closer to being balanced than what GW vomits forth. I've seen WKs a LOT. They are totally worth 400+ pts.

You need a better argument than this to merit a 50+% increase in points.

1.) easy access to str D in addition to other weapons, including Str D Ranged (2x 36" at that). It's offensive ability is unmatched outside of forgeworld. It can pop an imperial knight in a round of shooting.
2.) Insane CC stats, for instance initiative 5 allows it to destroy knights, terminators, wraiths, just about anything that ins't a bloodthirster or a special character before they can attack back.
3.) armor save + FNP + a toughness value makes it much more tough than vehicle equivalents (eg imperial knights).
4.) in army synergy, it's a buff magnet, benefitting from invis, forewarning, etc. This is where I add the bit about defensive buffs being multiplicative, a wraith knight is already stupid tough, add invis and it's invincible.

How I'd fix it, drop it to intiave 4 and make it so that it can't benefit from psychic powers or formations abilities. Boom fixed.

It would still be too cheap. It's worth 400 pts even with those changes.

I think they have certainly stepped up in the attitude towards the customers and players.

On the balance side I think the game is in one of its worst states ever. In general I think the game is all over the place. On a competitive level you get stuff like units in combat that barely ever wound eachother because of the psychic powers and alot of saving throws.
I think if you have friends that agree to play the game casually, it can certainly be ok.

BBAP, you are such a nice fellow.

 BBAP wrote:

For a given value of "bad". It's not a faithful representation of the capabilities of real-world rifles and mortars - but the "game world" has malign entities that crawl through holes in reality and a galaxy-spanning steampunk empire that runs on prayers. I can forgive a few inconsistencies, provided they don't unduly shaft the game. This one doesn't. it is a non-issue.

The fluff of the setting is irrelevant for the validity of your point. Still the game simulates battle in terms we can understand. In a full sci-fi setting, we would probably not see melee, unless a Dune-like explanation with forcefields is set up. The IG remember closely classic human armies from close centuries in the past, and the weapons are expected to work and evoke similar effects. Russes are tanks with armor and turrets, basilisk fire indirect fire. A sniper rifle should snipe better than a mortar. The way targets are selected is does not reflect this.

You'd rather they just did away with the first profile and made them all Assault X weapons, so everyone can use them to full effect? They could make them all Heavy X, but that wouldn't fix the issue of Relentless platforms using Salvo weapons to full effect and would instead cark the ability of non-Relentless models to get any value out of them. Would that be good game design?

Salvo is just put on the wrong weapons. Or to better say, Salvo is a fig leaf for the wrong weapons.
An hot-shot volley gun would be better just Assault 3. Perhaps a good weapon for salvo would be something like a heavy bolter.
And I do not complain the use of a relentless platform per se. On gravs, salvo is used as a limitation, but such limitation never comes in effect because of relentless. Is the intention of using salvo on a strong weapon to limit it, and THEN make the limitation null.. THIS makes the designers a bunch of hacks.
THEIR INCOHERENCE AND LACK OF VISION.
Good design would just be assault X for weapons used by infantry, and heavy with lower rate of fire for gravs on bikes. I cannot see a situation beyond Heavy Bolters in which salvo would work better than something else.
And this disregarding how utterly idiotic Gravs are, conceptually, in the first place.

I don't disagree that it was unneeded and unnecessary, but that doesn't mean it's detrimental. I don't think it is.

Is this an answer I am supposed to take seriously? It was put effort to fix something not in need to be fixed, while other aspects of the game and whole armies lagged or where under-developed, see orks. This is enough to make it bad. One should observe the context in which changes has been made, too.

If you play with indecisive, claw-fingered mutants I suppose it does. Maybe I'm just lucky.

You must be pleasant to play with. Insulting other players is not an argument, Nice Fellow.
Not everybody has the luxury of unlimited time and expert players to play with: set up a game should be fast and not a chore. Furthermore, see below.

A tolerable amount.

"Tolerable" is very subjective. What we can register objectively is a removal of player agency and added pointless game time: even small amounts add up for a final effect.

I'm not saying it couldn't be better - I'm saying it's not as bad as whiners like you make it out to be.

This is the second time you use insults instead of actual arguments. I do wonder why. Could it be perhaps you have no actual comebacks? Is something else? Please tell me I am on the edge of my seat.

I know that. I said as much in my reply. I'm not interested in "outside the core" here.

But this makes your argument deeply dishonest, because many armies have rerolls (on saves, hit, wound, scatter, reserves, run, charges) random tables, fnp, reanimations, and so on, and all these things end up being used in the actual game being played. If you ignore what is in the codex, you are analysing the situation without using the whole dataset. This means that you will draw, as you are doing now, the wrong conclusions - intentionally or not.
I frankly cannot tell which one of these two options is more hilarious.

It is. Read for comprehension.

No is not. Being insulting and dismissing does not make your arguments stronger, Nice Fellow.

I am frankly wondering if discussing with you is worthy the effort, BBAP. You are dismissing toward me, insulted my fellow players and you brought no arguments beyond "I like it this way" and "is not such a big deal, you whiner" or "is sci-fi, LOL".

 Kaiyanwang wrote:

In a full sci-fi setting, we would probably not see melee, unless a Dune-like explanation with forcefields is set up.

Or instead of forcefields, really hard armor that withstands hits from the most common weapons. . . where have I seen that?

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Kaiyanwang wrote:

In a full sci-fi setting, we would probably not see melee, unless a Dune-like explanation with forcefields is set up.

Or instead of forcefields, really hard armor that withstands hits from the most common weapons. . . where have I seen that?

But then how does an angry guy with a sword manage to get through that really hard armor? Superior armor technology would simply drive the use of bigger guns. For example, infantry squads might be armed with additional anti-tank missiles for dealing with space marines.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Kaiyanwang wrote:

In a full sci-fi setting, we would probably not see melee, unless a Dune-like explanation with forcefields is set up.

Or instead of forcefields, really hard armor that withstands hits from the most common weapons. . . where have I seen that?

Even in the modern world, soldiers are trained in close combat techniques because, for now at least, those in command realise the lie behind the assertion "things will go well". The most modern example I've read is from 2004, the charmingly named battle of Danny Boy where British soldiers were obliged to engaged Iraqi ambushers in close combat due to communications system failure. If the capacity for failure even exists in a military system, it will either occur by accident or purposeful hostile action.

If, in the wonderful world of scifi, a gun sight can in some way be blinded or its operator stabbed in the back with at least as much reliability as they can be shot from orbit, both assets will be developed for when "Things Don't Go Well".

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Kaiyanwang wrote:

In a full sci-fi setting, we would probably not see melee, unless a Dune-like explanation with forcefields is set up.

Or instead of forcefields, really hard armor that withstands hits from the most common weapons. . . where have I seen that?

In 40k force fields (probably indeed inspired partly by Dune) do not forbid completely melee, they just partially protect.
So no false equivalencies, please

My point was about what we expect from the weapons and tactics, melee and ranged, in the 40k game, and those weapons behave, or are supposed to behave, like weapons and tactics of recent human history. The players can have with those weapons a better familiarity than with some obscure, extreme-range warfare of an hypothetical, different setting and system. So saying "lol is sci-fi" is a non-argument, because the warfare shown in 40k is more "ancient" than expected from a game set in the year 40.000. Weapons in 40k are often made to recall existing ones, and are expected to operate as such.
Axes are applied to face, in melee, they are not artillery pieces. So, I expect Sniper rifles to Snipe better then mortars.

 malamis wrote:
Even in the modern world, soldiers are trained in close combat techniques because, for now at least, those in command realise the lie behind the assertion "things will go well". The most modern example I've read is from 2004, the charmingly named battle of Danny Boy where British soldiers were obliged to engaged Iraqi ambushers in close combat due to communications system failure. If the capacity for failure even exists in a military system, it will either occur by accident or purposeful hostile action.

If, in the wonderful world of scifi, a gun sight can in some way be blinded or its operator stabbed in the back with at least as much reliability as they can be shot from orbit, both assets will be developed for when "Things Don't Go Well".

The difference is that you're talking about a last-resort option in the real world, while in 40k there are whole units of nothing but angry guys with chainsaws running across an open field to get into melee. Melee combat should exist in 40k, but it should be a very minor element relative to shooting.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Kaiyanwang wrote:

In a full sci-fi setting, we would probably not see melee, unless a Dune-like explanation with forcefields is set up.

Or instead of forcefields, really hard armor that withstands hits from the most common weapons. . . where have I seen that?

But then how does an angry guy with a sword manage to get through that really hard armor? Superior armor technology would simply drive the use of bigger guns. For example, infantry squads might be armed with additional anti-tank missiles for dealing with space marines.

Angry guy has rare weapon that penetrates armor. Or angry guy slips knife between plates, etc.

The argument about driving the use of bigger guns doesn't work in 40K because the heavy armored troops are rare in-universe. There's no reason for every guardsman to be armed with a plasma gun because IG are rarely coming across an enemy with heavy armor. The most common enemies for IG, for millenia, were Orks or other humans.

 Kaiyanwang wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Kaiyanwang wrote:

In a full sci-fi setting, we would probably not see melee, unless a Dune-like explanation with forcefields is set up.

Or instead of forcefields, really hard armor that withstands hits from the most common weapons. . . where have I seen that?

In 40k force fields (probably indeed inspired partly by Dune) do not forbid completely melee, they just partially protect.
So no false equivalencies, please

My point was about what we expect from the weapons and tactics, melee and ranged, in the 40k game, and those weapons behave, or are supposed to behave, like weapons and tactics of recent human history. The players can have with those weapons a better familiarity than with some obscure, extreme-range warfare of an hypothetical, different setting and system. So saying "lol is sci-fi" is a non-argument, because the warfare shown in 40k is more "ancient" than expected from a game set in the year 40.000. Weapons in 40k are often made to recall existing ones, and are expected to operate as such.
Axes are applied to face, in melee, they are not artillery pieces. So, I expect Sniper rifles to Snipe better then mortars.

The only point I can concede is that Sniper rifles ought to be better at sniping than mortars.

The "Heavy Armor" (power armor) of 40K is not a false equivalency to "forcefields" in Dune. Both types of defense (in universe) are ample protection against common ranged weapons, therefore common weapons have trouble stopping troops from getting to close quarters and turning a firefight into a rout. Because Power Armor "works" against many weapons with modern day equivalencies, the dynamic of battle is different than modern day. A squad of marines doesn't get gunned down by a 50cal, and they're in a hurry to get where you are, so instead of waiting around for an air strike, they just assault your position and kill you. That's the paradigm of 40K, and it's well defined.

Marmatag wrote:
And, making all of the codex information available to everyone would definitely increase sales. People would be more likely to try out more stuff if they could read about it in advance.

Oh so much this. I know in the early 2000s I tried to buy every codex and buy what applied to me. This is why I loved Age of Sigmar so much. Buy all the Alliance books and use what ever you wanted. I really hope they do this for 40K as well. By that I don't mean throw out the lore and start over again but just giving the dataslates for free like how the warscrolls are free and the Alliance books are reasonably costed.

 Fafnir wrote:

5th edition saw probably the best balance in the game's history

Yeah like grey knights or spess furries nullifying other armies. And parking lots everywhere.

 koooaei wrote:

 Fafnir wrote:

5th edition saw probably the best balance in the game's history

Yeah like grey knights or spess furries nullifying other armies. And parking lots everywhere.

Which edition would you consider the best?

I've only played in 5, 6 and 7.
I'd definitely consider 6-th the worst. Than it's a tie between 5 and 7. 7 could have been the best of the bunch if not for excessive amount of special rules on top of special rules and stupidly powerful mages. Maelstorm is a huge plus though. If you combine it with some of the eternal war missions and point-cost based killpoints, you end up with a very robust pt reward system. Even if you simply take maelstorm out of the book, it's MUCH better than old eternal war.

 koooaei wrote:

 Fafnir wrote:

5th edition saw probably the best balance in the game's history

Yeah like grey knights or spess furries nullifying other armies. And parking lots everywhere.

*best*, not perfect

5E had it's problems, and I'm always surprised to find myself pining for the days of 5E, KP's were and still are stupid victory mechanics, wound allocation shennanigans were ridiculous (though they can be just as bad now), everything having 4+ cover all the time, poor vehicle secondary weapons rules, underpriced rhinos, 5pt psybolt upgrades on BS5 TL Autocannon GK dreads, Gunline space wolf armies, and more.

But I'd probably take it, as a whole, over any other single edition in terms of balance.

 Peregrine wrote:

 malamis wrote:
Even in the modern world, soldiers are trained in close combat techniques because, for now at least, those in command realise the lie behind the assertion "things will go well". The most modern example I've read is from 2004, the charmingly named battle of Danny Boy where British soldiers were obliged to engaged Iraqi ambushers in close combat due to communications system failure. If the capacity for failure even exists in a military system, it will either occur by accident or purposeful hostile action.

If, in the wonderful world of scifi, a gun sight can in some way be blinded or its operator stabbed in the back with at least as much reliability as they can be shot from orbit, both assets will be developed for when "Things Don't Go Well".

The difference is that you're talking about a last-resort option in the real world, while in 40k there are whole units of nothing but angry guys with chainsaws running across an open field to get into melee. Melee combat should exist in 40k, but it should be a very minor element relative to shooting.

Correct; and even fluff wise a Codex Astartes compliant chapter only has at normal state 20% of it's devotees as dedicated close combat specialists ( 8th company and 5 battle companies ASM + command squads & veterans). However, 40k isn't exactly representative of pitched symmetric battles in the first place because if it was everyone would be playing Imperial Guard infantry and/or tank companies with either the Aquila, the chaos star or the 4 armed emprah embossed thereon, with 10 man allied detachments of actually differnt units.

The scale that 40k is played, which is, outside of apocalypse, small scale skirmish engagements, ambushes, infiltration actions or teleport assaults (as defined by the standard missions in the rulebook) is quite possibly the *only* place close combat specialists make sense in Sci Fi. Even in apocalypse the weight of fire on the table means even the most tooled up CC units have a 1 turn life expectancy, unless you take 2-300 of them. Which is exactly as it should be.

5th was the last time I had fun with 40k it had issues like multi wound shenanigans and vehicles being too strong but those were easy to fix for competent devs, instead we got 6th and 7th which are both terrible boring messes that take too long to play.

 Insectum7 wrote:


The "Heavy Armor" (power armor) of 40K is not a false equivalency to "forcefields" in Dune. Both types of defense (in universe) are ample protection against common ranged weapons, therefore common weapons have trouble stopping troops from getting to close quarters and turning a firefight into a rout. Because Power Armor "works" against many weapons with modern day equivalencies, the dynamic of battle is different than modern day. A squad of marines doesn't get gunned down by a 50cal, and they're in a hurry to get where you are, so instead of waiting around for an air strike, they just assault your position and kill you. That's the paradigm of 40K, and it's well defined.

I would argue that not every being in that universe wears power armour, and melee is not used only against power armour.

 Peregrine wrote:

 malamis wrote:
Even in the modern world, soldiers are trained in close combat techniques because, for now at least, those in command realise the lie behind the assertion "things will go well". The most modern example I've read is from 2004, the charmingly named battle of Danny Boy where British soldiers were obliged to engaged Iraqi ambushers in close combat due to communications system failure. If the capacity for failure even exists in a military system, it will either occur by accident or purposeful hostile action.

If, in the wonderful world of scifi, a gun sight can in some way be blinded or its operator stabbed in the back with at least as much reliability as they can be shot from orbit, both assets will be developed for when "Things Don't Go Well".

The difference is that you're talking about a last-resort option in the real world, while in 40k there are whole units of nothing but angry guys with chainsaws running across an open field to get into melee. Melee combat should exist in 40k, but it should be a very minor element relative to shooting.

Isn't it already minor? Most models in 40k have guns, not swords. Its not as if the IG are all packing broadswords. The squad leaders do have swords, but that to me is more a symbolic thing than something that's going to see every day use.
Aren't officers today given a ceremonial saber (not to be used on the field, obviously), and didn't WWI officers have swords as a symbol of rank, which they took with them when going over the top?

Likewise, I don't see tactical marines with chainswords, and I rarely hear anyone claiming that they belong in melee. They have a knife, iirc, but today's forces have that too.
The ones who do have swords usually have a very specific roles with specific equipment and rules to help them get into CC. They are specialists, as they should be.

The whole idea that everyone wants to rush each other and whack each other over the head with rifles is a gross misconception. Admittedly, the tendency that artists have to keep drawing opposing armies standing 2 feet from each other to make it "epic looking" doesn't help.

 Peregrine wrote:

 malamis wrote:
Even in the modern world, soldiers are trained in close combat techniques because, for now at least, those in command realise the lie behind the assertion "things will go well". The most modern example I've read is from 2004, the charmingly named battle of Danny Boy where British soldiers were obliged to engaged Iraqi ambushers in close combat due to communications system failure. If the capacity for failure even exists in a military system, it will either occur by accident or purposeful hostile action.

If, in the wonderful world of scifi, a gun sight can in some way be blinded or its operator stabbed in the back with at least as much reliability as they can be shot from orbit, both assets will be developed for when "Things Don't Go Well".

The difference is that you're talking about a last-resort option in the real world, while in 40k there are whole units of nothing but angry guys with chainsaws running across an open field to get into melee. Melee combat should exist in 40k, but it should be a very minor element relative to shooting.

What you're not understanding is that angry guys with chainsaws running into melee are a really cool visual. There is no other argument for it, which is okay because no other argument is required.

I mean, I get the urge to earn geek points by pointing out how ehhhctually, it wouldn't work like that realistically. But you just don't want to go there, because that's the slippery slope that leads to AI-piloted spherical spacecraft shooting invisible lasers at each other from millions of miles away in a fraction of a second. It's not that people don't notice the unrealistic bits and need to be freed from the shackles of ignorance, they're aware of them and don't care.

The point he's making is that actually balancing something that's realistically totally unintuitive as an army strategy with something more practical is going to be very difficult to do properly.

 Kaiyanwang wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:


The "Heavy Armor" (power armor) of 40K is not a false equivalency to "forcefields" in Dune. Both types of defense (in universe) are ample protection against common ranged weapons, therefore common weapons have trouble stopping troops from getting to close quarters and turning a firefight into a rout. Because Power Armor "works" against many weapons with modern day equivalencies, the dynamic of battle is different than modern day. A squad of marines doesn't get gunned down by a 50cal, and they're in a hurry to get where you are, so instead of waiting around for an air strike, they just assault your position and kill you. That's the paradigm of 40K, and it's well defined.

I would argue that not every being in that universe wears power armour, and melee is not used only against power armour.

That's . . . . true. Melee is often used by models who don't have enough/any firepower, because that's the only way they can fight. . . so, duh?

Melee is just a tactic, used when appropriate for the context. 40K provides a number of contexts in which melee is appropriate, so melee is a thing. Being "sci-fi" doesn't really have anything to do with it, the setting is what the setting is. No doubt space-faring forces bombard planets all the time, but sometimes they have to go get a mcguffin, hold a piece of dirt or besiege a city/installation, so they put boots on the ground in close quarters with enemy combatants. In those circumstances, oftentimes the ranged output of a force isn't expedient enough to win the day, so they just run up and clobber the enemy.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Kaiyanwang wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:


The "Heavy Armor" (power armor) of 40K is not a false equivalency to "forcefields" in Dune. Both types of defense (in universe) are ample protection against common ranged weapons, therefore common weapons have trouble stopping troops from getting to close quarters and turning a firefight into a rout. Because Power Armor "works" against many weapons with modern day equivalencies, the dynamic of battle is different than modern day. A squad of marines doesn't get gunned down by a 50cal, and they're in a hurry to get where you are, so instead of waiting around for an air strike, they just assault your position and kill you. That's the paradigm of 40K, and it's well defined.

I would argue that not every being in that universe wears power armour, and melee is not used only against power armour.

That's . . . . true. Melee is often used by models who don't have enough/any firepower, because that's the only way they can fight. . . so, duh?

Melee is just a tactic, used when appropriate for the context. 40K provides a number of contexts in which melee is appropriate, so melee is a thing. Being "sci-fi" doesn't really have anything to do with it, the setting is what the setting is. No doubt space-faring forces bombard planets all the time, but sometimes they have to go get a mcguffin, hold a piece of dirt or besiege a city/installation, so they put boots on the ground in close quarters with enemy combatants. In those circumstances, oftentimes the ranged output of a force isn't expedient enough to win the day, so they just run up and clobber the enemy.

That's beyond my point.

 Kaiyanwang wrote:

That's beyond my point.

Then I confess, your point is beyond me.

 Kaiyanwang wrote:

 Slayer le boucher wrote:


Because ironicly, GW Studio sucks at their own game, for them its unthinkable why someone would want 3 times the same exact unit in an army instead of other things, thats why you end up with 2/3x Grav centurions or Drakes or other bullcrap.

The design team is composed by bumbling buffoons, but I fail to understand this sentence. They constantly write rules for formations pushing us to buy 2-4 copies of the same unit to make it barely functional.

i'll admit this statement is obsolete, since it pre-dates the formations era.

it was at one of the GD or something that one of the Dev team who was asked questions by a guy about balance, simply replied" well when we test stuff we usually take a bit of everything to test how it goes, we have a hard time seeing why people want to have multiple of the same units, when you can have more different units"

This statement was done when Eldar Wave serpent madness was a thing so yeah...

But i find that it is an insight in how casual their testing of the units and lists are, i bet they just take one formation in a given list to test that particular formation, then they switch to another one, or maybe two formations, but they never do in a competitive way.

i mean it takes minutes to the competitive people out there to see where the cheese is when something new comes out, and that it can create absolute abominable things to play against, so why does it escapes the Devs eyes when their the ones writhing it?