So, for the first time in a long time, I find myself agreeing with The Long war Podcast. I'd suggest, before you comment here, you wastch this video first:
However, I want to know what everyone else is thinking. Did points go up on units nobody buys but points on units selling well stayed the same or went down? This is, from what I gathered, the people on this podcast are really suggesting.
Personal opinions: as an Ork player I can't help but agree. Boyz went up because GW can comfortably adjust them without sales being affected. Really, boyz should have gone up 1pt while elite units like burnas, lootas, heavy wepaons, etc... should have had a sizable pts drop or rules change. Yet, this did not happen. However, as many people argued when the codex dropped, other units in other factions were predicted to also be going up. I remember being told to "shut up and wait for CA" where I would be proven "wrong" and everyone's troops will have gone up to balance out why Orks didn't get expected and suggested drops. We now know that hasn't happened and cultists (a unit already nerfed several times through rules changes) were the only troop to have now gone up which has had no change at all for chaos players lists. All while lists that have won, I would estimate from my own experience, over 50% of tournaments, both locally (in my viewing from going out to town when I need paints, 100% of games I watched with soup just smashed opponents) and internationally, have gotten cheaper.
I think it's just that since GW writes books months out instead of moving to digital, they are responding to meta events from 8 months ago. So technically, Chapter Approved is already out of date as GW is responding to the ITC meta, but the ITC meta of the past. And that's not even getting into the fact that ITC is essentially playing a different game with their custom missions that GW aren't taking into account at all (reasonably so).
It's not so much that it's a marketing move, it's that they wrote it with information that's now out of date.
Well there is probably a correlation between under selling units and under powered units. People are less likely to spend money if a unit is over pointed. So figuring out motivation becomes difficult.
It's not so much that it's a marketing move, it's that they wrote it with information that's now out of date.
This is it.
Untill GW gets with the times and puts things in a easily updated digital form the game will suffer, and other orginizations will continue to make up their own house rules that dont really go along with how GW has made the game.
I am sure most players would be willing to pay some kind of monthly fee to have a digital rules app that is regularly updated.
I also find it highly implausible that it takes 8 months to make CA. Is there only 2 people at GW working on this?
The game is constantly play testing itself with GT's and Majors every couple of weeks, it is not hard to see what is broken or op, and needs a little tweek.
If things were in digital document everyone had they could release updates every few weeks, it doesnt need months of play testing to determine how many points something should drop, you see something is weak or op and you adjust the points just a little, wait for a couple of tournaments to pass and see how it effected things and then adjust again. Do this incrementally untill things are were they should be.
It's not so much that it's a marketing move, it's that they wrote it with information that's now out of date.
This is it.
Untill GW gets with the times and puts things in a easily updated digital form the game will suffer, and other orginizations will continue to make up their own house rules that dont really go along with how GW has made the game.
I am sure most players would be willing to pay some kind of monthly fee to have a digital rules app that is regularly updated.
I also find it highly implausible that it takes 8 months to make CA. Is there only 2 people at GW working on this?
The game is constantly play testing itself with GT's and Majors every couple of weeks, it is not hard to see what is broken or op, and needs a little tweek.
If things were in digital document everyone had they could release updates every few weeks, it doesnt need months of play testing to determine how many points something should drop, you see something is weak or op and you adjust the points just a little, wait for a couple of tournaments to pass and see how it effected things and then adjust again. Do this incrementally untill things are were they should be.
I also think they should take something good that Privateer Press did with their CID; put out beta test rules from time to time and encourage people to test and give feedback. They've done this a little bit with the FAQs but I think they need to be more frequent. For instance they might put out a beta updated datasheet for a unit or two (or even an army) and take like 2-3 months or so to get feedback from it, and then adjust it again later based on that.
Yes chapter approved was just a marketing hoax. Regular Marines are the obvoious offenders. Collectors allready have loads of them.
Cries for some semblence of balance with points reduction or rules has been heard since day one of 8th. Such balance would not sell miniatures and therefore primaris was given a point drop instead.
It's barely about the game enjoyment at all. They are just trying to steer players into buying the new kits.
Trickstick wrote: Well there is probably a correlation between under selling units and under powered units. People are less likely to spend money if a unit is over pointed. So figuring out motivation becomes difficult.
My impression of CA is that it was mostly about internal balance within codexes, not between them. I think it will result in more different units seeing play, which is nice, but it won't do much else.
Wayniac wrote: I think it's just that since GW writes books months out instead of moving to digital, they are responding to meta events from 8 months ago. So technically, Chapter Approved is already out of date as GW is responding to the ITC meta, but the ITC meta of the past. And that's not even getting into the fact that ITC is essentially playing a different game with their custom missions that GW aren't taking into account at all (reasonably so).
It's not so much that it's a marketing move, it's that they wrote it with information that's now out of date.
Matters aren't helped either with the fact that custom missions, custom requirements for # of Detachments, etc all exist.
Look at Drukhari for example. They get a benefit for fielding multiple Patrols...which let's be frank here, can't be done in tournament formats.
I forget which part of the episode they discussed it "i watched on twitch" but they talked about how irresponsible it was to release CA and vigils in the middle of the Christmas season because people are waiting for point changes before they buy and I have to say I 100% agreed. They really should release a change like this about a week or 2 before Black Friday.
As for increasing or decreasing units that nobody is buying to "sell models" i agree and disagree. Yes if they get cheaper they will get better and more likely you will sell more but at the same time units that never get taken don't get taken because they are typically overcosted so they should get a points decrease.
The answer is yes, but for a reason that is not what these guys (or many people on the forum) love to insinuate.
GW Either does not modify units' rules to push sales, or does so so incompetently that the net effect is essentially negligible. New units that get released are actually ridiculously OP at such incredibly low rates that it almost perfectly mirrors the chance of a unit being OP from an older kit with a rules change (i.e., roughly 5-10% of units overall)
Look at a few recent major releases.
Nurgle Daemon Release
Slippity Slipslopper, Gnarlmaw: OP Great unclean one, named great unclean one, other characters: Bad.
Their average is so incredibly inconsistent that people have to look back to EARLY SEVENTH EDITION to point a finger to one release of TWO kits where everything released was super OP.
Now, with that gak debunked, is this a marketing decision? You better freaking believe it is. People have a completely different idea of how games should be released and balanced in the E-sports video game era, people want balance to be constantly shuffled back and forth. The best way to get that little endorphin high of "a new thing is good!" is by buffing, rather than nerfing, and not buffing a TON. that's exactly what GW is doing in CA, the paid supplement. historically in 8th ed, buffs are in CA (paid), nerfs are in FAQs (Free).
They maybe get better, if the unit was not so bad to begin with or the army can carry a weaker model.
GK changes are a bit odd, they are to best GK units and this means free points. Only those free points don't really have a good spending target. Can't take more draigos or NDKGMs, because both rule of 3, and the drops aren't that big to begin with.
Now expectations are another thing. Am not sure about other GK players, but I thought that after the last CA, that GW is really planning to fix the army. Right now, with the leaks for next year releases, it looks that GK will maybe get updated in 2020 or 2021. And am not even sure they plan codex so far in advance.
I do agree with CA being some sort of seson pass. And I can even imagine that for people with good armies, the changes bring more options, specially for non tournament games. For everyone else, am not sure it is worth the money. Playing with a cheaper draigo and cheaper NDK is not really going to improve my army, and am not buying any more GK till GW fixs them. Worse thing that could happen for me, is me getting money from somewhere, spending it on more GK, the expiriance still being bad and then GW doing something like removing the army or turning it in to primaris.
the_scotsman wrote: The answer is yes, but for a reason that is not what these guys (or many people on the forum) love to insinuate.
GW Either does not modify units' rules to push sales, or does so so incompetently that the net effect is essentially negligible. New units that get released are actually ridiculously OP at such incredibly low rates that it almost perfectly mirrors the chance of a unit being OP from an older kit with a rules change (i.e., roughly 5-10% of units overall)
Look at a few recent major releases.
Nurgle Daemon Release
Slippity Slipslopper, Gnarlmaw: OP Great unclean one, named great unclean one, other characters: Bad.
Their average is so incredibly inconsistent that people have to look back to EARLY SEVENTH EDITION to point a finger to one release of TWO kits where everything released was super OP.
Now, with that gak debunked, is this a marketing decision? You better freaking believe it is. People have a completely different idea of how games should be released and balanced in the E-sports video game era, people want balance to be constantly shuffled back and forth. The best way to get that little endorphin high of "a new thing is good!" is by buffing, rather than nerfing, and not buffing a TON. that's exactly what GW is doing in CA, the paid supplement. historically in 8th ed, buffs are in CA (paid), nerfs are in FAQs (Free).
I have to agree that GW doesn't intentionally make OP rules for new releases but more so that their ability to figure out balance without vocal feedback from the player base is quite abysmal. If you want to see what blatant "rules to boost sales" looks like then just flip back to the Necron codex of 7th and the codex/supplement releases followed. There efforts to stimulate sales with blatant power creep (it sure as heck worked for those Necron sales) was slowly killing the game and 8th is the (unfortunate) byproduct of GW trying to fix the mess they themselves created. I think GW is aware of the risk/reward of OP releases but as long as the sales figures look good by acting like balance matters and not resorting to blatant power creep then they won't go down the selling power route too heavily (paying money for CA to get points decreases does signal that selling power is marketable). If numbers stagnate or drop then I would expect to see some of those more extreme changes to keep the numbers looking good for investors.
I do think that the way the community seems to buy basically anything GW puts out is sending them the message that putting out gak with their brand slapped on it will sell well enough to justify its production.
Daedalus;
But I think he means it will always be that way.
As before CA 2019 comes out, we will have had two new remaining codexes, then new versions of how many? 4-6?
I don't think GW is nearly subtle enough to introduce the changes they have done the Chapter Approved in the interest of selling certain model kits. If that was their goal, I think they would have been far more blatant about it. I just don't see them having a light touch about that kind of thing. More of a Hanlon's Razor thing.
Honestly, I think GW just doesn't want to see Chaos Cultists being the default only troop choice used in CMS armies. Which I agree with as a CMS that doesn't like to use cultists often. At the same time, the design confines of regular space marine units (Chaos and Loyalists both) limits marines effectiveness to the point that they don't really compete nearly as well as cultists even after the point increase in many cases.
Now, that could be in the interest of selling Primaris kits. I don't know. It still seems like GW would have made Primaris better than they are. I still get the impression the designers I trying to make a balanced game, just struggling to do so with some elements likely because they have some sort of framework (read: marines can't be less than XX points, must not have traditional stat changes, CA shouldn't really change stats/special abilities often, etc.) they want to maintain.
I less inclined to give GW the benefit of the doubt that CA wasn't a marketing move. I don't really appreciate the idea of paying money for what is in reality a game patch. You want to buy the book, fine that cost money. But the CA changes to should be available for no cost in an electronic format.
Marmatag wrote: Chapter Approved 2018 was a massive disappointment because it doesn't address huge problems:
Marines still suck
Chaos Marines still suck, but are flatly superior to loyalists.
Guard are still OP Knights are still OP Ynnari is still OP
Tyranids were big winners really, and that's about it. Maybe Necrons, but i doubt it.
Tau, IMO. Several new suits being viable really helps their ability to deal with diverse threats.
I think it'll remain to be seen if ALL marine equivalents suck. The more elite marines (Deathwatch, vanilla vets, thousand sons, plague marines) seem like they got pretty substantial boosts.
While we don't know for sure the effect that Chapter Approved will have on meta armies and army balance as a whole, when you consider the 8 month hiatus that they can't respond to, I could see CA having more of a marketing impact than a balance impact.
I have to agree that GW doesn't intentionally make OP rules for new releases but more so that their ability to figure out balance without vocal feedback from the player base is quite abysmal. If you want to see what blatant "rules to boost sales" looks like then just flip back to the Necron codex of 7th and the codex/supplement releases followed. There efforts to stimulate sales with blatant power creep (it sure as heck worked for those Necron sales) was slowly killing the game and 8th is the (unfortunate) byproduct of GW trying to fix the mess they themselves created. I think GW is aware of the risk/reward of OP releases but as long as the sales figures look good by acting like balance matters and not resorting to blatant power creep then they won't go down the selling power route too heavily (paying money for CA to get points decreases does signal that selling power is marketable). If numbers stagnate or drop then I would expect to see some of those more extreme changes to keep the numbers looking good for investors.
I do think that the way the community seems to buy basically anything GW puts out is sending them the message that putting out gak with their brand slapped on it will sell well enough to justify its production.
Lets say they did have a reverse creep in mind when they started 8th ed. It would have been ok, if they kept the style. But somehow they have IG or eldar and GK in the same game. I don't think they are fixing anything, the book seem too random in power level. The gaps in power are so big, that something crazy like designers writing armies they like with better rules as better, seems possible. And that would be crazy considering this a huge company.
I think it'll remain to be seen if ALL marine equivalents suck. The more elite marines (Deathwatch, vanilla vets, thousand sons, plague marines) seem like they got pretty substantial boosts.
What did the plagu marines or 1ksons get? Serious question, I only seen the leak, and it didn't look as if anything got cheaper.
So they don't want to sell GK kits? They want all GK players to buy a new army? If they do, then why don't they say it, that they are slowly phasing out the army or don't plan to support it, and don't do those stunts where GK are mentioned as fixed, along side a SoB codex and all the narrative/open stuff.
Danny76 wrote: Daedalus;
But I think he means it will always be that way.
As before CA 2019 comes out, we will have had two new remaining codexes, then new versions of how many? 4-6?
What reason would they have to update any current books? The only purpose would be a big model splash for Primaris and that's it.
Daedalus81 wrote: Robin literally just confirmed that IK wasn't in the wild when they started working on CA.
The conspiracy stuff is really obnoxious.
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hobojebus wrote: , not when your pushing out codex after codex so fast.
And we have...two left now? Last year was pretty exceptional in terms of releases.
This is no excuse! They should have delayed CA until they had a clear idea of how everything interacts. Right now it feels like they're trying to patch a game version that came out 7 or 10 updates ago while the current updates are bringing lots of bugs with them.
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Pandabeer wrote: Just a little something: There was no way Ork points costs were going to change in CA, the codex was way too recent for that.
Nobody here said they were... we were hoping that the codex would take into account CA as they were probably wrote at the same time but obviously they didn't has PK and now more expensive than PF and so are several more weapons of the same profile. We know GW wants them to be the same price as they have changed them to be the same twice now.
Karol wrote: So they don't want to sell GK kits? They want all GK players to buy a new army? If they do, then why don't they say it, that they are slowly phasing out the army or don't plan to support it, and don't do those stunts where GK are mentioned as fixed, along side a SoB codex and all the narrative/open stuff.
Not saying they are but... business wise... GK are the old space marines and it's very much possible a lot of the marine players might flock to them as Primaris come in... GK becomes a heaven for old marine players until GW gets around to "fixing" them by adding primaris GK... So making GK bad stops this from happening and encourages players to buy the new marines... however, if they just said "Okay, we want you to stop buying GK" that would not only piss off a hell of a lot of people but it would also stop a lot of potential sales of stock they're trying to get rid of. So by nerfing them slowly into oblivion they can continue to sell the models to the hundreds of players still holding onto hope while also selling models as competitive GK players move to another faction. Not saying at all this is happening but if I was a games company who only cared about money and not making a good product and money... this is what i would do.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Just want to say I find it super funny how on Twitch right now orks are fight "ASTRA MILITARUM".... they have 2 knights... -_- To me this is not "ASTRA MILITARUM" this is soup!
I'm not sure why these discussions always have an air of "conspiracy" about them, as if basic business principles are difficult to comprehend. There's nothing secretive about it.
1) GW has no vested interest in a perfectly balanced, and nuanced game. They need a game to be balanced "enough" to continue selling models - which is priority numero uno. While I don't doubt GW employees enthusiasm for the product, GW is smart enough as a business to realize that additional resources, time and investment in perfecting the game is wasted money and effort. The game needs to be "good enough", this is a point at which almost all successful companies eventually arrive at.
2) To this point...in order to sell models, likewise some models need rules balanced up or down to ensure these models keep selling. GW has access to their own sales numbers and are capable of looking at spreadsheets and saying "Damn, no one has purchased X in four months...". So again, this will mean they will consider balancing these models just enough to make them more appealing sales-wise. The bonus is that it may also slightly balance the game....but game balance is not the driving factor behind this.
In other words, GW wants both. They bump units to sell them, and by doing so also gain some favor with players and consumers. It's a double-win for them. They're not doing it for the "good of the game" they're doing it to stay in the business of selling models. Nobody should fault them for that, or complain or chide them for it. It's their job.
Elbows wrote: I'm not sure why these discussions always have an air of "conspiracy" about them, as if basic business principles are difficult to comprehend. There's nothing secretive about it.
1) GW has no vested interest in a perfectly balanced, and nuanced game. They need a game to be balanced "enough" to continue selling models - which is priority numero uno. While I don't doubt GW employees enthusiasm for the product, GW is smart enough as a business to realize that additional resources, time and investment in perfecting the game is wasted money and effort. The game needs to be "good enough", this is a point at which almost all successful companies eventually arrive at.
2) To this point...in order to sell models, likewise some models need rules balanced up or down to ensure these models keep selling. GW has access to their own sales numbers and are capable of looking at spreadsheets and saying "Damn, no one has purchased X in four months...". So again, this will mean they will consider balancing these models just enough to make them more appealing sales-wise. The bonus is that it may also slightly balance the game....but game balance is not the driving factor behind this.
In other words, GW wants both. They bump units to sell them, and by doing so also gain some favor with players and consumers. It's a double-win for them. They're not doing it for the "good of the game" they're doing it to stay in the business of selling models. Nobody should fault them for that, or complain or chide them for it. It's their job.
When I say something for a fact I get told I'm crazy so I keep it reeled back like a conspiracy theory.
Elbows wrote: I'm not sure why these discussions always have an air of "conspiracy" about them, as if basic business principles are difficult to comprehend. There's nothing secretive about it.
1) GW has no vested interest in a perfectly balanced, and nuanced game. They need a game to be balanced "enough" to continue selling models - which is priority numero uno. While I don't doubt GW employees enthusiasm for the product, GW is smart enough as a business to realize that additional resources, time and investment in perfecting the game is wasted money and effort. The game needs to be "good enough", this is a point at which almost all successful companies eventually arrive at.
2) To this point...in order to sell models, likewise some models need rules balanced up or down to ensure these models keep selling. GW has access to their own sales numbers and are capable of looking at spreadsheets and saying "Damn, no one has purchased X in four months...". So again, this will mean they will consider balancing these models just enough to make them more appealing sales-wise. The bonus is that it may also slightly balance the game....but game balance is not the driving factor behind this.
In other words, GW wants both. They bump units to sell them, and by doing so also gain some favor with players and consumers. It's a double-win for them. They're not doing it for the "good of the game" they're doing it to stay in the business of selling models. Nobody should fault them for that, or complain or chide them for it. It's their job.
If it is their job to make money, it is the player's job to be mad when the company does not give you exactly what you want. We are obligated to pur own best interest, and if you prefer the game be more balanced, then it is your obligation to tell the company that you want better.
Nobody is faulting GW for wanting money. They are instead faulting them for not delivering a product that reached their standards.
Daedalus81 wrote: Robin literally just confirmed that IK wasn't in the wild when they started working on CA.
The conspiracy stuff is really obnoxious.
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hobojebus wrote: , not when your pushing out codex after codex so fast.
And we have...two left now? Last year was pretty exceptional in terms of releases.
This is no excuse! They should have delayed CA until they had a clear idea of how everything interacts. Right now it feels like they're trying to patch a game version that came out 7 or 10 updates ago while the current updates are bringing lots of bugs with them.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Pandabeer wrote: Just a little something: There was no way Ork points costs were going to change in CA, the codex was way too recent for that.
Nobody here said they were... we were hoping that the codex would take into account CA as they were probably wrote at the same time but obviously they didn't has PK and now more expensive than PF and so are several more weapons of the same profile. We know GW wants them to be the same price as they have changed them to be the same twice now.
This is exactly it. It's great they're patching the game. But they're patching the game from months ago, not the game as it currently stands. They're always going to be chasing their tails trying to fix stuff that has already changed because they respond so slowly.
Well I've watched that podcast and one of them who owns a store says that CA is actually killing the market big time then I heard from someone else that it's also hurting GW big time...
Basically, nobody wants to buy anything from the stores because they're waiting for CA... This, in its self, isn't bad but it is super bad when it happens at the biggest selling time of the year, Christmas. Nobody bought anything from the stores when they should have been selling boat loads... and apparently this might also be affecting GW as people wait for CA they spend their Christmas present money on other things as they become impatient so when CA comes out they have less money to spend on GW.... CA should be left until summertime or just before Black Friday (i think someone said this above). This way they get all the data they need from play testers and they don't strangle their own market!
I myself will not be buying CA though because A. I have Battlescribe. and B. I refuse to pay for points. And I refuse to pay for fixes to the game!
I have to agree that GW doesn't intentionally make OP rules for new releases but more so that their ability to figure out balance without vocal feedback from the player base is quite abysmal. If you want to see what blatant "rules to boost sales" looks like then just flip back to the Necron codex of 7th and the codex/supplement releases followed. There efforts to stimulate sales with blatant power creep (it sure as heck worked for those Necron sales) was slowly killing the game and 8th is the (unfortunate) byproduct of GW trying to fix the mess they themselves created. I think GW is aware of the risk/reward of OP releases but as long as the sales figures look good by acting like balance matters and not resorting to blatant power creep then they won't go down the selling power route too heavily (paying money for CA to get points decreases does signal that selling power is marketable). If numbers stagnate or drop then I would expect to see some of those more extreme changes to keep the numbers looking good for investors.
I do think that the way the community seems to buy basically anything GW puts out is sending them the message that putting out gak with their brand slapped on it will sell well enough to justify its production.
Lets say they did have a reverse creep in mind when they started 8th ed. It would have been ok, if they kept the style. But somehow they have IG or eldar and GK in the same game. I don't think they are fixing anything, the book seem too random in power level. The gaps in power are so big, that something crazy like designers writing armies they like with better rules as better, seems possible. And that would be crazy considering this a huge company.
I think it'll remain to be seen if ALL marine equivalents suck. The more elite marines (Deathwatch, vanilla vets, thousand sons, plague marines) seem like they got pretty substantial boosts.
What did the plagu marines or 1ksons get? Serious question, I only seen the leak, and it didn't look as if anything got cheaper.
Thousand Sons, Death Guard, and pretty much all elite marine-equivalents got 2pt per model drops, in the case of the tsons their weapon upgrades went down significantly (Terminators also got a hefty drop).
Deathwatch are the ones I think to watch. To Death...watch. Storm shields on every guy AND a marine equivalent that can actually put out some appreciable alpha-strike damage and do something that other units don't do (poison 2+ woundspam). The Tsons and DG are interesting to me because theyre actually reasonably durable, with the Tsons getting their 5++ and the "+1 to all save types vs 1 damage weapons" making them really tough to remove with lasguns.
Thousand Sons and Guardsmen standing there and shooting each other in the face actually goes in favor (in terms of points of models killed) of the thousand sons even if the guardsmen have FRFSRF. Same with storm shield deathwatch vs guardsman. That's not even considering the guardsman to be a "5.5" point model, which I usually do because I give them FRFSRF so there's a 30-point commander for every 20 guard, upping their points effectively by 1.5ppm.
The real key I think is that units that can get the (now massively cheap) storm shields or another source of good defense that works against anti-elite firepower are now able to remove what was before a glaring weakness and can participate in a slugfest with screen units successfully.You can still level your overcharged plasma against a full squad of 20ppm deathwatch veterans with storm shields, but you're going to be a lot less happy about it.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Heh. You know, that's a thought. Proxy your GK as Death watch with storm shields (that's their "psychic barrier!")
They got good narines, they got far and away the best termies, armed with roughly the same stuff.
When the points were updated in 8th edition, most of the prior edition armies clocking at 1850 became little over 2000 (ranging anywhere from 100~300 points). The average number of models as a result was reduced compared to that of prior editions.
The point change merely re-sets the average model count to closer to how it was in editions prior - meaning all CA does is allowing you pull out those models off the shelves again.
Maybe, just MAYBE GW could push sales for another box or so, but not as exaggerated as this post/TLW podcast seems to suggest.
They don't want to sell you a single army, they want you to buy from other ranges too. That's how they're targeting you.
Power levels creeping and being obviously uneven is, IMO, an obvious marketing decision taken to spur sales amongst the competitive meta crowd.
Again, they're a business. They exist to take your money. They're not your friend.
This is the problem, as my partner (a business woman (yes, she makes the money)) says... GW seem to be really in it for the short term but this is extremely bad for their financial future. They need a fine balance of wanting money and making the consumer happy with the illusion of friendship. Especially in this modern world where more and more nerdy companies are coming up that seem like better alternatives and seem more like they care about me (I know they never do but the feeling of it makes me buy more of their stuff). Years ago I would have never have thought I'd be playing anything other than 40k, but now I play a huge range of different games because alternatives do exist from companies that offer free rules, that offer models at a reasonable price and have games that seem somewhat balanced. Don't get me wrong, I love 40k (mainly as a hobby rather than a game) but games and other companies have got my attention now and I'm spending about 50% of what I used to on GW because of this.
On the flipside, people have been saying that GW is making short-sighted decisions that are sure to cripple them for at least fifteen years, to my knowledge, and so far it hasn't.
Excommunicatus wrote: On the flipside, people have been saying that GW is making short-sighted decisions that are sure to cripple them for at least fifteen years, to my knowledge, and so far it hasn't.
15 years is both a long and super short amount of time in the business world.
Excommunicatus wrote: On the flipside, people have been saying that GW is making short-sighted decisions that are sure to cripple them for at least fifteen years, to my knowledge, and so far it hasn't.
8th ed has only been out for about 1.5 years - short-sighted decisions would still take years to affect them.
FYI, GW stock plummeted recently and hasn't gotten back up to where it was yet.
Excommunicatus wrote: On the flipside, people have been saying that GW is making short-sighted decisions that are sure to cripple them for at least fifteen years, to my knowledge, and so far it hasn't.
8th ed has only been out for about 1.5 years - short-sighted decisions would still take years to affect them.
FYI, GW stock plummeted recently and hasn't gotten back up to where it was yet.
I had predicted that Games Workshop's stock bump wouldn't last maybe a year ago. Expect it to start recovery around February before it spirals. Though, that assumes Games Workshop does nothing to deal with it, and that's not going to happen. They'll have noticed and be making actions designed to recover stockholder's faith in the long-term success of the company.
Excommunicatus wrote: On the flipside, people have been saying that GW is making short-sighted decisions that are sure to cripple them for at least fifteen years, to my knowledge, and so far it hasn't.
8th ed has only been out for about 1.5 years - short-sighted decisions would still take years to affect them.
FYI, GW stock plummeted recently and hasn't gotten back up to where it was yet.
Oh, well, that shallow and simplistic analysis proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt.
There's definitely nothing at all currently going incredibly badly in Britain that would impact a company that makes a fair-share of its revenue from exports.
My parrot died, my grandad died, therefore my grandad was a parrot. They're called syllogisms.
Excommunicatus wrote: On the flipside, people have been saying that GW is making short-sighted decisions that are sure to cripple them for at least fifteen years, to my knowledge, and so far it hasn't.
8th ed has only been out for about 1.5 years - short-sighted decisions would still take years to affect them.
FYI, GW stock plummeted recently and hasn't gotten back up to where it was yet.
I had predicted that Games Workshop's stock bump wouldn't last maybe a year ago. Expect it to start recovery around February before it spirals. Though, that assumes Games Workshop does nothing to deal with it, and that's not going to happen. They'll have noticed and be making actions designed to recover stockholder's faith in the long-term success of the company.
Who knows what British stocks are going to do next year?
Inspired me to do some calculations, the thing is after I appreciate Castellans weapons its gravely underpriced compared to post-CA18 Land Raider.
I picked out point costs from battlescribe for the total cost of Knight:
Plasma Decimator = 7 plasma gun equivalents (can be argued higher because double range)
Volcano Lance = 7.5 Lascannon equivalents
2x Twin Siegebreaker Cannon = 4 Autocannon equivalents
2x Shieldbreaker Missile = 1 Lascannon equivalent (but offers ++save removal so it's more valuable in reality)
2x Twin meltagun = 4 meltagun equivalents
So counting this together we arrive to conclusion that Knight Castellan pays 218.5 points for W 28, T8, 3+, 5++ body.
Meanwhile Land Raider pays 200 points for W 16, T8, 2+, X++ body.
Castellan pays 7.80 points per T8 Wound
Land Raider pays 12.5 points per T8 Wound
Counting the Knight Castellans cost using Land Raiders points per W ratio I arrive that Castellan with above loadout should cost 735.5 points (funnily close to the absolute maximum of 750 given in Long War's podcast)
Vice-versa using Castellan's ratio Land Raider should cost 125 points for it's body. And as Land Raider got -40 pts decrease in 1.5 years we can expect roughly balanced Land Raider 2021 or so.
Should I add that Castellan can leave melee and fire weapons afterwards and can fire heavy weapons after moving without the -1 to hit penalty. Land Raider is missing both of these attributes and does not have invulnerable save so it should pay less for it's wounds.
So there, Knight Castellan is gravely undercosted relative to Land Raider. Knight Codex is 0.5 years old, no adjustments, meanwhile Codex CSM is out 1.5 years, pitiful balances and Land Raiders still unplayable as long as you can get units like Knight Castellan for that point-power-ratio.
They don't want to sell you a single army, they want you to buy from other ranges too. That's how they're targeting you.
Power levels creeping and being obviously uneven is, IMO, an obvious marketing decision taken to spur sales amongst the competitive meta crowd.
Again, they're a business. They exist to take your money. They're not your friend.
They don't have to be my friends, and I don't have any problems with them making money. But they are selling a product that doesn't work. No where in any rule book does it say that GK can't be played mono. In fact when 8th ed started GW said that they want to bring back focus to mono armies, in the last CAGK had a focus article about how they are going to be made bettter. they even said how they would get better. But they didn't deliver any of the stuff they promised, the point drops do not make people want to try out paladins,purfires, or any of the other GK options. All they "fixed" was making stuff that was already taken cheaper, and GW said they are going to nerf such units.
If a w40k was a car or a shoes, you could demand a refund, because they stuff GW sells was sold not working.
GW, needs a major updating... like... what happened to that 40k app they said they were going to make? That seemed to have gone all dark and they refuse to talk about it now. XD
They don't want to sell you a single army, they want you to buy from other ranges too. That's how they're targeting you.
Power levels creeping and being obviously uneven is, IMO, an obvious marketing decision taken to spur sales amongst the competitive meta crowd.
Again, they're a business. They exist to take your money. They're not your friend.
They don't have to be my friends, and I don't have any problems with them making money. But they are selling a product that doesn't work. No where in any rule book does it say that GK can't be played mono. In fact when 8th ed started GW said that they want to bring back focus to mono armies, in the last CAGK had a focus article about how they are going to be made bettter. they even said how they would get better. But they didn't deliver any of the stuff they promised, the point drops do not make people want to try out paladins,purfires, or any of the other GK options. All they "fixed" was making stuff that was already taken cheaper, and GW said they are going to nerf such units.
If a w40k was a car or a shoes, you could demand a refund, because they stuff GW sells was sold not working.
You've tried this 'logic' before.
GK work perfectly well for the vast majority of people who aren't into the competitive scene. What you've done is you've bought a Yugo to race at Le Mans and now you're upset you're losing.
Caveat emptor, innit? Again, GW want you to spend your money on another army. You're claiming this is some sort of grand deceit because they don't do what you want them to do, but the fact is that you could easily have researched and made a better decision.
Seriously though, I haven't bought both CA yet. I look at my Oculus Rift... I paid high amount for it and I hear when it first came out it wasn't up to the standards I would have expected... The kit/hardware itself was amazing (40k models) but the software(or in 40k's scene the rules) was just not working. However, it was a new product and people gave it a chance and I could see they were hard at work fixing that (look at EA the most evil games company there is (literally evil, not even business evil... they have done illegal stuff out of the wazooo!) even they actually have a dedicated team working to patch their games and bring out an update once a week). And now the Oculus Rift is amazing and I have almost 0 complaints with both the hardware and software. However, imagine if I had bought this product for £400 and plugged it into my computer and a message came up saying "Okay, we fixed some of the issues that came out 8 months ago, we're still working on this stuff though maybe we'll fix it twice a year... That will be £60 for you to even install the full software to use the product". They would be shut down! The only reason 40k is continuing to get away with selling patches to their game is because old dedicated players are used to doing it... However, as soon as we all refuse to buy CA and just use Battlescribe then they might start doing it has a free pdf and just sell fluff and rules in CA. However, I say that... knowing how spoiled and out oft ouch GW can be they'd probably just sue battlescribe, lose the law suit and then only allow us to see points if we go into GW and pay the staff £10 to see a special screen with points on it that changes every day.
GK work perfectly well for the vast majority of people who aren't into the competitive scene. What you've done is you've bought a Yugo to race at Le Mans and now you're upset you're losing.
Dude I don't play in tournaments. And I get destroyed by people playing eldar, IG, tyranids or chaos. Only time I had a more or less balanced game was when I played against a guy with a primaris army made out of starter boxs, no Gulliman. But then the guy switched to DW, bought a castellan and custodes and the fun was gone.
I don't know what a yugo or le mans means.
Caveat emptor, innit?
???
Again, GW want you to spend your money on another army. You're claiming this is some sort of grand deceit because they don't do what you want them to do, but the fact is that you could easily have researched and made a better decision.
dude I get it. they want to make money. I have no problem with that. But this is like making an army bad and not fixing it, just to make people spend more money. If a company made phones that would break down on purpose, they would get sued. And I did research, I checked their site, asked the store owner. Played a few games and first asked on 4chan, when everyone just insulting polish people, and then here. And If I remember right, the first advice I got was people making fun about people that start GK.
Ah and since the time I started, and GW said themselfs that they know that GK are not that good, GW had put out 2 CAs and 4 FAQs. They fixed nothing. I would understand them not fixing stuff, if they had a policy of no errata/no faq, and CA did not exist.
For clarity, nothing I say should be interpreted as giving GW a free pass. They do make unjustifiable mistakes and they are sometimes incompetent.
I just don't think either applies here.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
You don't have to play in tournaments to be part of the competitive crowd.
So by your own statements you were told GK weren't appropriate for your needs, bought them anyway and now you want to blame GW for that?
Caveat emptor means 'buyer beware'. It's a broad legal principle that states that ultimately the responsibility for ensuring the product you buy fits your needs rest upon you, not the retailer.
Excommunicatus wrote: For clarity, nothing I say should be interpreted as giving GW a free pass. They do make unjustifiable mistakes and they are sometimes incompetent.
I just don't think either applies here.
Yes, I completely agree with you. Keeping Castellan unbalanced (or altenatively keeping the other options unbalanced, whichever way one wants to see the situation) relative to many other options makes financial sense and as we are talking about publicly traded company doing business in highly competed open markets is sound choice financially.
Returning maximum shareholder value is mandated by law by s. 172(1) of the Companies Act 2006 in the U.K. (and by other companies/corporations acts in other jurisdictions), so GW are literally under orders to extract everything they possibly can from us.
Excommunicatus wrote: Returning maximum shareholder value is mandated by law by s. 172(1) of the Companies Act 2006 in the U.K. (and by other companies/corporations acts in other jurisdictions), so GW are literally under orders to extract everything they possibly can from us.
No, they are required to maximize shareholder value, a requirement that includes things like considering future value of the product lines. A cash grab product that has the potential to damage long-term sales by driving away customers is not required by law.
Excommunicatus wrote: Returning maximum shareholder value is mandated by law by s. 172(1) of the Companies Act 2006 in the U.K. (and by other companies/corporations acts in other jurisdictions), so GW are literally under orders to extract everything they possibly can from us.
No, they are required to maximize shareholder value, a requirement that includes things like considering future value of the product lines. A cash grab product that has the potential to damage long-term sales by driving away customers is not required by law.
Probably why I didn't say it was.
s. 172(1) in fact explicitly prohibits such decisions. So what's your point? That you didn't bother reading the source provided but wanted to comment on it anyway?
Excommunicatus wrote: Returning maximum shareholder value is mandated by law by s. 172(1) of the Companies Act 2006 in the U.K. (and by other companies/corporations acts in other jurisdictions), so GW are literally under orders to extract everything they possibly can from us.
No, they are required to maximize shareholder value, a requirement that includes things like considering future value of the product lines. A cash grab product that has the potential to damage long-term sales by driving away customers is not required by law.
Probably why I didn't say it was.
s. 172(1) in fact explicitly prohibits such decisions. So what's your point? That you didn't bother reading the source provided but wanted to comment on it anyway?
Well I went to read it and now I feel like I'm the only one who actually read it.
I don't think CA was about altering the competitive tournament meta.
It was about improving garagehammer or casual pickup games in your FLGS. There are a few exceptions - but I think the majority of units did not transition from "rubbish" to "tournament tier quality". They did however move away from sufficiently far from rubbish that they are not a crushing liability.
Is there a marketing element to this? Sure. If before units were "too bad" to be worth buying you now might consider them because they are better.
More importantly however you have the next level of ignorance. Countless people - who don't post on forums, who are not following the tournament meta, who have no idea about loyal 32s or see knights on every other table etc, buy a unit "because it looks cool". Then they put it on a table, and its awful. (This is basically Karol's Grey Knights complaint for the last... however many months.) That player gets disheartened and drops out of the hobby.
GW have a motive to try and stop that and while you can say its not enough on certain lists most have moved in the right direction.
Again, people have been forceasting - quite unsuccessfully - that GW will crumble any second now because of those types of decisions for at least fifteen years.
In fact, GW's stock price has steadily risen until recently and you can't blame GW for the electorate's idiocy.
Excommunicatus wrote: Again, people have been forceasting - quite unsuccessfully - that GW will crumble any second now because of those types of decisions for at least fifteen years.
In fact, GW's stock price has steadily risen until recently and you can't blame GW for the electorate's idiocy.
Too true. You can, however, do what I’m doing and vote with your feet by not purchasing a book that you feel doesn’t suit your needs.
My money was spent on the Vigilus book and all the lovely new Ork vehicles this year, because that’s the best message I can give GW.
I also find it highly implausible that it takes 8 months to make CA. Is there only 2 people at GW working on this?
Apparently there are six dedicated rules people at GW, so not as low as two, but still not very many. Doubling their team would probably solve a lot of issues and oversights, and it's not like they couldn't afford to do it.
Excommunicatus wrote: No part of my point is that we should be grateful that GW in their munificence has seen fit to grace us with products, for avoidance of doubt.
Absolutely vote with your wallet. That might achieve something. Complaining on the internet almost certainly won't.
Helps with my mental health and enjoyment of the hobby though. I can't enjoy a hobby if I'm not complaining about it at least twice a day!
So.... as I was aying. Where in the hell is that army builder for 40k they promised us like a year ago!
Do not casually dismiss how many people one voice of dissent can reach.
As some who has seen parts of how gw make things here and there I know for a fact they do read the forums. Marketing doesn’t howerver so that might be a problem.
To the original post, I do think that Chapter Approved is a marketing ploy, but the lack of substance is due to GW forgetting why it was a marketing ploy to begin with. It’s a like a car dealership having a end of year sale, but not stocking the advertised vehicles. Less conspiracy, more simple incompetence on the part of GW. I don’t think they realized that the bump at the release of 8th was due to the perception that the gameplay had gotten better, and until they realize that a good game with good rules is one that will draw new players in and make more money than milking the same aging player base they will continue to make crappy decisions.
And yeah, I think they are woefully unaware of the sales “freeze effect” being tied to upcoming rules updates.
This is no excuse! They should have delayed CA until they had a clear idea of how everything interacts. Right now it feels like they're trying to patch a game version that came out 7 or 10 updates ago while the current updates are bringing lots of bugs with them.
Did you not see the thread on GW missing the date for the first big FAQ?
The impact of a new codex takes 6 months before it *should* be assessed. Made worse in that assessing anything during this year's release schedule a bit of a fool's errand.
Then you make it MORE complex in that Castellan's are not currently sweeping tournaments.
I'd concede the point if they didn't release 15 or so codexes plus supplements.
Nobody here said they were... we were hoping that the codex would take into account CA as they were probably wrote at the same time but obviously they didn't has PK and now more expensive than PF and so are several more weapons of the same profile. We know GW wants them to be the same price as they have changed them to be the same twice now.
Oh my god enough with the PKbs. It's higher strength and more base attacks on average. Get over it. We don't know they want them the same price, because they changes were completely out of sync.
So just so we have it clear -
Not changing points = promoting sales
Lowering points = promoting sales, except for GK, of course
Raising points = promoting sales for everything else
Excommunicatus wrote: For clarity, nothing I say should be interpreted as giving GW a free pass. They do make unjustifiable mistakes and they are sometimes incompetent.
I just don't think either applies here.
Yes, I completely agree with you. Keeping Castellan unbalanced (or altenatively keeping the other options unbalanced, whichever way one wants to see the situation) relative to many other options makes financial sense and as we are talking about publicly traded company doing business in highly competed open markets is sound choice financially.
If, as I've seen stated, GW were working on CA18 before the Imperial Knights book was released, how exactly do you expect them to have the data to determine there may be an issue with the Castellan?
Oh my god enough with the PKbs. It's higher strength and more base attacks on average. Get over it. We don't know they want them the same price, because they changes were completely out of sync.
The price of a weapon is separate from the price of a unit. Nobz pay for their extra strength and attacks in their profile. They also have a much worse save and slower movement.
A PK is functionally identical to a PF, therefore they should have the exact same points cost. The MODEL that uses the weapon should be pointed different to account for its different stats. Lolman has this absolutely right and this is something GW have themselves stated.
The changes to the PK and PF have been in sync for an number of armies actually and so far GW has moved the price of the PK to be in line with the PF.
It’s a complete misstep by GW that has made our codex somewhat outdated after its release.
Oh my god enough with the PKbs. It's higher strength and more base attacks on average. Get over it. We don't know they want them the same price, because they changes were completely out of sync.
The price of a weapon is separate from the price of a unit. Nobz pay for their extra strength and attacks in their profile. They also have a much worse save and slower movement.
A PK is functionally identical to a PF, therefore they should have the exact same points cost. The MODEL that uses the weapon should be pointed different to account for its different stats. Lolman has this absolutely right and this is something GW have themselves stated.
The changes to the PK and PF have been in sync for an number of armies actually and so far GW has moved the price of the PK to be in line with the PF.
It’s a complete misstep by GW that has made our codex somewhat outdated after its release.
This has been proven false multiple times. You cannot price the stats fully on the model or the stats of the weapon fully on the weapon.
PK having an higher cost than a PF has a logic behind it, get over it.
I also find it highly implausible that it takes 8 months to make CA. Is there only 2 people at GW working on this?
Apparently there are six dedicated rules people at GW, so not as low as two, but still not very many.
Fascinating. Source?
This is pretty much common knowledge. I have frequently attended Warhammer world open days where you get an opportunity to speak to the staff and members of the rules team are always on hand and yes there are only 6 of them. These 6 guys are responsible for ALL the rules for AoS, 40k, warhammer underworlds(shadespire) and all the boxed games like tTitanicus etc. There just isn't enough of them!
Off the top of my head,
Robin Cruddace
Phil Kelly
Simon Grant
Jervis Johnson
and I can't recall the other 2. I have spoken to all of these guys in the past. They exclusively as a team write the 40k rules and then take feedback from (paid) playtesters and tournament feedback to tweak them. If any of you are interested in the background working of GW listening to the honest wargamer podcast frequently gives you this insight. The show host is Rob Symes who is an ex GW employee and was the one that started the warhammer live stream. Its a great show because while they don't pull any punches when discussing GW inner workings they are also fans.
No one can say whether CA is definitively one way or the other because the rules team won't reveal that info but its certainly not a conspiracy theory to suggest that these are manipulated by sales targets. The honest wargamer says this all the time.
I think CA is driven by the rules team wanting to make the game more balanced while fighting the imperative from above their heads to sell more of xyz models. But now my conspiracy theory hat on says that I think its one of several steps to change the game to the way they want it. I think from now onwards we will see sweeping changes in faq's and CA and campaign books. Theyve spent the first 18 months getting the framework (codices) in place now they will start tweaking it.
To those angry at GK being slowly more and more unplayable as a mono (including myself) if you looke at the precednet set for AoS and how theyve phased out whole armies before. I woulod recommend not buying another GK model. They will continue to get base service in rules but I can't see them ever becoming a future contender for even middle tier 40k.
This is no excuse! They should have delayed CA until they had a clear idea of how everything interacts. Right now it feels like they're trying to patch a game version that came out 7 or 10 updates ago while the current updates are bringing lots of bugs with them.
Buuuulllshiii
Did you not see the thread on GW missing the date for the first big FAQ?
The impact of a new codex takes 6 months before it *should* be assessed. Made worse in that assessing anything during this year's release schedule a bit of a fool's errand.
Then you make it MORE complex in that Castellan's are not currently sweeping tournaments.
I'd concede the point if they didn't release 15 or so codexes plus supplements.
Nobody here said they were... we were hoping that the codex would take into account CA as they were probably wrote at the same time but obviously they didn't has PK and now more expensive than PF and so are several more weapons of the same profile. We know GW wants them to be the same price as they have changed them to be the same twice now.
Oh my god enough with the PKbs. It's higher strength and more base attacks on average. Get over it. We don't know they want them the same price, because they changes were completely out of sync.
So just so we have it clear -
Not changing points = promoting sales
Lowering points = promoting sales, except for GK, of course
Raising points = promoting sales for everything else
Point A. No way is this BS. They are outright behind on their updates and doing a big change like this at Christmas does more to hurt sales and the game itself than actually help it. They are incompetent and I'll stick to my orginal point: trying to fix and balance a gamr with a 8 month lagnis like trying to patch a game without taking into account 8 months worth of updates. As a coder this would outright break your game as scripts conflict with scripts and we are seeing this with GW, not only in 8th edition as they don't take into account recent stuff, but also with their past editions. If I had my way we would have all used the index for over a year and they would have actually worked on the Codexes together to balance them all with each other while taking into account the suggestions of the public. Right now the game is so unstable... as a casual player I stop playing for a month and I comeback and the game just seems to have changed with changes that should have been there from the start. I just don't see how we get angry at games like Fallout 76 when 40k is just as buggy and charges us for patches!
Point 2. This is exsactly what people said when the index came out and PK were more expensive. It was soon seen to be unbalanced and so GW made them the same price in CA 2017. Now they're off again.
Oh my god enough with the PKbs. It's higher strength and more base attacks on average. Get over it. We don't know they want them the same price, because they changes were completely out of sync.
The price of a weapon is separate from the price of a unit. Nobz pay for their extra strength and attacks in their profile. They also have a much worse save and slower movement.
A PK is functionally identical to a PF, therefore they should have the exact same points cost. The MODEL that uses the weapon should be pointed different to account for its different stats. Lolman has this absolutely right and this is something GW have themselves stated.
The changes to the PK and PF have been in sync for an number of armies actually and so far GW has moved the price of the PK to be in line with the PF.
It’s a complete misstep by GW that has made our codex somewhat outdated after its release.
This has been proven false multiple times. You cannot price the stats fully on the model or the stats of the weapon fully on the weapon.
PK having an higher cost than a PF has a logic behind it, get over it.
Apart from you're wrong and the game designers them selves said that you're wrong and have evidence that you're wrong. So you get over the fact that you're wrong. In fact, even in this case guards PFs being cheaper is wrong and I can see flaws. Under your system it's okay that the guard at 4pts model can have S8 attacks (catachan trait) while a marine has exsactly the same but pays more? The whole point them being the same price is that the base models are widely different while the weapon should be the same. And it's not just PKs... heavy flamers, heavy bolters, twinlinked weapons, all cheaper in comparison to orks now.
Elbows wrote: I'm not sure why these discussions always have an air of "conspiracy" about them, as if basic business principles are difficult to comprehend. There's nothing secretive about it.
1) GW has no vested interest in a perfectly balanced, and nuanced game. They need a game to be balanced "enough" to continue selling models - which is priority numero uno. While I don't doubt GW employees enthusiasm for the product, GW is smart enough as a business to realize that additional resources, time and investment in perfecting the game is wasted money and effort. The game needs to be "good enough", this is a point at which almost all successful companies eventually arrive at.
2) To this point...in order to sell models, likewise some models need rules balanced up or down to ensure these models keep selling. GW has access to their own sales numbers and are capable of looking at spreadsheets and saying "Damn, no one has purchased X in four months...". So again, this will mean they will consider balancing these models just enough to make them more appealing sales-wise. The bonus is that it may also slightly balance the game....but game balance is not the driving factor behind this.
In other words, GW wants both. They bump units to sell them, and by doing so also gain some favor with players and consumers. It's a double-win for them. They're not doing it for the "good of the game" they're doing it to stay in the business of selling models. Nobody should fault them for that, or complain or chide them for it. It's their job.
Point 1 pretty much nails it so far as I can see. GW want the game to be playable and enjoyable in a wide variety of gaming environments but are not in the business of putting all of their focus onto just one - competitive play.
From a certain viewpoint they are nearly there already. If you look at the stats over a lot of games at https://www.40kstats.com/faction-breakdown-report most factions are in the range that you should reasonably expect to win 2-3 games out of a 5 game weekend tournament with most factions. There are a couple of outliers that have issues (e.g. GK, Ynnari) but mostly the rest of it comes down to the usual mixes of luck and skill. Despite the opinions we see on threads such as this I would imagine the GW management and design teams would be intensely relaxed if all the factions fell into that 2-3 win average range and consider it mostly job done a the faction level. The fact that this set of points changes were more about internal balance issues than cross-faction balance issues indicates to me that the designers are picking up on this feedback and are aiming for "good enough" balance.
We have had ex-insiders tell us that there is no real flow of information from sales to the rules designers, in which case any idea that they see and respond to a decline in sales would be mistaken. They may however be receiving feedback from the playtest team - most of whom run tournaments - regarding units rarely seen in the tournament environment and which therefore are candidates for looking at rebalancing upwards.
GW should, of course, move to digital point casting as to make sure that points can be updated more frequently.
Regarding CA I think the problem with CA is more that they've been doing catch up with the codexes that CA hasn't been useful for anything except changing point values that are often changed months in advance of actual release.
However, we are now entering a period where all the codexes are about to be done and they can start to release campaign books and standalone models and it is there where I think the CA could potentially shine: as a collected codex of all single-model releases over the year or years. So that when you want to field several models that are each in their own campaign book they could simply release Chapter Approved collecting all those releases into an easily referenced source.
Oh my god enough with the PKbs. It's higher strength and more base attacks on average. Get over it. We don't know they want them the same price, because they changes were completely out of sync.
The price of a weapon is separate from the price of a unit. Nobz pay for their extra strength and attacks in their profile. They also have a much worse save and slower movement.
A PK is functionally identical to a PF, therefore they should have the exact same points cost. The MODEL that uses the weapon should be pointed different to account for its different stats. Lolman has this absolutely right and this is something GW have themselves stated.
The changes to the PK and PF have been in sync for an number of armies actually and so far GW has moved the price of the PK to be in line with the PF.
It’s a complete misstep by GW that has made our codex somewhat outdated after its release.
You see how a terminator costs more than a marine? It's paying for a wound and armor, because the *actual cost of a model with T4 W2 4+ is NOT 7 points*. Do you see where terminators pay a different cost for power fists than marines?
Point A. No way is this BS. They are outright behind on their updates and doing a big change like this at Christmas does more to hurt sales and the game itself than actually help it. They are incompetent and I'll stick to my orginal point: trying to fix and balance a gamr with a 8 month lagnis like trying to patch a game without taking into account 8 months worth of updates. As a coder this would outright break your game as scripts conflict with scripts and we are seeing this with GW, not only in 8th edition as they don't take into account recent stuff, but also with their past editions. If I had my way we would have all used the index for over a year and they would have actually worked on the Codexes together to balance them all with each other while taking into account the suggestions of the public. Right now the game is so unstable... as a casual player I stop playing for a month and I comeback and the game just seems to have changed with changes that should have been there from the start. I just don't see how we get angry at games like Fallout 76 when 40k is just as buggy and charges us for patches!
So, if a big change like CA does more to hurt sales for Christmas, and it comes it really close to Christmas - even *after* the boxes mean to be available in time *for* Christmas, but it's still a marketing ploy?
You've also made the mistake of separating CA from the FAQs. They *did* attempt to address the Loyal 32 with the CP changes. Changes must be kept in context of everything changed.
You also can't make broad changes and see saw balance constantly - that's a horrible approach.
Automatically Appended Next Post: A couple other items.
1) Its patently absurd to bring up catachan power fists. They do not have whole squads with fists and are not even part of the points scope.
Do you pay extra for klaws on goffs or skarboyz?
2) CA has more content for stuff outside matches play than in. Its total hubris to think if they don't adjust points that the money machine grinds to a halt.
Have you ever been to a Golden Daemon competition? Those models never see the table. Have you ever seen the meme about piles of unbuilt models while still buying more and said, yea that's me?
Not changing points = promoting sales
Lowering points = promoting sales, except for GK, of course
Raising points = promoting sales for everything else
Add "I bought an army composed of only the best stuff, and the fact GW has has changed it is clearly a trick to make me buy other units rather than attempt to balance the game".
Wish they had gutted the Castellan though. Something about the guy in the OP's video squealing about how "it wouldn't be fair" really irked me.
Oh my god enough with the PKbs. It's higher strength and more base attacks on average. Get over it. We don't know they want them the same price, because they changes were completely out of sync.
The price of a weapon is separate from the price of a unit. Nobz pay for their extra strength and attacks in their profile. They also have a much worse save and slower movement.
A PK is functionally identical to a PF, therefore they should have the exact same points cost. The MODEL that uses the weapon should be pointed different to account for its different stats. Lolman has this absolutely right and this is something GW have themselves stated.
The changes to the PK and PF have been in sync for an number of armies actually and so far GW has moved the price of the PK to be in line with the PF.
It’s a complete misstep by GW that has made our codex somewhat outdated after its release.
This has been proven false multiple times. You cannot price the stats fully on the model or the stats of the weapon fully on the weapon.
PK having an higher cost than a PF has a logic behind it, get over it.
Apart from you're wrong and the game designers them selves said that you're wrong and have evidence that you're wrong. So you get over the fact that you're wrong. In fact, even in this case guards PFs being cheaper is wrong and I can see flaws. Under your system it's okay that the guard at 4pts model can have S8 attacks (catachan trait) while a marine has exsactly the same but pays more? The whole point them being the same price is that the base models are widely different while the weapon should be the same. And it's not just PKs... heavy flamers, heavy bolters, twinlinked weapons, all cheaper in comparison to orks now.
Considering that the said guardmen still is 33% less effective with it than a marine even with the catachan trait? Yeah, quite fair.
If you have evidence that the cost of a weapon is not tied to the model stats, please provide it, until then you are just getting angry on nonsense.
I would think that the impact of CA on christmas sales is probably lower than we would think. The vast majority of sales are not generated from meta chasing players. Those meta chasers and the slightly more casual but still competitive players would still buy the models that CA buffs before or after christmas.
After all CA itself is a product we have to pay for. My local FLGS is now saying their tournament in Jan will be using CA eternal war missions so its generating its own christmas sales bump. I bought it despite saying I wouldn't because the missions are so good for the game.
Nithaniel wrote: I would think that the impact of CA on christmas sales is probably lower than we would think. The vast majority of sales are not generated from meta chasing players. Those meta chasers and the slightly more casual but still competitive players would still buy the models that CA buffs before or after christmas.
After all CA itself is a product we have to pay for. My local FLGS is now saying their tournament in Jan will be using CA eternal war missions so its generating its own christmas sales bump. I bought it despite saying I wouldn't because the missions are so good for the game.
I have spoken to a lot of seller who say it has huge impact on their sales and they're campaigning to get it changed. Last month one shop sold about $500 worth of 40k which is nothing compared to usual as people held off for CA.
Everyone i know to which i speak to has been helding back purchases while waiting for CA.
Moving it to November would probably be a good move, but i guess that there is some present condition that inhibits something like that or they would do it, they surely like our money.
Oh my god enough with the PKbs. It's higher strength and more base attacks on average. Get over it. We don't know they want them the same price, because they changes were completely out of sync.
The price of a weapon is separate from the price of a unit. Nobz pay for their extra strength and attacks in their profile. They also have a much worse save and slower movement.
A PK is functionally identical to a PF, therefore they should have the exact same points cost. The MODEL that uses the weapon should be pointed different to account for its different stats. Lolman has this absolutely right and this is something GW have themselves stated.
The changes to the PK and PF have been in sync for an number of armies actually and so far GW has moved the price of the PK to be in line with the PF.
It’s a complete misstep by GW that has made our codex somewhat outdated after its release.
You see how a terminator costs more than a marine? It's paying for a wound and armor, because the *actual cost of a model with T4 W2 4+ is NOT 7 points*. Do you see where terminators pay a different cost for power fists than marines?
Point A. No way is this BS. They are outright behind on their updates and doing a big change like this at Christmas does more to hurt sales and the game itself than actually help it. They are incompetent and I'll stick to my orginal point: trying to fix and balance a gamr with a 8 month lagnis like trying to patch a game without taking into account 8 months worth of updates. As a coder this would outright break your game as scripts conflict with scripts and we are seeing this with GW, not only in 8th edition as they don't take into account recent stuff, but also with their past editions. If I had my way we would have all used the index for over a year and they would have actually worked on the Codexes together to balance them all with each other while taking into account the suggestions of the public. Right now the game is so unstable... as a casual player I stop playing for a month and I comeback and the game just seems to have changed with changes that should have been there from the start. I just don't see how we get angry at games like Fallout 76 when 40k is just as buggy and charges us for patches!
So, if a big change like CA does more to hurt sales for Christmas, and it comes it really close to Christmas - even *after* the boxes mean to be available in time *for* Christmas, but it's still a marketing ploy?
You've also made the mistake of separating CA from the FAQs. They *did* attempt to address the Loyal 32 with the CP changes. Changes must be kept in context of everything changed.
You also can't make broad changes and see saw balance constantly - that's a horrible approach.
Automatically Appended Next Post: A couple other items.
1) Its patently absurd to bring up catachan power fists. They do not have whole squads with fists and are not even part of the points scope.
Do you pay extra for klaws on goffs or skarboyz?
2) CA has more content for stuff outside matches play than in. Its total hubris to think if they don't adjust points that the money machine grinds to a halt.
Have you ever been to a Golden Daemon competition? Those models never see the table. Have you ever seen the meme about piles of unbuilt models while still buying more and said, yea that's me?
[spoiler]
You talked about guard only having 1 powerfist but then went on to talk about boyz get a single nobz with a PF... -_- We do have units that can have entire squads with power fists, they're called Nobz and Mega Nobz and we pay the points for the strength in return for losing the armour save, invulns, speed and DS abilities.
As for sales, it hurts everyone but GW. GW themselves only sent like 2 boxes of those big boxes to none GW stores and it seems (from what I have heard) they limited stock availability so when CA came out everyone was forced to go to them.
Oh my god enough with the PKbs. It's higher strength and more base attacks on average. Get over it. We don't know they want them the same price, because they changes were completely out of sync.
The price of a weapon is separate from the price of a unit. Nobz pay for their extra strength and attacks in their profile. They also have a much worse save and slower movement.
A PK is functionally identical to a PF, therefore they should have the exact same points cost. The MODEL that uses the weapon should be pointed different to account for its different stats. Lolman has this absolutely right and this is something GW have themselves stated.
The changes to the PK and PF have been in sync for an number of armies actually and so far GW has moved the price of the PK to be in line with the PF.
It’s a complete misstep by GW that has made our codex somewhat outdated after its release.
This has been proven false multiple times. You cannot price the stats fully on the model or the stats of the weapon fully on the weapon.
PK having an higher cost than a PF has a logic behind it, get over it.
Please provide this ‘proof’. I’d be interested to see it. Please also explain the logic as to why two identical weapons should be priced differently.
Please also explain why GW have themselves stated that equipment is priced separately from a unit by design?
You see how a terminator costs more than a marine? It's paying for a wound and armor, because the *actual cost of a model with T4 W2 4+ is NOT 7 points*. Do you see where terminators pay a different cost for power fists than marines?
Huh that’s odd. I don’t see Sergeants paying for any of their extra stats. In any army. *Almost as if the cost of the sergeant model was already priced into the cost of the unit itself.*
I also find it strange that you believe you know more about how GW price models and their equipment than GW themselves. GW have stated that the price for models in a unit and their equipment is separate by design. They have also shown that identical equipment is priced identically. As you’ve said a PF costs the same regardless of the model that has equipped it. As a PK is FUNCTIONALLY IDENTICAL to a PF, their price should be too, according to GWs own, stated design philosophy.
The PK will become the same price as PF at one point or another, when GW get their act together. As it was when the previous CA was released.
Oh my god enough with the PKbs. It's higher strength and more base attacks on average. Get over it. We don't know they want them the same price, because they changes were completely out of sync.
The price of a weapon is separate from the price of a unit. Nobz pay for their extra strength and attacks in their profile. They also have a much worse save and slower movement.
A PK is functionally identical to a PF, therefore they should have the exact same points cost. The MODEL that uses the weapon should be pointed different to account for its different stats. Lolman has this absolutely right and this is something GW have themselves stated.
The changes to the PK and PF have been in sync for an number of armies actually and so far GW has moved the price of the PK to be in line with the PF.
It’s a complete misstep by GW that has made our codex somewhat outdated after its release.
This has been proven false multiple times. You cannot price the stats fully on the model or the stats of the weapon fully on the weapon.
PK having an higher cost than a PF has a logic behind it, get over it.
Please provide this ‘proof’. I’d be interested to see it. Please also explain the logic as to why two identical weapons should be priced differently.
Please also explain why GW have themselves stated that equipment is priced separately from a unit by design?
You see how a terminator costs more than a marine? It's paying for a wound and armor, because the *actual cost of a model with T4 W2 4+ is NOT 7 points*. Do you see where terminators pay a different cost for power fists than marines?
Huh that’s odd. I don’t see Sergeants paying for any of their extra stats. In any army. *Almost as if the cost of the sergeant model was already priced into the cost of the unit itself.*
I also find it strange that you believe you know more about how GW price models and their equipment than GW themselves. GW have stated that the price for models in a unit and their equipment is separate by design. They have also shown that identical equipment is priced identically. As you’ve said a PF costs the same regardless of the model that has equipped it. As a PK is FUNCTIONALLY IDENTICAL to a PF, their price should be too, according to GWs own, stated design philosophy.
The PK will become the same price as PF at one point or another, when GW get their act together. As it was when the previous CA was released.
Those were your words man, not mine. The burden of the proof is on you.
Show us your GW statement where they say that those two weapons should have the same cost.
If you can do that, we can discuss about this mathematically illogical statement of yours. If not i don't see any merit in continuing this discussion. BTW we are off topic.
We've already won this debate about PK and PF because it will change like it always has and like how I won the last time I had this argument before CA 2017.
Also for people asking earlier I know from a friend who apparently spoke to guy called "Sam Pearson" that said he was the head writer or something for the Ork codex so you can add that to the list of devs if you need too.
Please provide this ‘proof’. I’d be interested to see it. Please also explain the logic as to why two identical weapons should be priced differently.
Please also explain why GW have themselves stated that equipment is priced separately from a unit by design?
Those things are not mutually exclusive and doesn't preclude making decisions in terms of balance. And in case you didn't notice ranged weapons already have a predetermined number of shots regardless of the model, which is quite different from melee.
Power Fist (as on a marine) - 2 S8 attacks - 9 points
Power Fist (as on a guard) - 2 S6 attacks - 8 points
Power Klaw (as on anything) - 3 S10 attacks - 13 points
Explain to me why GW though the IG fist should be cheaper? They're the same equipment!
Why are IG lascannons 20 points instead of 25? They're the same equipment!
A thunder hammer is the same equipment even if it's on a character - why the cost difference?
Huh that’s odd. I don’t see Sergeants paying for any of their extra stats. In any army. *Almost as if the cost of the sergeant model was already priced into the cost of the unit itself.*
I also find it strange that you believe you know more about how GW price models and their equipment than GW themselves. GW have stated that the price for models in a unit and their equipment is separate by design. They have also shown that identical equipment is priced identically. As you’ve said a PF costs the same regardless of the model that has equipped it. As a PK is FUNCTIONALLY IDENTICAL to a PF, their price should be too, according to GWs own, stated design philosophy.
I think you missed the nuance of their statements somewhere along the way. A PF in the same army is the same, because the single model in 10 with fewer attacks getting a discount isn't a big deal. That doesn't mean "identical" weapons across different armies are going to work the same.
Do you honestly the a Sx2 AP3 D3 weapon should be the same on any unit regardless of it's attacks or strength?
Like, say, a Tyrant Guard crushing claw (Sx2 AP3 D3) with S5 and 3 attacks at 12 points with no exploding attacks? If you go down...it's unlikely to be less than what the crushing claw is at.
The sooner you accept reality the happier you'll be.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
lolman1c wrote: We've already won this debate about PK and PF because it will change like it always has and like how I won the last time I had this argument before CA 2017.
Also for people asking earlier I know from a friend who apparently spoke to guy called "Sam Pearson" that said he was the head writer or something for the Ork codex so you can add that to the list of devs if you need too.
In your head you won. PK dropping from an insane point level in CA17 does not guarantee you a drop in the future.
And if you can't understand WHY a PK should be more then I really have to question your process in how you determine balance.
lolman1c wrote: We've already won this debate about PK and PF because it will change like it always has and like how I won the last time I had this argument before CA 2017.
Also for people asking earlier I know from a friend who apparently spoke to guy called "Sam Pearson" that said he was the head writer or something for the Ork codex so you can add that to the list of devs if you need too.
In your head you won. PK dropping from an insane point level in CA17 does not guarantee you a drop in the future.
And if you can't understand WHY a PK should be more then I really have to question your process in how you determine balance.
Wouldn't them changing PKs to be a value that isn't equal actually lend credence to the idea that they are not supposed to be equal, at least in the eyes of GW? They had a chance to make them equal and chose not to. They can't be said to have just forgotten to change it, like with some aberrant points values.
Please provide this ‘proof’. I’d be interested to see it. Please also explain the logic as to why two identical weapons should be priced differently.
Please also explain why GW have themselves stated that equipment is priced separately from a unit by design?
Those things are not mutually exclusive and doesn't preclude making decisions in terms of balance. And in case you didn't notice ranged weapons already have a predetermined number of shots regardless of the model, which is quite different from melee.
Power Fist (as on a marine) - 2 S8 attacks - 9 points
Power Fist (as on a guard) - 2 S6 attacks - 8 points
Power Klaw (as on anything) - 3 S10 attacks - 13 points
Explain to me why GW though the IG fist should be cheaper? They're the same equipment!
Why are IG lascannons 20 points instead of 25? They're the same equipment!
A thunder hammer is the same equipment even if it's on a character - why the cost difference?
Huh that’s odd. I don’t see Sergeants paying for any of their extra stats. In any army. *Almost as if the cost of the sergeant model was already priced into the cost of the unit itself.*
I also find it strange that you believe you know more about how GW price models and their equipment than GW themselves. GW have stated that the price for models in a unit and their equipment is separate by design. They have also shown that identical equipment is priced identically. As you’ve said a PF costs the same regardless of the model that has equipped it. As a PK is FUNCTIONALLY IDENTICAL to a PF, their price should be too, according to GWs own, stated design philosophy.
I think you missed the nuance of their statements somewhere along the way. A PF in the same army is the same, because the single model in 10 with fewer attacks getting a discount isn't a big deal. That doesn't mean "identical" weapons across different armies are going to work the same.
Do you honestly the a Sx2 AP3 D3 weapon should be the same on any unit regardless of it's attacks or strength?
Like, say, a Tyrant Guard crushing claw (Sx2 AP3 D3) with S5 and 3 attacks at 12 points with no exploding attacks? If you go down...it's unlikely to be less than what the crushing claw is at.
The sooner you accept reality the happier you will be.
The funny thing is, as Lolman has already said the precedent has been set already in that the PK should cost as much as the PF. GW made that change in the previous CA and clearly it wasn’t an ‘insane point level’ because as far as I remember the meta wasn’t flooded by Ork PK spam lists.
Yes I believe an identical weapon should be the same across all armies. As I have already stated - the price of THE UNIT is what defines its attacks etc. If I’m paying more for the same weapon and I pay more for the extra attacks I have paid for the same thing twice. “But you get extra attacks at Str 10!!!!!” Yes, this has been paid for with the unit cost and it’s other stats. If I pay for it again in the equipment cost I have paid for this twice.
What you forgot to mention in your above analysis is that the PK wielding Nob has a worse save, worse movement, worse BS, worse leadership etc than the marine. They get no access to a 2 pt 3++. This is why he gets more attacks. This is what allows the cost of the PK/PF to be the same across all armies. Yes the Ork is better in melee, but he also has way worse stats in other areas to compensate. If I pay for the melee benefit in choosing a PK the benefit is lost.
The funny thing is, as Lolman has already said the precedent has been set already in that the PK should cost as much as the PF. GW made that change in the previous CA and clearly it wasn’t an ‘insane point level’ because as far as I remember the meta wasn’t flooded by Ork PK spam lists.
Yes I believe an identical weapon should be the same across all armies. As I have already stated - the price of THE UNIT is what defines its attacks etc. If I’m paying more for the same weapon and I pay more for the extra attacks I have paid for the same thing twice. “But you get extra attacks at Str 10!!!!!” Yes, this has been paid for with the unit cost and it’s other stats. If I pay for it again in the equipment cost I have paid for this twice.
What you forgot to mention in your above analysis is that the PK wielding Nob has a worse save, worse movement, worse BS, worse leadership etc than the marine. They get no access to a 2 pt 3++. This is why he gets more attacks. This is what allows the cost of the PK/PF to be the same across all armies. Yes the Ork is better in melee, but he also has way worse stats in other areas to compensate. If I pay for the melee benefit in choosing a PK the benefit is lost.
First, - the original PK was 25 points - that is an insane cost. The PF was 20 points and was not adjusted in CA17, because the codexes got to it first, mostly.
Let's make a hypothetical game and try to balance it.
Unit A has 2A.
Unit B has the same stats, but 3A. We've determined each extra attack is worth 1 point.
So Unit A is worth x and Unit B is worth X + 1. They each pay 9 points for a PF. We'll let x be 5.
What if we made attacks 2 points each - make sure to update the base cost!
(7 + 9) / 2 = 8
(7 + 2 + 9) / 3 = 6
Still better!
Ok - 3 points!
(9 + 9) / 2 = 9
(9 + 3 + 9) / 3 = 7
Clearly this is a problem that a linear scale can not solve and I highly doubt GW would use a non-linear scale for such an issue. The other option is to make the weapon cost more for Unit B.
And on top of the Tryrant Guard we also have this one:
The Bullgryn Maul - it's the same stats as a Big Choppa. It should be the same cost, right? Nope - 7 points. The Bullgryn is WS3, S5, A3 so what could it possibly be? Maybe it's that Bullgryns get +1A on the charge.
Now, maybe GW missed both the Tyrant Guard and the Bullgryn, but I doubt it.
Furthermore, if the base cost includes all considerations then we wouldn't see marines pay 25 for a LC where guard pay 20. It's not a stretch to think they'd make the same effort for melee weapons.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
lolman1c wrote: Also, if this is the case, how come shooting weapons with the same profile are cheaper on marines who have better BS?
Other than flamer weapons what else is there that is directly comparable and grievously over costed?
Gitdakka wrote: Yes chapter approved was just a marketing hoax. Regular Marines are the obvoious offenders. Collectors allready have loads of them.
Cries for some semblence of balance with points reduction or rules has been heard since day one of 8th. Such balance would not sell miniatures and therefore primaris was given a point drop instead.
It's barely about the game enjoyment at all. They are just trying to steer players into buying the new kits.
I like baseless conspiracy theories. If I may ask, do these "new kits" don't include primaris? Their rules were mediocre for a year, with no drops, only to get a very modest one, man, GW must really hate money. Ditto with new ork buggies, most of the custodes besides bikes, SM superheavy, new Calgar, do these 'collectors' have loads of them already?
An Actual Englishman wrote: Yes I believe an identical weapon should be the same across all armies. As I have already stated - the price of THE UNIT is what defines its attacks etc. If I’m paying more for the same weapon and I pay more for the extra attacks I have paid for the same thing twice. “But you get extra attacks at Str 10!!!!!” Yes, this has been paid for with the unit cost and it’s other stats. If I pay for it again in the equipment cost I have paid for this twice.
The problem here is that means my Dual Pistol Captain is paying a penalty for being good with a Thunder Hammer when he doesn't have a Thunder Hammer. A Thunder Hammer will always be more effective on a WS2+ A4 model than a WS3+ A2 model, but the WS2+ A4 model shouldn't pay more for the chance he might have one. It's actually more fair for weapons to be cost adjusted for different profiles.
Okay, I'm going to try and discuss something other than the stupid PK argument because that's not the purpose of this thread. I want to drill down on this one fact:
HOW DOES GW ONLY HAVE 6 RULES WRITERS!?!?!? This is a company with literally a 1 billion pound market cap (well, maybe close to that; I haven't checked in a couple weeks). They dominate the industry. THEY CAN AND SHOULD DO BETTER. I get frustrated with the rules writers they have sometimes and the decisions they make, but honestly, now that I know it's just 6 of them, it's more like pity.
Seriously, I'd love to see a comparison to FFG or something. Or better yet, a comparison to Wizards of the Coast. I know Magic is a bigger game, but I suspect they employ dozens of people who are dedicated to the rules. 6 rules writers is unacceptable and GW should be ashamed of themselves after this year of raking in money hand over fist.
Elbows wrote: I'm not sure why these discussions always have an air of "conspiracy" about them, as if basic business principles are difficult to comprehend. There's nothing secretive about it.
1) GW has no vested interest in a perfectly balanced, and nuanced game. They need a game to be balanced "enough" to continue selling models - which is priority numero uno. While I don't doubt GW employees enthusiasm for the product, GW is smart enough as a business to realize that additional resources, time and investment in perfecting the game is wasted money and effort. The game needs to be "good enough", this is a point at which almost all successful companies eventually arrive at.
2) To this point...in order to sell models, likewise some models need rules balanced up or down to ensure these models keep selling. GW has access to their own sales numbers and are capable of looking at spreadsheets and saying "Damn, no one has purchased X in four months...". So again, this will mean they will consider balancing these models just enough to make them more appealing sales-wise. The bonus is that it may also slightly balance the game....but game balance is not the driving factor behind this.
In other words, GW wants both. They bump units to sell them, and by doing so also gain some favor with players and consumers. It's a double-win for them. They're not doing it for the "good of the game" they're doing it to stay in the business of selling models.
I don't agree with this line of reasoning, because GW has made rules for units that are so poor that it's to their own detriment. Sure, it's true that they don't have a huge financial incentive to make a perfectly balanced game, but it's ALSO true that there IS a financial incentive to make units, at bare minimum, overpowered. But they can't even do that half the time.
If GW's motivation when designing the rules for units was just "let's make some money" then every new unit that's released would be Riptide/Wraithknight/Imperial Knight tier on release, but they almost never are. In fact I'd go so far as to say that 90% of new models have gak rules on release- just absolutely god awful rules that are only suitable for the most casual and fluffy of games. That's directly harmful to their bottom line. How many people are snatching up Sunshark bombers? Or those Space Marine anti-air vehicles?
My opinion on the motivations of GW has been pretty constant for years: when it comes to rules they're predominantly well meaning but just incompetent. It's not a matter of being ambivalent toward the idea of having a well-written ruleset, it's a matter of having literally no idea HOW to make a well-written ruleset.
Now, as for this...
Nobody should fault them for that, or complain or chide them for it. It's their job.
This is some corporate bootlicker stuff my dude. Unless you are a GW shareholder you have no stake in the future of GW, your only stake is in getting a good product. They aren't giving their models and rules away for free, so as a paying customer you have every right to hold expectations (and make those expectations known to everyone around you) for the product or service that's going after your money.
If your condition for GW getting your hard earned money is that the rules for their models and game have to be good, then GWs only options are to either ignore you and not get your money, or acquiesce to your demand. You aren't obligated to give them a dime for anything.
Gene St. Ealer wrote: Okay, I'm going to try and discuss something other than the stupid PK argument because that's not the purpose of this thread. I want to drill down on this one fact:
HOW DOES GW ONLY HAVE 6 RULES WRITERS!?!?!? This is a company with literally a 1 billion pound market cap (well, maybe close to that; I haven't checked in a couple weeks). They dominate the industry. THEY CAN AND SHOULD DO BETTER. I get frustrated with the rules writers they have sometimes and the decisions they make, but honestly, now that I know it's just 6 of them, it's more like pity.
Seriously, I'd love to see a comparison to FFG or something. Or better yet, a comparison to Wizards of the Coast. I know Magic is a bigger game, but I suspect they employ dozens of people who are dedicated to the rules. 6 rules writers is unacceptable and GW should be ashamed of themselves after this year of raking in money hand over fist.
6 writers are not as undersized as it looks, it's about the correct number for the task.
Mind you, those are the rule "writers", behind them they have a team of editors who make things pretty.
They are also not the ones who personally playtest, they only receive the feedback and write rules accordingly. 6 persons at full time is actually more than i would allocate to an activity like that.
If you think about it, it means that each of them has about 3 or 4 codici to maintain, which is more akin to a part time job than a full time one.
No, 6 writers is more than fine.
The size of the playtest team, now that is a number that i'm eager to know.
Daedalus81 wrote: First, - the original PK was 25 points - that is an insane cost. The PF was 20 points and was not adjusted in CA17, because the codexes got to it first, mostly.
Let's make a hypothetical game and try to balance it.
Unit A has 2A.
Unit B has the same stats, but 3A. We've determined each extra attack is worth 1 point.
So Unit A is worth x and Unit B is worth X + 1. They each pay 9 points for a PF. We'll let x be 5.
What if we made attacks 2 points each - make sure to update the base cost!
(7 + 9) / 2 = 8
(7 + 2 + 9) / 3 = 6
Still better!
Ok - 3 points!
(9 + 9) / 2 = 9
(9 + 3 + 9) / 3 = 7
Clearly this is a problem that a linear scale can not solve and I highly doubt GW would use a non-linear scale for such an issue. The other option is to make the weapon cost more for Unit B.
And on top of the Tryrant Guard we also have this one:
The Bullgryn Maul - it's the same stats as a Big Choppa. It should be the same cost, right? Nope - 7 points. The Bullgryn is WS3, S5, A3 so what could it possibly be? Maybe it's that Bullgryns get +1A on the charge.
Now, maybe GW missed both the Tyrant Guard and the Bullgryn, but I doubt it.
Furthermore, if the base cost includes all considerations then we wouldn't see marines pay 25 for a LC where guard pay 20. It's not a stretch to think they'd make the same effort for melee weapons.
We don't need to do a hypothetical bit of maths focussing only on offensive output in melee because it misses entire swathes of a units' statline that also impact on balance. A PK on a unit with a 4+ save and no access to an invulnerable in melee isn't going to be around as long as a PF on a unit with an inbuilt/easily accessed invulnerable or with a much better save.
Which is why this all falls down. You're making massive assumptions with your maths that don't translate into real game scenarios.
Storm bolters are equivalent to Kustom Shootas. Rapid fire 2 24 range is roughly assault 4 18 range. How much are they on a BS3 model? How much do they cost Orks on BS5 model?
I feel 6 main ruke writers is fine but there does need to be a 2nd level with more people. These are the in house play testers and I'd argue there needs to be just as much as an game testing company (if they still exist since game companies found out they couoe charge you for an Alpha).
Six rules writers sounds about right to me though they must have been very stretched over the past year or two. Too many more than that and you'll start to get cliques, conflicts and just plain the head not knowing what the tails doing (the latter already being a minor issue for them, ruleswise, at times.
Gene St. Ealer wrote: 6 rules writers is unacceptable and GW should be ashamed of themselves after this year of raking in money hand over fist.
How many do you seriously think they need?
As somebody else said, you should probably literally double that number. I don't get how this is controversial. You have 6 people who are basically the intellectual engine for a billion pound company. They probably aren't paid that much, and obviously, as noted, I'm sure they've been stretched severely thin this release (and that's clear given some of the oversights, delays, and baffling choices). Doubling that number means you have twice the brains participating in codex development, which is where rules are written. That's how you make datasheets unique, interesting, and functional. Then you'd assign point values and have playtesters help with that.
I think that the creeping samey blandness of 8th can be directly tied to this lack of rules writers. A small number of writers means less time per codex, which means less time per datasheet, which means less time to come up with innovative rules and mechanics. So instead we fall back to "ZOMG let's add another d6 in here, players love wacky random dice rolls!"
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Dai wrote: Six rules writers sounds about right to me though they must have been very stretched over the past year or two. Too many more than that and you'll start to get cliques, conflicts and just plain the head not knowing what the tails doing (the latter already being a minor issue for them, ruleswise, at times.
I don't know about that -- most of the teams I've worked on in my life have been 10-12 people with one manager, and that doesn't seem unreasonable.
Gene St. Ealer wrote: 6 rules writers is unacceptable and GW should be ashamed of themselves after this year of raking in money hand over fist.
How many do you seriously think they need?
As somebody else said, you should probably literally double that number. I don't get how this is controversial. You have 6 people who are basically the intellectual engine for a billion pound company. They probably aren't paid that much, and obviously, as noted, I'm sure they've been stretched severely thin this release (and that's clear given some of the oversights, delays, and baffling choices). Doubling that number means you have twice the brains participating in codex development, which is where rules are written. That's how you make datasheets unique, interesting, and functional. Then you'd assign point values and have playtesters help with that.
I think that the creeping samey blandness of 8th can be directly tied to this lack of rules writers. A small number of writers means less time per codex, which means less time per datasheet, which means less time to come up with innovative rules and mechanics. So instead we fall back to "ZOMG let's add another d6 in here, players love wacky random dice rolls!"
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Dai wrote: Six rules writers sounds about right to me though they must have been very stretched over the past year or two. Too many more than that and you'll start to get cliques, conflicts and just plain the head not knowing what the tails doing (the latter already being a minor issue for them, ruleswise, at times.
I don't know about that -- most of the teams I've worked on in my life have been 10-12 people with one manager, and that doesn't seem unreasonable.
Fair enough, you're right about general team size. I watched the Jervis Johnson interview on Warhammer TV and it seems he is the head rules honcho for AoS and 40k has their own guy for this. He didn't confirm specifics of company structure obviously but I inferred that there were a least one or two developers under these guys working solely on a system and then a bunch of developers working on both.
He suggested that they don't really consider balance and are more about the actual game design and rule writing and that the balance really comes later after external playtesters look at it.
Dai wrote: Six rules writers sounds about right to me though they must have been very stretched over the past year or two. Too many more than that and you'll start to get cliques, conflicts and just plain the head not knowing what the tails doing (the latter already being a minor issue for them, ruleswise, at times.
Exsactly, look at the Matt Ward era of GW. You have a singular rule writer who pushes their codex to the point it caused the End Times. XD
However, doubling rules writers means GW is doubling the amount they pay out... XD Seriously though, from what I've heard (from former employees who left the comoany about 5 years ago) the pay itself is very low... I know one guy who left to work as standard Tesco's worker because they paid more. Obviously, he wasn't a head rule writer or anything so it's impossible to know but he said it was pretty much like this across the board.
What's suoer funny is that they basically have the inquisition in GW where if you even hint that you're unhappy with pay you'd get jumped on by all the other members who tell you how luck it is that they work for GW. XD said it was like a cult.
Dai wrote: Six rules writers sounds about right to me though they must have been very stretched over the past year or two. Too many more than that and you'll start to get cliques, conflicts and just plain the head not knowing what the tails doing (the latter already being a minor issue for them, ruleswise, at times.
Exsactly, look at the Matt Ward era of GW. You have a singular rule writer who pushes their codex to the point it caused the End Times. XD
However, doubling rules writers means GW is doubling the amount they pay out... XD Seriously though, from what I've heard (from former employees who left the comoany about 5 years ago) the pay itself is very low... I know one guy who left to work as standard Tesco's worker because they paid more. Obviously, he wasn't a head rule writer or anything so it's impossible to know but he said it was pretty much like this across the board.
Right! That's the astounding thing I've heard. I know it's the UK and things are different, but here in the US, a technical writer makes a decent enough (but not fantastic) salary, and I'd think GW rules writers should be comparable to that. GW's shelling out who-knows how much for factory expansion and investing in their manufacturing capital; they should invest a little more in their human and intellectual capital as well.
Trickstick wrote: GW isn't a rule making company. It is a model making company, which uses rules to market and promote the selling of models.
They can repeat this lie until the End Times, it doesn't make it any truer. The fact they produce a game makes them a game company whether they like it or not, and comes with certain obligations.
Anyways the issue with their rules team is the 40k team seems to be the same guys (mostly?) as in the 6th and 7th edition "Forge the Narrative!" days; that is, they are the people who don't care as much about balance but more for throwing down kewl models and having a kewl game with your mates at your flat after a pint at the pub. As a result, they listen to people like the ITC tournament organizers who it's already been shown have forked the game since their house rules change the game fundamentally. Also as I already said, it's the fact GW insists on print instead of digital for 40k so they can't/won't update things a lot faster than twice a year. They should really have quarterly at best updates/tweaks to the game, which are delivered as actual errata and for free like the FAQs, but where they tweak actual datasheets. For instance, if Chaos Marines are lackluster, they would have a review of that (and other units) and then have an update on Warhammer Community that's like hey we reviewed these units and found they aren't where we want them, so here are updated datasheets with point adjustments that are effective immediately.
The AOS team has tournament players helping to design the rules, so they have a vested interest in things at least somewhat balanced (although AOS still has a lot of issues) while the 40k team still seems to be the people who aren't interested in competitive play but are giving a bone because they know it's a popular thing.
Trickstick wrote: GW isn't a rule making company. It is a model making company, which uses rules to market and promote the selling of models.
They can repeat this lie until the End Times, it doesn't make it any truer. The fact they produce a game makes them a game company whether they like it or not, and comes with certain obligations.
Anyways the issue with their rules team is the 40k team seems to be the same guys (mostly?) as in the 6th and 7th edition "Forge the Narrative!" days; that is, they are the people who don't care as much about balance but more for throwing down kewl models and having a kewl game with your mates at your flat after a pint at the pub. As a result, they listen to people like the ITC tournament organizers who it's already been shown have forked the game since their house rules change the game fundamentally. Also as I already said, it's the fact GW insists on print instead of digital for 40k so they can't/won't update things a lot faster than twice a year. They should really have quarterly at best updates/tweaks to the game, which are delivered as actual errata and for free like the FAQs, but where they tweak actual datasheets. For instance, if Chaos Marines are lackluster, they would have a review of that (and other units) and then have an update on Warhammer Community that's like hey we reviewed these units and found they aren't where we want them, so here are updated datasheets with point adjustments that are effective immediately.
The AOS team has tournament players helping to design the rules, so they have a vested interest in things at least somewhat balanced (although AOS still has a lot of issues) while the 40k team still seems to be the people who aren't interested in competitive play but are giving a bone because they know it's a popular thing.
They kinda did repeat this until The End Times then stopped producing a bunch of models and made big changes that got you to buy lots of new models. XD But yes, from my AoS friends I've heard nothing but good from that game. Armies that seem terible still have a chance in causal, and that's what I like to hear.
BaconCatBug wrote: GW need to hire a legal/technical writer to make sure their rules actually work, for once.
They could do this... but why would they? GW only came this far in 8th edition because they left it until the last second until their company was about to collapse in on itself... They've dragged themselves out of their grave by just slightly doing what the customer might want and their stocks show that. The recent stock drops is likely because of t CA (lots of people are selling their shares now in case there is a drop in model sales). Once that is over and summer hits their stocks will rise again and they'll balance out. Right now GW is in a good state... I will always be critical of them as I believe that's the right thing to do (I do enjoy 40k, etc...) but as long as they don't end up like 6th and 7th edition then they'll probably be fine. However, we should not forget if they ended up like the mid 2005-2016 GW then they might end up like that again.
BaconCatBug wrote: GW need to hire a legal/technical writer to make sure their rules actually work, for once.
They could do this... but why would they? GW only came this far in 8th edition because they left it until the last second until their company was about to collapse in on itself... They've dragged themselves out of their grave by just slightly doing what the customer might want and their stocks show that. The recent stock drops is likely because of the from CA and the idea that lots of people are selling now in case there is a drop in model sales. Once that is over and summer hits their stocks will rise again and they'll balance out. Right now GW is in a good state... I will always be critical of them as I believe that's the right thing to do (I do enjoy 40k, etc...) but as long as they don't end up like 6th and 7th edition then they'll probably be fine. However, we should not forget if they ended up like the mid 2005-2016 GW then they might end up like that again.
You make an interesting point and one that is both good and bad: GW's fanbase basically showed them that mediocrity is acceptable by how well received 8th edition is despite still being a horribly unbalanced mess. So why would GW put in more effort when their stock skyrocketed from doing a minimal job?
As somebody else said, you should probably literally double that number. I don't get how this is controversial. .
It's not controversial. You posted a rather hyperbolic rant about how ridiculous it was that they only had 6 rules writers, without mentioning why that was an issue or how big you felt the team should be. Or why you would be more qualified to make that decision than whoever is actually doing that work, for that matter... So people questioned it. Simple cause and effect in action.
We all think of GW as a large company with a lot of staff (and it is) but the design teams have always been pretty small and tight knit. A lot of the same people have been there for a long time, as well. Everything they've said publicly about their design process indicates that it is based almost entirely around concepts they think are cool, mainly for what makes a cool model, and they fill in the details from there. So when they say they're a model company first, believe them. Rules come last and are filled in around what the model designers conceive as a given model's role and capabilities from a narrative standpoint. They're really driven by creativity rather than the actual math behind what they're doing, or what is necessary for balance. Imagine someone like Jes Goodwin sketching a cool idea for a character and writing a few notes about what types of things it and its weapons can do, and then some CAD guys turning that into something that can be produced and the rules guys trying to figure out how to represent it using only a d6.
On top of that, the same relatively few people are doing everything for every game and product they produce. Those six rules writers are writing not only all of the codices for 40k but the rules for games like Kill Team, Speed Freaks, Necromunda and whatever else they come out with. That's why you see them constantly reusing and adapting the same ideas in all of their game systems. They're all mainly the same mechanically with varying degrees of complexity.
Obviously everyone keeps busy and they have a system worked out where they can consistently push out products that are pretty popular, and they clearly are very comfortable with it. They would have to really shift their focus away from the cozy, creative workshop environment they have going and put a lot more emphasis on mechanics in order to wrestle everything under control from a balance perspective. It's just not part of their culture, for better or worse.
Them not having teams for each game (or at least enough to properly spread it out so you don't have to cut corners) is totally on them for not seeing that's the main appeal, though. It's been that way for years: GW thinks they are a model company and bases everything around that, but I'd wager that the vast majority of people who buy their miniatures wouldn't buy it if there wasn't a game.
Totally agree, but I have to question how changing things up would affect everything. We all like the weird, distinct aesthetic and setting as well, and that's the creative product of a handful of people. Would we be willing to sacrifice a portion of the style for more substance? I doubt they would be unless they had to.
I really don't get why people think this is some grand conspiracy to sell models. Obviously GW wants to sell models, no one is disputing that, but if you look beyond just CA I think there is a much more likely reason.
GW is afraid that by invalidating peoples armies it will do a lot more damage to their financial future than if they allow various imbalances to continue.
People get mad and complain when there is imbalance, and some of them may even quit.
But people become absolutely irate and downright nasty when they feel as though they have been cheated out of their money regardless of whether the reason is malicious or not. Especially in this day and age where video games get review bombed (mass negative user reviews) because players feel like content isn't being developed fast enough or that a balance patch broke some item that they liked.
Consider the following:
1) The Index releases at the start of 8e (and their continued legal status in matched play)
2) The way in which primaris space marines were released
3) The mainly point reduction nature of CA 4) Age of Sigmar
While they might seem separate they all have one very strong link of logic, they were specifically done in a way to displace the least number of players as possible.
1)While the indexes didn't include literally every option that ever existed, it did cover the vast majority of model-able options from 7e. This meant that anyone playing during 7e should be able to bring their models WYSIWYG into the new edition. However because GW allowed everyone to do this it also meant that new players could have built these units in the time between then and their codex being released. Overall I don't think GW wants to tell either type of player that they can't use those models anymore.
2) Everything about Primaris seems like basically an attempt to not step on the toes of Classic Marines.
* They lack flexibility like classic marines and instead fill very narrow specific niches.
* They can't simply replace classic marines in existing strategies or lists (can't use old transports)
* They share keywords and are integrated into the main SM Codex, giving the impression that they are to be run in a combined force (aka you can buy them to add to your existing marines rather than simply as a replacement for them)
* They are lore-wise distinct from Classic Marines and described as physically bigger meaning that they have a reason to be run alongside one another as well as a justification to wave away the size discrepancy.
Why would GW be scared to simply say that these are new true-scale marine models that you can replace your army with? Because for the past 5 years GW had been selling an entire range of classic scale marines in the form of the horus heresy which they had been encouraging people to kitbash into their 40k army. And only a year before Primaris were launched they released Burning of Prospero which gave people plastic Tartaros and Custodes, both of which were scaled to classic marines and received 40k rules, and also plastic MK3 which they again encouraged people to use in kitbashing their 40k armies.
3) 8e has been built around the idea of soup from the very start. From the lack of mono-army restriction to the way that detachments and even CP work, I don't doubt for a minute that soup was on the menu when GW planned the edition. I do believe it was ultimately done with benign intentions as it should at a cursory level benefit both GW and the players.
* All players can now use models that they like from related ranges which they previously were previously off-limits due to strict force construction rules.
* GW can now sell existing models to previous customers (cross range sales), and new releases have the added benefit of servicing an entire faction rather than a single army. (so Dark Eldar can't complain they got no releases this year becausethere was a Ynnari release, and it is that players choice not to use it)
* GW no longer has to push players to adopt entire new armies (once that player has "completed" their collection) which is a much harder and less friendly sale (because a new army has a large upfront investment in order for it to be usable). They can instead sell small add-ons from other ranges which is easier for a customer to justify since it adds value to their existing investment and costs less.
* Narrative players can now run fluffy mixed faction armies with less/no house ruling compared to previous editions.
The problem that GW forgot to take into consideration is that when you allow more competitive players access to a wider range of tools which were not meant to be utilized together then you end up with very strong instances of imbalance and obsolescence.
However, because GW sold this edition with the allowance for soup it means that quite a lot of people bought models under that assumption. Buffing units to make a mono-dex army work has the potential to make the imbalance even worse if something ends up better than the already skewed competitive lists. And gutting the ally system through tighter restrictions risks invalidating a lot of peoples purchases and leading to mass tournament player outrage.
Even something like restricting CP to the detachment that generated it would suddenly make every "loyal 32" completely obsolete and leave anyone who used it feeling like they wasted their money on something which became a tournament necessity less than a year ago.
4) Age of Sigmar at launch was a disaster for GW. Communities tore themselves apart and ran wild shouting vitriol about GW, the game, and even the community at everyone who would listen. And all of that anger had to do with feels of invalidation.
* The world people had know and loved was just invalidated and replaced
* The game they loved and understood also invalidated and replaced
* Even a large selection of the models they liked, gone. Discontinued even if they were relatively good kits in plastic.
Whether you like them or not I think it's hard to argue that GW hasn't put a lot of effort since then into trying to repair their reputation with the majority of players.And I doubt they want to repeat anything close to that cluster**** anytime soon.
tl;dr I think it's much more likely that they're worried they'll have a mini-AoS launch style disaster if they invalidate soup, and that fear is influencing how they do balancing updates. Specifically they are trying to target buff certain bad units to make them more appealing, while not hammering down powerunits if it would mean invalidating peoples purchases. (especially big purchases like the Castellan since the more money someone spends and the more people who buy into it, then the louder the outrage becomes)
Luciferian wrote: Totally agree, but I have to question how changing things up would affect everything. We all like the weird, distinct aesthetic and setting as well, and that's the creative product of a handful of people. Would we be willing to sacrifice a portion of the style for more substance? I doubt they would be unless they had to.
I absolutely would if it meant the game was better. I think they should really have the teams properly staffed. One or two creative guys who know the lore, at least 1-2 actual designers with a math foundation. The issues stem from the fact all their guys seem to be creative types, and lack in the actual design/math department (despite them apparently claiming they use formulas). And the fact they seem to be passionate about what they collect, and not so passionate about anything else which is likely why you see Imperium and usually Eldar (thanks Phil Kelly) always getting a lot of love and everything else being sort of phoned in; it's hard to really write good rules for something you aren't really caring about.
Luciferian wrote: Totally agree, but I have to question how changing things up would affect everything. We all like the weird, distinct aesthetic and setting as well, and that's the creative product of a handful of people. Would we be willing to sacrifice a portion of the style for more substance? I doubt they would be unless they had to.
I absolutely would if it meant the game was better. I think they should really have the teams properly staffed. One or two creative guys who know the lore, at least 1-2 actual designers with a math foundation. The issues stem from the fact all their guys seem to be creative types, and lack in the actual design/math department (despite them apparently claiming they use formulas). And the fact they seem to be passionate about what they collect, and not so passionate about anything else which is likely why you see Imperium and usually Eldar (thanks Phil Kelly) always getting a lot of love and everything else being sort of phoned in; it's hard to really write good rules for something you aren't really caring about.
I'm kind of torn about it, because I can really respect and appreciate that the entire company is ultimately driven by this engine of creativity and passion and that they give so much leeway to the lead designers who are in large part responsible for everything we do love about the game. At the same time, they absolutely could find a better balance if they shifted more of their focus to a mechanical approach. I don't think they lack the talent to do that, but they would have to change their design process and work flow quite a bit.
I really don't get why people think this is some grand conspiracy to sell models. Obviously GW wants to sell models, no one is disputing that, but if you look beyond just CA I think there is a much more likely reason.
GW is afraid that by invalidating peoples armies it will do a lot more damage to their financial future than if they allow various imbalances to continue.
People get mad and complain when there is imbalance, and some of them may even quit.
But people become absolutely irate and downright nasty when they feel as though they have been cheated out of their money regardless of whether the reason is malicious or not. Especially in this day and age where video games get review bombed (mass negative user reviews) because players feel like content isn't being developed fast enough or that a balance patch broke some item that they liked.
Consider the following:
1) The Index releases at the start of 8e (and their continued legal status in matched play)
2) The way in which primaris space marines were released
3) The mainly point reduction nature of CA 4) Age of Sigmar
While they might seem separate they all have one very strong link of logic, they were specifically done in a way to displace the least number of players as possible.
1)While the indexes didn't include literally every option that ever existed, it did cover the vast majority of model-able options from 7e. This meant that anyone playing during 7e should be able to bring their models WYSIWYG into the new edition. However because GW allowed everyone to do this it also meant that new players could have built these units in the time between then and their codex being released. Overall I don't think GW wants to tell either type of player that they can't use those models anymore.
2) Everything about Primaris seems like basically an attempt to not step on the toes of Classic Marines.
* They lack flexibility like classic marines and instead fill very narrow specific niches.
* They can't simply replace classic marines in existing strategies or lists (can't use old transports)
* They share keywords and are integrated into the main SM Codex, giving the impression that they are to be run in a combined force (aka you can buy them to add to your existing marines rather than simply as a replacement for them)
* They are lore-wise distinct from Classic Marines and described as physically bigger meaning that they have a reason to be run alongside one another as well as a justification to wave away the size discrepancy.
Why would GW be scared to simply say that these are new true-scale marine models that you can replace your army with? Because for the past 5 years GW had been selling an entire range of classic scale marines in the form of the horus heresy which they had been encouraging people to kitbash into their 40k army. And only a year before Primaris were launched they released Burning of Prospero which gave people plastic Tartaros and Custodes, both of which were scaled to classic marines and received 40k rules, and also plastic MK3 which they again encouraged people to use in kitbashing their 40k armies.
3) 8e has been built around the idea of soup from the very start. From the lack of mono-army restriction to the way that detachments and even CP work, I don't doubt for a minute that soup was on the menu when GW planned the edition. I do believe it was ultimately done with benign intentions as it should at a cursory level benefit both GW and the players.
* All players can now use models that they like from related ranges which they previously were previously off-limits due to strict force construction rules.
* GW can now sell existing models to previous customers (cross range sales), and new releases have the added benefit of servicing an entire faction rather than a single army. (so Dark Eldar can't complain they got no releases this year becausethere was a Ynnari release, and it is that players choice not to use it)
* GW no longer has to push players to adopt entire new armies (once that player has "completed" their collection) which is a much harder and less friendly sale (because a new army has a large upfront investment in order for it to be usable). They can instead sell small add-ons from other ranges which is easier for a customer to justify since it adds value to their existing investment and costs less.
* Narrative players can now run fluffy mixed faction armies with less/no house ruling compared to previous editions.
The problem that GW forgot to take into consideration is that when you allow more competitive players access to a wider range of tools which were not meant to be utilized together then you end up with very strong instances of imbalance and obsolescence.
However, because GW sold this edition with the allowance for soup it means that quite a lot of people bought models under that assumption. Buffing units to make a mono-dex army work has the potential to make the imbalance even worse if something ends up better than the already skewed competitive lists. And gutting the ally system through tighter restrictions risks invalidating a lot of peoples purchases and leading to mass tournament player outrage.
Even something like restricting CP to the detachment that generated it would suddenly make every "loyal 32" completely obsolete and leave anyone who used it feeling like they wasted their money on something which became a tournament necessity less than a year ago.
Spoiler:
4) Age of Sigmar at launch was a disaster for GW. Communities tore themselves apart and ran wild shouting vitriol about GW, the game, and even the community at everyone who would listen. And all of that anger had to do with feels of invalidation.
* The world people had know and loved was just invalidated and replaced
* The game they loved and understood also invalidated and replaced
* Even a large selection of the models they liked, gone. Discontinued even if they were relatively good kits in plastic.
Whether you like them or not I think it's hard to argue that GW hasn't put a lot of effort since then into trying to repair their reputation with the majority of players.And I doubt they want to repeat anything close to that cluster**** anytime soon.
tl;dr I think it's much more likely that they're worried they'll have a mini-AoS launch style disaster if they invalidate soup, and that fear is influencing how they do balancing updates. Specifically they are trying to target buff certain bad units to make them more appealing, while not hammering down powerunits if it would mean invalidating peoples purchases. (especially big purchases like the Castellan since the more money someone spends and the more people who buy into it, then the louder the outrage becomes)
I personally own a Land Raider and the unit feels pretty much invalidated. Got 60 point decrease after 1.5 years from utter garbage to garbage, I'm in love with GW now (I'm actually not). And like I calculated earlier in this thread, less than 30 minute job btw, the Castellan body point cost relative to Land Raider body is ridiculously cheap with far better associated rules. They would not have these problems if they used somewhat consistently a mathematical procedure to generate vehicle and unit point cost from the durability derived from T, W and Save values, and same with weapons. But I guess I just need to suck it up and accept GW has no interest in balancing LR and it's rules are only provided as a gesture of good will, which is weird as they expect me to pay them yearly so I can play with 'balanced' rules.
EDIT: Land Raiders actual point decrease is 60 because of the Twin Lascannon discounts.
In England the Castellion Knight thingy is only £80 from my local game store in town... to me, for a 600+ pts model, this doesn't seem that much. XD It's about double what a codex costs. XD
Anyway, back on target. I find it very interesting how all the vets got made 14pts. Honestly, this is a great price for them... they get better weapons, more attacks and better leadership! All for 1pts more! To me, this was the "marine" change we all wanted... sneaked in to not upset marketing. This is what GW want you to play your marines as! Right now, You can have a squad of 25pts marines all with 2 or 3 S8 attacks with 3++. That's 125pts for an extremely tough unit that does 11 S8 D3D attacks. XD Now that's the marines i want!
Jack Flask wrote:4) Age of Sigmar at launch was a disaster for GW. Communities tore themselves apart and ran wild shouting vitriol about GW, the game, and even the community at everyone who would listen. And all of that anger had to do with feels of invalidation.
* The world people had know and loved was just invalidated and replaced
* The game they loved and understood also invalidated and replaced
* Even a large selection of the models they liked, gone. Discontinued even if they were relatively good kits in plastic.
Whether you like them or not I think it's hard to argue that GW hasn't put a lot of effort since then into trying to repair their reputation with the majority of players.And I doubt they want to repeat anything close to that cluster**** anytime soon.
I really didn't see my local community or even several of the online communities tearing themselves apart on AoS' launch. What I saw was that the local WHFB community was just tired of the FB system (heavy amount of rules with little/no balance combined with power striding) and struggling to find reason to play when the End Times books started being released. When AoS did launch, some of the online community did have preferences between favored formats of Mantic and 9th Age, depending on their system preferences, while mocking all the "rules" of AoS.
Jack Flask wrote: The problem that GW forgot to take into consideration is that when you allow more competitive players access to a wider range of tools which were not meant to be utilized together then you end up with very strong instances of imbalance and obsolescence.
However, because GW sold this edition with the allowance for soup it means that quite a lot of people bought models under that assumption. Buffing units to make a mono-dex army work has the potential to make the imbalance even worse if something ends up better than the already skewed competitive lists. And gutting the ally system through tighter restrictions risks invalidating a lot of peoples purchases and leading to mass tournament player outrage.
Even something like restricting CP to the detachment that generated it would suddenly make every "loyal 32" completely obsolete and leave anyone who used it feeling like they wasted their money on something which became a tournament necessity less than a year ago.
To be honest, I completely forgot that GW said that given that the net effect was basically 0. The only change was that people started to take more specialized detachments which is something GW themselves even basically suggested in the full FAQ text.
"This means that you can still include appropriate allies, but now they might need to be included in a different Detachment."
Overall though it really isn't lying on GW's part because with the very FAQ article you linked they explained their reasoning. Up to that point people running mono-elite armies had difficulty mustering any significant amounts of CP, so they buffed core (HQ+Troop) detachment output in order to try and help those armies since they likely would likely see most of their points invested into it.
The problem is that GW, on top of not addressing soup hard enough, also keeps trying to make one-size-fits-all corrections to the core rules, which don't help because any rules designed to benefit a less efficient army is still just going to be used to greater effect by a more efficient army.
But the reason I brought up the Loyal 32 is because, exactly as you said, there is no reason not to field it meaning that every tournament grade Imperium army that needs CP to work has no reason not to have one if they are playing at maximum tryhard level. So I could be wrong but my gut feeling is that a targeted removal of CP sharing (or even stricter allies) would leave quite a few people frustrated that they pushed by the meta to buy into it only for GW to remove the reason for their purchase.
Ghorgul wrote: I personally own a Land Raider and the unit feels pretty much invalidated. Got 60 point decrease after 1.5 years from utter garbage to garbage, I'm in love with GW now (I'm actually not). And like I calculated earlier in this thread, less than 30 minute job btw, the Castellan body point cost relative to Land Raider body is ridiculously cheap with far better associated rules. They would not have these problems if they used somewhat consistently a mathematical procedure to generate vehicle and unit point cost from the durability derived from T, W and Save values, and same with weapons. But I guess I just need to suck it up and accept GW has no interest in balancing LR and it's rules are only provided as a gesture of good will, which is weird as they expect me to pay them yearly so I can play with 'balanced' rules.
EDIT: Land Raiders actual point decrease is 60 because of the Twin Lascannon discounts.
It's non-viable due to the units from other codexes that you've been given access to. It has not however been invalidated (in the literal sense that it is no longer a valid choice). I know that may sound silly but look at it this way, which of the following three scenarios would make you the least mad:
a) The land raider is trash compared to the Castellan, so GW removes the land raider from the game and tells everyone to just buy a Castellan
b) You buy a Castellan because the land raider is trash. A year later in an effort to make the land raider more relevant GW makes space marines unable to ally in castellans. You now have a large expensive model you can't field.
c) The land raider is trash.
While all three scenarios suck, I'd argue that c) sucks the least because you can at least still use your land raider if you want (probably in friendly games since its still trash) and if you bought a Castellan than you still can also use that. And I know or have seen quite a few players who added a big stompy robot to their army if only because they though it was awesome to have a big stompy robot.
Charistoph wrote:
Spoiler:
Jack Flask wrote:4) Age of Sigmar at launch was a disaster for GW. Communities tore themselves apart and ran wild shouting vitriol about GW, the game, and even the community at everyone who would listen. And all of that anger had to do with feels of invalidation.
* The world people had know and loved was just invalidated and replaced
* The game they loved and understood also invalidated and replaced
* Even a large selection of the models they liked, gone. Discontinued even if they were relatively good kits in plastic.
Whether you like them or not I think it's hard to argue that GW hasn't put a lot of effort since then into trying to repair their reputation with the majority of players.And I doubt they want to repeat anything close to that cluster**** anytime soon.
I really didn't see my local community or even several of the online communities tearing themselves apart on AoS' launch. What I saw was that the local WHFB community was just tired of the FB system (heavy amount of rules with little/no balance combined with power striding) and struggling to find reason to play when the End Times books started being released. When AoS did launch, some of the online community did have preferences between favored formats of Mantic and 9th Age, depending on their system preferences, while mocking all the "rules" of AoS.
Sorry, I should have used more specific speech. My local community also didn't "tear itself apart" and actually had a pretty good rate of adoption for AoS for a while (I actually got into the game myself when it first launched).
I will not however walk back from the claim that the online communities flew into a frothing rage though, and if you didn't see it then count yourself luck because it really wasn't pretty. The initial AoS News and Rumor thread on Dakka was full of massive back-and-forth arguments by many of the same people which eventually devolved into ad hominem which then spread to other threads and boards, getting even worse when the mods (not unreasonably) changed the WHFB boards into the current AoS boards. For month afterwards (it honestly might have even stretched up to a year) you had the same small contingent of grudge bearing WHFB fans showing up in every AoS related thread to spew vitriol and try to ward away anyone they could from even trying the game in the hopes that they could kill the community and GW would bring back WHFBs.
On Warseer the news and rumor thread devolved even faster with anyone not immediately critical of the game being labelled as a shill or a troll and eventually even the mods straight up started banning anyone who talked favorably about AoS since they were also upset.
There were absolutely people who just faded out of the hobby during and after the end times, but to call what happened online after the announcement of AoS "just mocking"... well there was a reason the AoS fans went on to make their own forum and why Dakka's AoS board has very low traffic (it still has way more than Warseer though...).
Gene St. Ealer wrote: Okay, I'm going to try and discuss something other than the stupid PK argument because that's not the purpose of this thread. I want to drill down on this one fact:
HOW DOES GW ONLY HAVE 6 RULES WRITERS!?!?!? This is a company with literally a 1 billion pound market cap (well, maybe close to that; I haven't checked in a couple weeks). They dominate the industry. THEY CAN AND SHOULD DO BETTER. I get frustrated with the rules writers they have sometimes and the decisions they make, but honestly, now that I know it's just 6 of them, it's more like pity.
Seriously, I'd love to see a comparison to FFG or something. Or better yet, a comparison to Wizards of the Coast. I know Magic is a bigger game, but I suspect they employ dozens of people who are dedicated to the rules. 6 rules writers is unacceptable and GW should be ashamed of themselves after this year of raking in money hand over fist.
Actually, why should they hire more people? They already proved their making hand over fist without having to "up their game". Adding more rules writers might only dilute their "profits", because those rules writers have to be paid. If they're churning money at their current state of affairs, why put in more effort, to listen to the same amount of abuse from the fans?
I don't understand why GW has problems with balancing mono vs soups. Soups give utility of mixing, mono in most cases does not. So if soup exists, and if GW wants it to be so, it is ok. But then mono armies need to get extra rules which activate only if all detachments are taken from the same codex.
If doom is an important tool for CWE eldar, but too OP in DE armies, then why just not make doom a "free" psychic power if all your detachments are taken from the CWE codex.
Flip belts on harlis too OP in Inari. Ok, but in pure Harli lists they work the way they did before the nerf.
BA smash captin a problem when combined with IG and Castellans, No problem, wings etc work only if all detachments are BA.
It really doesn't require genius levels of table top design.
And if one or the other would end up too good, then they could be fixed by FAQs or errata. Maybe mono lists get more CP. Maybe soup has to be more flexible and be less effective by the rule of 3.
If they added to this a scalable unit cost, where units would cost more the more you take of them, the game would be a hell lot of more diverse as unit selection goes.
Karol wrote: It really doesn't require genius levels of table top design.
Game design and balancing is far more difficult than people realise. It is like having a thousand different levers, all of which affect each other. You change one thing and three other things suddenly need fixing. I'm not saying that there are not ways in which GW has failed to address simple problems, but trying to fix one thing can often lead to unforeseen difficulties.
Karol wrote: It really doesn't require genius levels of table top design.
Game design and balancing is far more difficult than people realise. It is like having a thousand different levers, all of which affect each other. You change one thing and three other things suddenly need fixing. I'm not saying that there are not ways in which GW has failed to address simple problems, but trying to fix one thing can often lead to unforeseen difficulties.
I hope that the same people that quit in the middle of 7th edition will quickly decide to quit again, so GW gives 40k a complete reset. And with complete reset I mean that GW should start 9th edition as Space Marines vs. Chaos Space Marines (or any other pairing) and max. 2 subfactions qeper side. You cannot relaunch a game with 15+ factions and expect it to work.
There is no other way that 40k will ever be on a significantly higher level of playability. After 1.5 years of 8th edition, I think that 7th was the better game if you avoid playing vs. Eldar, Tau and maxed Necrons/Space Marines list. IMO 8th is just boring point & click without much tactical/stratigical depth, just like tournament level 7th.
Trollbert wrote: I hope that the same people that quit in the middle of 7th edition...
That was me! 7th was pretty bad. They went a bit crazy with all the formations, and certain rules just killed things I liked. 8th, although far from perfect, has some aspects that are better than they have been since 5th came out. The biggest one for me is they have eventually fixed wound allocation. Being able to just remove what you want is far better than 5ths weirdness of the "closest model" system that just killed advancing footguard.
Gene St. Ealer wrote: Okay, I'm going to try and discuss something other than the stupid PK argument because that's not the purpose of this thread. I want to drill down on this one fact:
HOW DOES GW ONLY HAVE 6 RULES WRITERS!?!?!? This is a company with literally a 1 billion pound market cap (well, maybe close to that; I haven't checked in a couple weeks). They dominate the industry. THEY CAN AND SHOULD DO BETTER. I get frustrated with the rules writers they have sometimes and the decisions they make, but honestly, now that I know it's just 6 of them, it's more like pity.
Seriously, I'd love to see a comparison to FFG or something. Or better yet, a comparison to Wizards of the Coast. I know Magic is a bigger game, but I suspect they employ dozens of people who are dedicated to the rules. 6 rules writers is unacceptable and GW should be ashamed of themselves after this year of raking in money hand over fist.
Actually, why should they hire more people? They already proved their making hand over fist without having to "up their game". Adding more rules writers might only dilute their "profits", because those rules writers have to be paid. If they're churning money at their current state of affairs, why put in more effort, to listen to the same amount of abuse from the fans?
If they hired more writers the internet rage machine would just change tack to “look they hired more writers and they’re STILL incompetent and lazy and other adjectives”, or “they need MOAR WRITERS 17 isn’t enough” or whatever suits their narrative. A strange game. The only way to win is not to play.
The only way to win is to take the size of negative opinions into account. A few negative voices is different to large-scale unsatisfaction. It just happens that negative opinions are louder most of the time, as people are more motivated to voice complaints than praise. Then you have to take into account the tendency to attribute a single opinion to a collective. You see this all the time with "Reddit thinks X" or "Dakka hates Y". It is just something you have to deal with though.
a) The land raider is trash compared to the Castellan, so GW removes the land raider from the game and tells everyone to just buy a Castellan
b) You buy a Castellan because the land raider is trash. A year later in an effort to make the land raider more relevant GW makes space marines unable to ally in castellans. You now have a large expensive model you can't field.
c) The land raider is trash.
While all three scenarios suck, I'd argue that c) sucks the least because you can at least still use your land raider if you want (probably in friendly games since its still trash) and if you bought a Castellan than you still can also use that. And I know or have seen quite a few players who added a big stompy robot to their army if only because they though it was awesome to have a big stompy robot.
First, re Soup, I think this shows either complete ignorance or actual deceit. Their "fix" to soup did nothing at all and wasn't even something that needed to be fixed, because you very very rarely saw anyone taking a mixed detachment (maybe in an Index army at the time) because it meant you lost your faction trait. The entire problem was and still is taking multiple detachments of different armies using a shared keyword. That is what needed the change, not detachments themselves. It should have been for Matched Play you can't have Imperium/Chaos/Aeldari/Tyranid as a keyword for Battleforged, and maybe give a few exceptions for the weird armies that can't fully operate as a mono faction. That would have killed most of the soup problems immediately.
Second, re AOS. The major issue wasn't the change, it was the lack of points. AOS was an experiment to see if pure narrative gaming could be sustainable, and thanks to a community so ingrained in points and balance that experiment proved to be a complete and utter failure. AOS was rejected by a very vocal group (I don't say minority because it's very hard to tell via online mediums) who couldn't fathom having to police themselves and wanted a game that they could use for competitive tournaments, which you can't do if it's entirely on you to balance the game.
In the end, the main issue is GW is addressing a meta that has long since passed because they are using outdated methods of delivery (i.e. print) and either GW not caring nor understanding this or the playtesters not bothering to explain it to them or give the correct feedback (it's impossible to tell due to NDAs that exist even after release whether it's the playtesters not bothering to tell GW or GW not listening) and ITC existing in the way it does being a different type of game and one that GW themselves cannot publicly endorse, so GW's changes have to be made for the entire game while ITC changes just enough to be almost completely separate.
Gene St. Ealer wrote: Okay, I'm going to try and discuss something other than the stupid PK argument because that's not the purpose of this thread. I want to drill down on this one fact:
HOW DOES GW ONLY HAVE 6 RULES WRITERS!?!?!? This is a company with literally a 1 billion pound market cap (well, maybe close to that; I haven't checked in a couple weeks). They dominate the industry. THEY CAN AND SHOULD DO BETTER. I get frustrated with the rules writers they have sometimes and the decisions they make, but honestly, now that I know it's just 6 of them, it's more like pity.
Seriously, I'd love to see a comparison to FFG or something. Or better yet, a comparison to Wizards of the Coast. I know Magic is a bigger game, but I suspect they employ dozens of people who are dedicated to the rules. 6 rules writers is unacceptable and GW should be ashamed of themselves after this year of raking in money hand over fist.
Actually, why should they hire more people? They already proved their making hand over fist without having to "up their game". Adding more rules writers might only dilute their "profits", because those rules writers have to be paid. If they're churning money at their current state of affairs, why put in more effort, to listen to the same amount of abuse from the fans?
If they hired more writers the internet rage machine would just change tack to “look they hired more writers and they’re STILL incompetent and lazy and other adjectives”, or “they need MOAR WRITERS 17 isn’t enough” or whatever suits their narrative. A strange game. The only way to win is not to play.
Whatever you say, man. I assume you haven't worked for a large company before, because I can't think of any other large company (yes, GW is not enormous, but it is at the very least large) that relies on literally 6 people for the entirety of the rules/processes that make their product work. I don't have an NDA, so I don't know exactly what GW's process is. But I don't think you need to have all the information to see how few man hours you get from 6 people divided across about a dozen different game *formats*, and then guess that that lack of man hours contributes to stale, samey, sometimes nonfunctional rules.
Gene St. Ealer wrote: Okay, I'm going to try and discuss something other than the stupid PK argument because that's not the purpose of this thread. I want to drill down on this one fact:
HOW DOES GW ONLY HAVE 6 RULES WRITERS!?!?!? This is a company with literally a 1 billion pound market cap (well, maybe close to that; I haven't checked in a couple weeks). They dominate the industry. THEY CAN AND SHOULD DO BETTER. I get frustrated with the rules writers they have sometimes and the decisions they make, but honestly, now that I know it's just 6 of them, it's more like pity.
Seriously, I'd love to see a comparison to FFG or something. Or better yet, a comparison to Wizards of the Coast. I know Magic is a bigger game, but I suspect they employ dozens of people who are dedicated to the rules. 6 rules writers is unacceptable and GW should be ashamed of themselves after this year of raking in money hand over fist.
Actually, why should they hire more people? They already proved their making hand over fist without having to "up their game". Adding more rules writers might only dilute their "profits", because those rules writers have to be paid. If they're churning money at their current state of affairs, why put in more effort, to listen to the same amount of abuse from the fans?
If they hired more writers the internet rage machine would just change tack to “look they hired more writers and they’re STILL incompetent and lazy and other adjectives”, or “they need MOAR WRITERS 17 isn’t enough” or whatever suits their narrative. A strange game. The only way to win is not to play.
Whatever you say, man. I assume you haven't worked for a large company before, because I can't think of any other large company (yes, GW is not enormous, but it is at the very least large) that relies on literally 6 people for the entirety of the rules/processes that make their product work. I don't have an NDA, so I don't know exactly what GW's process is. But I don't think you need to have all the information to see how few man hours you get from 6 people divided across about a dozen different game *formats*, and then guess that that lack of man hours contributes to stale, samey, sometimes nonfunctional rules.
I believe it is only recently (within the last couple years) that they split the teams for the games. AOS has a separate team than 40k, I think the issue is the 40k team is the "old guard" from the bad times while the AOS team are new and seem to have more of a passion for making the game better. The 40k team seems to be the same "forge the narrative" and "this isn't really a competitive game but a collecting hobby" guys (Cruddace, maybe Ward again, maybe Phil Kelly, not sure who else is on the team anymore) and they long ago lost all their creative designer types (Rick Priestly, Alessio, Andy Chambers, Pete Haines etc.) who all went on to design actually balanced games (e.g. Kings of War, Bolt Action/Hail Caesar/etc., I forget what Andy Chambers designed but IIRC it was a dogfighting game, maybe WW1). Since they don't actually say anymore who is on the team, it's hard to tell but from what they've shown of the AOS team in White Dwarf, they are all gamers first (Ben Johnson, for example, is a high-end tournament player with a real passion for making AOS a good game), which is why overall balance in AOS is worlds better than 40k (far from perfect, but much better)
We basically flip-flopped. In the old days, 40k was the newer, progressive game to appeal to new players and WHFB was the old reliable game for the older crowd of gamers, the grognards/veterans. Now it feels in part like 40k is the venerable old game for the older gamers and AOS is the hot new game.
Crimson wrote: For all the talk about AOS being more balanced, it it because its rules are so simple that everything is really samey.
I don't actually think that's true though. It's "simple" in the sense that 40k has a ton of tiny options while AOS doesn't (since let's be honest here AOS points are essentially 40k's Power Levels). But 40k's surface complexity is pretty shallow IMHO, and it doesn't mean that it shouldn't also be balanced. I really do think it's because 40k has the old guard of designers who are more interested in a spectacle and a fun themed game with your mates than really making a solid game, while the AOS team really wants to have both.
AOS is in no way shape or form balanced. Its still entirely about bringing the right list, just like 40k. There is some truth in that there are more viable factions but those viable factions still pretty much operate off of the same core listbuild with some minor differences sprouting off of them.
Crimson wrote: For all the talk about AOS being more balanced, it it because its rules are so simple that everything is really samey.
I don't actually think that's true though. It's "simple" in the sense that 40k has a ton of tiny options while AOS doesn't (since let's be honest here AOS points are essentially 40k's Power Levels). But 40k's surface complexity is pretty shallow IMHO, and it doesn't mean that it shouldn't also be balanced. I really do think it's because 40k has the old guard of designers who are more interested in a spectacle and a fun themed game with your mates than really making a solid game, while the AOS team really wants to have both.
Sorry, but you're completely wrong. Jervis Johnson is the lead designer of AOS, Pete Foley is the lead designer of 40K. Also, AOS has not toughness/strength interaction and as wounds spill over there is no functional difference between multishot and multidamage weapons. IMO, these things make it a worse game, but they sure as hell make it easier to balance. 40K is just a much more complex game.
Isn't AoS like super broken? they killed of a ton of armies, including armies from prior edition that were good, everything else is dominated by a combination of two books, with the rest being bad or old, or both at the same time.
I know that a few months ago when, I think, a new edition came out people were very unhappy about the stuff GW did. Invalidate the whole AoS marine model line, just to replace it by a new one that is just better, while everything old got nerfs, point ups or stayed bad.
Again I don't have much xp with AoS, but from the games I seen being played durning AoS events or on tables next to me. End with anything between one to three mosh pits of models fighting for 2-3 turn, if armies are balanced against each other. And if they are not or two turns back to back happen the better army just win. I doubt anyone would like to see what a knight/IG or inari soup does to an army if it gets two turns back to back to shot and melee in w40k.
I wouldn't consider AOS "super-broken". Its as broken as 40k is. You get the same type of games out of either system. Both boil down to list building carrying you through.
From what I've seen and people I've talked to, AOS is better overall balanced than 40k, but has the same issues (i.e. listbuilding being critical), just they seem to be less pronounced. Like there's a ton of things in AOS that are viable at nearly all levels which is more than can be said about 40k.
We don't need to do a hypothetical bit of maths focussing only on offensive output in melee because it misses entire swathes of a units' statline that also impact on balance. A PK on a unit with a 4+ save and no access to an invulnerable in melee isn't going to be around as long as a PF on a unit with an inbuilt/easily accessed invulnerable or with a much better save.
Which is why this all falls down. You're making massive assumptions with your maths that don't translate into real game scenarios.
Storm bolters are equivalent to Kustom Shootas. Rapid fire 2 24 range is roughly assault 4 18 range. How much are they on a BS3 model? How much do they cost Orks on BS5 model?
That hypothetical was comparing like for like and clearly demonstrates that attempting to scale base cost with attacks without consideration for the weapon the model will carry does not work. Which is why thunder hammers are more expensive on characters, BS3 models pay more for guns, and why models with higher base attacks pay more for weapons than other models in the game.
I have given you in-game examples that have been continually ignored.
Kustom Shoota can run and gun and gets all it's shots all the time while a storm bolter only gets them within 12". Kustom Shoota with DDD scores 1.6 hits at 18" - the storm bolter scores 1.3 out of rapid fire range.
There is distinct nuance that you've willfully ignored.
From talking to people in my local area it's the opposite; AoS is far more unbalanced than 40k and has several armies that are borderline unplayable even at casual play whereas it's really only until you get to actual competitive stuff that certain 40k armies start to struggle (GK being the exception). Hell, I've crushed Eldar and Dark Eldar lists with Necrons in local games but I've had numerous AoS playing friends tell me that things like Overlords are just impossible to do anything with except lose in 2.0
Bosskelot wrote: From talking to people in my local area it's the opposite; AoS is far more unbalanced than 40k and has several armies that are borderline unplayable even at casual play whereas it's really only until you get to actual competitive stuff that certain 40k armies start to struggle (GK being the exception). Hell, I've crushed Eldar and Dark Eldar lists with Necrons in local games but I've had numerous AoS playing friends tell me that things like Overlords are just impossible to do anything with except lose in 2.0
Considering the similarities between both systems, do we need another ends times? I’ve been hearing rumors of a 40k “end times”. That would be something eh?
We already had the end times, with the invalidation of a large chunk of models and moving towards a more cookie cutter "everyone has a re-roll 1's aura" etc format.
Trickstick wrote: Well there is probably a correlation between under selling units and under powered units. People are less likely to spend money if a unit is over pointed. So figuring out motivation becomes difficult.
My impression of CA is that it was mostly about internal balance within codexes, not between them. I think it will result in more different units seeing play, which is nice, but it won't do much else.
If that is the case than they screwed up with the Ork codex again as well The Stompa went from collecting dust on the shelf, to getting repainted, repaired and made to look pretty.....only to be put right back on the shelf when GW did basically nothing to address the fact that its about 350-400pts over priced. Same thing for the Orkanauts, they are slightly more competitive but you won't see people rushing out to buy them. And lets not forget the noble Burna Boy who hasn't been relevant since.....what 6th? Burna Wagon? And even than it was only viable if you took a 160pt transport Oooo and lets not forget Nob Bikers and Bikers in general in the Ork codex, still relegated to display cases or collecting dust on a shelf.
Orktober was an intense marketing campaign that technically spanned 3 months and it led to a bunch of new Ork Vehicles that are rather lackluster at best and a lot of nothing as far as most of the codex was concerned, the biggest thing Orktober did was change our lists from 90% boyz to 40% boyz. CA is the same thing just for everyone else.
Dysartes wrote: SemperMortis, were you really expecting points changes to a book which had been out for, what, 6 weeks before CA was released?
Especially when they were apparently writing CA6-8 months ago?
if it takes 6-8 months to write CA how long does it take to write a complete codex? I am guessing about the same time. And are the rules writers forced into a code of silence, locked in separate dungeons spread across England so that none of them can possibly talk to one another? Or god forbid they have an Editor to review the rules before they are printed? The point being is that CA and the Ork codex came out at about the same time so if the point of CA was to have internal balance you would expect that to be the point in the Ork codex. Also, how fething hard is it to print CA? really? I mean its about 12 pages of points changes and that is about it, and clearly they weren't even using tournament results or local results to influence the points changes otherwise Knights/IG and Smashcaptains would have gotten price hikes instead of the soup of all soup lists actually getting cheaper.
It's almost like making physical codexes be the basis of your rules is a dumb idea, or something.
It would be so much easier if they could just update an electronic codex once a month as they see fit, but no, they are locked into literally Victorian Era thinking.
BaconCatBug wrote: It's almost like making physical codexes be the basis of your rules is a dumb idea, or something.
It would be so much easier if they could just update an electronic codex once a month as they see fit, but no, they are locked into literally Victorian Era thinking.
it would also be a lot easier if they didn't fill 3/4ths of the codex with fluff/pictures/art and just printed separate stuff for that. Of course that would mean they couldn't charge $50 for a book with 30 pages. My guess is that they stick to that format because they don't want their artists and fluff writers to go elsewhere.
Dysartes wrote: SemperMortis, were you really expecting points changes to a book which had been out for, what, 6 weeks before CA was released?
Especially when they were apparently writing CA6-8 months ago?
if it takes 6-8 months to write CA how long does it take to write a complete codex? I am guessing about the same time. And are the rules writers forced into a code of silence, locked in separate dungeons spread across England so that none of them can possibly talk to one another? Or god forbid they have an Editor to review the rules before they are printed? The point being is that CA and the Ork codex came out at about the same time so if the point of CA was to have internal balance you would expect that to be the point in the Ork codex. Also, how fething hard is it to print CA? really? I mean its about 12 pages of points changes and that is about it, and clearly they weren't even using tournament results or local results to influence the points changes otherwise Knights/IG and Smashcaptains would have gotten price hikes instead of the soup of all soup lists actually getting cheaper.
Again, following what has been said in this thread, the 6-8 months means it was being written before Imperial Knights came out... so how could any points from the book that hadn't been released, following reports on gameplay in the wild, have possibly occurred?
I didn't think the lead time was so extreme - I was thinking 3 months or so, not 6-8 (though taking feedback during that time, of course). I'm not sure if Smashcaptains were an issue that far back, though.
Again, following what has been said in this thread, the 6-8 months means it was being written before Imperial Knights came out... so how could any points from the book that hadn't been released, following reports on gameplay in the wild, have possibly occurred?
I didn't think the lead time was so extreme - I was thinking 3 months or so, not 6-8 (though taking feedback during that time, of course). I'm not sure if Smashcaptains were an issue that far back, though.
It's not that they weren't testing points up until 3 months ago. It's that taking new codexes, getting them to playtesters, getting enough games in, coming up with changes and then facilitating discussions takes a lot more time than might be allowed for the cutoff to get the book ready for QA, language translation, and then print.
With no cutoffs or strict time sensitive demand the FAQs are the most nimble as was shown when they went for a CP nerf, which is a reasonable indicator that they see the issues, but perhaps not might as you want them to see it.
Not that I have any faith in GW to begin with, but if they don't in the "two week errata" up the cost of Knights at the very least I will be disappointed. Smash Captains got hard nerfed with the CP Regen change, and now Knights (specifically the 3++ Castellan with Cawls Wrath) are the problem
Games Workshop revenues went up by 25% in 2018 but their stock is flat. When they collapse into themselves in a few years it will be because they increased sales by milking more money out of their blindly loyal fans but did not effectively broaden their customer base.
Tokhuah wrote: Games Workshop revenues went up by 25% in 2018 but their stock is flat. When they collapse into themselves in a few years it will be because they increased sales by milking more money out of their blindly loyal fans but did not effectively broaden their customer base.
There it is! Oh how I missed you, silly internet comments that don't understand how stocks work.
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Wayniac wrote: Revenue doesn't mean you're doing things smart anyways, just that your customers don't care enough for it to affect you.
It's true. I've worked for a lot of companies that were profitable and yet did a ton of things wrong/never learned to do things right. The two are not actually related despite appearing to be one and the same. You can do everything wrong and still make money, it doesn't mean that you're suddenly doing everything right.
Tokhuah wrote: Games Workshop revenues went up by 25% in 2018 but their stock is flat. When they collapse into themselves in a few years it will be because they increased sales by milking more money out of their blindly loyal fans but did not effectively broaden their customer base.
^^soooo this.
I walked into the local geedub store the other day
And pretty creepy store grot hit me with a salesman's pitch like this 'are you a painter or collector or gamer?
When i told him that i was lookin to join a league he said that a new one would start in January using a CA with no points but that would involve buying painting new armies from start collecting boxes... When i said that i have 2 unbuilt eldar start collecting boxes aleady and 4000points of painted orks plus imperial amd marine armies in need of finishing his patience was nearly worn. I explained that i still had bad feelings about my orc fantasy army in a box now and never coming back and he refelexively tried to defend AoS as a more historically accurate battle game. With that my patience was worn. He was clearly pushing me to starting a new army in a new game system whether AoS or 8th ed 40k ... He was not intetested in talking collecting and supporting old hobby. ... So the 100euro or so that he might expect me to spend should i join his league also dried up and blew away. I know small potatoes but not as if gw hadnt made thousands on me over the years already. And gw could do worse than having happy old dudes like myself soeaking openly about how well gw supports my old dudes but instead it is plastic trash by design. Ick. Anyways i would have picked up CA and some new ork buggy kits to do that league. Now i will just keep my 40k stuff in the boxes alongside the fantasy stuff and read the CA leaks. Yeah. Changing cover to make it more interactive and more a presence on the battlefield is a start but still targeting the unit in cover leaves some issues about abstracted LoS that ... Well meh. And the open play no points units in the CA book. Meh. And the ridiculous point tweaking alongside the fact of primaris marines aka stormcaste astartes simply feels like gw wants me to relive the rejection following the demise of fantasy at every opportunity ... Yeah. No. Not feeling it and yes. Utter fail. Now rather than my word of mouth recommending and selling new kits and my old models being given as gifts for friends to start new armies all of that stops and turns upside down ... As is there is no way that i can recommend this hobby and this company to anyone except as a stock investment for the near term next 1 to 3 years. Actually i started recommending gw as an investment pre 8th and about now am turning neutral for 2019.
Yeah, they do this for some reason at my gw... the wholemidea is that you buy an army from the store and in a month you come back and do a tournament with it.... it's basically a really long version of the magic the gathering tournaments where you buy a booster box and use the cards inside that to make a deck on the day. It's a money making scheme that's kinda dumb.... but at least it makes sense with mtg.... with 40k, why would I need a new army if I already have a few with years of experience I might want yo use in a tournament? And why would I want to spend that much money in such a short amount of time?
lolman1c wrote: Yeah, they do this for some reason at my gw... the wholemidea is that you buy an army from the store and in a month you come back and do a tournament with it.... it's basically a really long version of the magic the gathering tournaments where you buy a booster box and use the cards inside that to make a deck on the day. It's a money making scheme that's kinda dumb.... but at least it makes sense with mtg.... with 40k, why would I need a new army if I already have a few with years of experience I might want yo use in a tournament? And why would I want to spend that much money in such a short amount of time?
It's as stupid as targeting kids over adults, because kids are so good at saving up money to afford £50 kits and totes don't blow it on sweets drinks and other tat.
"I've worked for a lot of companies that were profitable and yet did a ton of things wrong/never learned to do things right."
Said every employee ever.
Even "your" coworkers (note: "your" in this case is the reader, not singling out the poster).
The idea that you're not doing anything wrong is stupid. Whatever your skillset, look at your work from 5 years ago. Look at how bad it is. How could you be so stupid? How could anyone make such terrible mistakes?
Side note: if you look at your work from 5 years ago, and it looks good, then you've learned nothing in 5 years. You're no better than you were 5 years ago. So you'll probably be no better in 5 years. I hope I never work with you.
Gw stock was the most succesfull one during 2017. The ceo mentioned in a report that such growth was not sustainable (lo and behold it's not; anyway Stock price is a bad indicator of how well a givne company is doing because it' based on "public" (investor) perception as much as fact and profit. Profit and revenue are far more reliable markers to check the health of a company.
Also is it that weird a GW store wants to sell you models, primarily? They don't make a profit of organising leagues.an FLGS might do it just to draw people in. Or a club but they are usually non-profit.
Stock does suggest how investors - people who actually have money on the line, which are usually (not always) people who have done well with money on the line in the past - expect the company to behave.
Which would you trust more: the gesalt vision of where GW is going from those here on DakkaDakka, or money-focused investors in a non-high-profile company (GW is not a household name)?
Neither are super reliable, but I'd trust the stock market's predictions more than random postsers. But flat doesn't mean "about to implode" - it actually means the exact opposite. It means there *isn't* a general concern that it's about to fall/fail/go under/etc.
So flat stock suggests that GW is likely to neither grow nor contract outside the range the economy itself does.
I agree with your conclusion. A flat stock does suggest that, but it's not a very reliable metric for predicting the future. Only how much faith investors have in the current course/news.
lolman1c wrote: Yeah, they do this for some reason at my gw... the wholemidea is that you buy an army from the store and in a month you come back and do a tournament with it.... it's basically a really long version of the magic the gathering tournaments where you buy a booster box and use the cards inside that to make a deck on the day. It's a money making scheme that's kinda dumb.... but at least it makes sense with mtg.... with 40k, why would I need a new army if I already have a few with years of experience I might want yo use in a tournament? And why would I want to spend that much money in such a short amount of time?
It's as stupid as targeting kids over adults, because kids are so good at saving up money to afford £50 kits and totes don't blow it on sweets drinks and other tat.
No, they don't want you to buy a starter box. They want you to get an entire 1-2k point army.
lolman1c wrote: Yeah, they do this for some reason at my gw... the wholemidea is that you buy an army from the store and in a month you come back and do a tournament with it.... it's basically a really long version of the magic the gathering tournaments where you buy a booster box and use the cards inside that to make a deck on the day. It's a money making scheme that's kinda dumb.... but at least it makes sense with mtg.... with 40k, why would I need a new army if I already have a few with years of experience I might want yo use in a tournament? And why would I want to spend that much money in such a short amount of time?
It's as stupid as targeting kids over adults, because kids are so good at saving up money to afford £50 kits and totes don't blow it on sweets drinks and other tat.
No, they don't want you to buy a starter box. They want you to get an entire 1-2k point army.
No I got that mate I was talking about kirbys change of direction in 2004 and drawing a parallel, my fault for not being clear.
Both are unrealistic, sure some can drop £500-700 at short notice but most people have mortgages, car payments and other bills to cover.
lolman1c wrote: Yeah, they do this for some reason at my gw... the wholemidea is that you buy an army from the store and in a month you come back and do a tournament with it.... it's basically a really long version of the magic the gathering tournaments where you buy a booster box and use the cards inside that to make a deck on the day. It's a money making scheme that's kinda dumb.... but at least it makes sense with mtg.... with 40k, why would I need a new army if I already have a few with years of experience I might want yo use in a tournament? And why would I want to spend that much money in such a short amount of time?
It's as stupid as targeting kids over adults, because kids are so good at saving up money to afford £50 kits and totes don't blow it on sweets drinks and other tat.
No, they don't want you to buy a starter box. They want you to get an entire 1-2k point army.
No I got that mate I was talking about kirbys change of direction in 2004 and drawing a parallel, my fault for not being clear.
Both are unrealistic, sure some can drop £500-700 at short notice but most people have mortgages, car payments and other bills to cover.
I've said it before and I will say it again. If GW lowered their prices I could easily see myself buying a 2nd or even a 3rd army because I love the models. But as it currently stands, I will not buy a 2nd or 3rd army because I don't want to drop a thousand dollars or more, acquiring a stand alone 2,000pt army. I most assuredly bought most of my army second hand, but lets take a look at my standard 40k 2,000 Ork army if I had bought everything brand new from GW.
HQ:
Warboss x1 = $20
Weirdboy x2 = $44.5
Troops:
Boyz x 90 = $261
Elites:
Kommandos x 15 = $135
Tankbustas x 20 = $180
Heavy Support:
Mek Gunz x 6 = $276
BoneBreaker x2 = $148
Transports:
Trukk x2 = $74.5
Grand Total: $1,139
And that isn't even a third of my ork army. If GW prices were a third lower I would probably have invested in a second army which means I would probably have spent more overall, not including the required books and paints necessary for a 2nd army. Ohh well, that is why we have recasters and 3rd party vendors....not to mention my friend and his amazing 3D printer which is producing me 3 Grot tanks a day atm
I've said it before and I will say it again. If GW lowered their prices I could easily see myself buying a 2nd or even a 3rd army because I love the models. But as it currently stands, I will not buy a 2nd or 3rd army because I don't want to drop a thousand dollars or more, acquiring a stand alone 2,000pt army. I most assuredly bought most of my army second hand, but lets take a look at my standard 40k 2,000 Ork army if I had bought everything brand new from GW.
HQ:
Warboss x1 = $20
Weirdboy x2 = $44.5
Troops:
Boyz x 90 = $261
Elites:
Kommandos x 15 = $135
Tankbustas x 20 = $180
Heavy Support:
Mek Gunz x 6 = $276
BoneBreaker x2 = $148
Transports:
Trukk x2 = $74.5
Grand Total: $1,139
And that isn't even a third of my ork army. If GW prices were a third lower I would probably have invested in a second army which means I would probably have spent more overall, not including the required books and paints necessary for a 2nd army. Ohh well, that is why we have recasters and 3rd party vendors....not to mention my friend and his amazing 3D printer which is producing me 3 Grot tanks a day atm
GW sells more product for same money.
Guy who champions recasting says he'd spend more on incremental sales.
GW sells more product for same money.
Guy who champions recasting says he'd spend more on incremental sales.
Yeah, I would spend more on GW than on recasters if the prices were better. Why spend $45 on 5 Kommandos when I can just buy them online for $30 or even less?
GW sells more product for same money.
Guy who champions recasting says he'd spend more on incremental sales.
Yeah, I would spend more on GW than on recasters if the prices were better. Why spend $45 on 5 Kommandos when I can just buy them online for $30 or even less?
Because recasters don't keep stores open or run a magazine or do *anything* else that promotes the hobby.
GW sells more product for same money. Guy who champions recasting says he'd spend more on incremental sales.
Yeah, I would spend more on GW than on recasters if the prices were better. Why spend $45 on 5 Kommandos when I can just buy them online for $30 or even less?
Because recasters don't keep stores open or run a magazine or do *anything* else that promotes the hobby.
It's easy to be cheap when you steal.
"Don't keep stores open" Cool, get rid of the stores, give profit motive back to the privately opened stores. Bam there goes a massive hit to your overhead. "Don't run a magazine" You mean the magazine that is a paid monthly subscription? How much is that again? $90 for 12 magazines? How much is a weekday NYT subscription? $5 a week? so $130 for 260 papers........so $.50 a paper compared to $7.50 for a single magazine. Of course you have to factor in what is in each magazine/paper and the skills of the writer....I am sure GW employs better journalists/writers than the NYTs does.
GW does a lot of stuff a recaster doesn't have to, but it has been my experience that GW delivers a better quality product than recasters as well. So lets meet in the middle here. How much does it really cost to develop a cool model? not to much since we can literally do it now ourselves and print them ourselves using 3D printers. So really lets take that out of hte cost because its so cheap. How much is plastic? I can buy 3 huge reels for $20 which will build me 50+ Grot Tanks that I helped design. It took me about 8 hours to design the Grot tanks I am using, so 8 hours and lets say I am worth $200 an hour, so $1620 is the entire overhead for producing 50+ grot tanks....what does that break down to? $32.4 a tank...or almost the same as Forgeworld does them....and that is paying myself the equivalent of $416,000 a year
So how about we stop paying the handful of model designers $416,000 a year and reduce it to something like 100,000 a year which brings the cost of the model down to about $10
Yes I know I made numbers up out of thin air and I am well aware there are a lot more over head costs associated with running a business, I am merely pointing out how ridiculous GW's prices are and how they could easily entire a larger fan base and encourage their current fan base to stop buying recasted models AND to buy MORE models by simply reducing the massive price of the game.
SemperMortis wrote: How much does it really cost to develop a cool model? not to much since we can literally do it now ourselves and print them ourselves using 3D printers. So really lets take that out of hte cost because its so cheap.
I don't think you understand how the miniature design process works.
SemperMortis wrote: How much does it really cost to develop a cool model? not to much since we can literally do it now ourselves and print them ourselves using 3D printers. So really lets take that out of hte cost because its so cheap.
I don't think you understand how the miniature design process works.
Are you sure? I can't spot any holes. I'm ready to start my own model making business!
SemperMortis wrote: How much does it really cost to develop a cool model? not to much since we can literally do it now ourselves and print them ourselves using 3D printers. So really lets take that out of hte cost because its so cheap.
I don't think you understand how the miniature design process works.
Are you sure? I can't spot any holes. I'm ready to start my own model making business!
I know you can't argue without making up points or ignoring parts of posts but damn that was quick even by your standards.
I really wish I had put a disclaimer in to my original post showing that I was making numbers up but the point was relevant to the costs that GW charges for little plastic army men.
Ohhh wait....I did.
Yes I know I made numbers up out of thin air and I am well aware there are a lot more over head costs associated with running a business, I am merely pointing out how ridiculous GW's prices are and how they could easily entire a larger fan base and encourage their current fan base to stop buying recasted models AND to buy MORE models by simply reducing the massive price of the game.
For the purposes of the discussion, though, are they a reimplementation of a GW model (mostly), or an implementation of what a Grot Tank should look like?
Because those are two very different things.
Look at Kings of War's High Elves or Empire vs GW's High Elves or Empire. Look at Kromlech Orkz vs GW's Orkz. A fairly generic concept, but a very different execution.
Bharring wrote: For the purposes of the discussion, though, are they a reimplementation of a GW model (mostly), or an implementation of what a Grot Tank should look like?
Because those are two very different things.
Look at Kings of War's High Elves or Empire vs GW's High Elves or Empire. Look at Kromlech Orkz vs GW's Orkz. A fairly generic concept, but a very different execution.
Comparing a FW tank to the one I printed ....let me put it this way, I won't be selling them online for fear of GW lawyers
Bharring wrote: For the purposes of the discussion, though, are they a reimplementation of a GW model (mostly), or an implementation of what a Grot Tank should look like?
Because those are two very different things.
Look at Kings of War's High Elves or Empire vs GW's High Elves or Empire. Look at Kromlech Orkz vs GW's Orkz. A fairly generic concept, but a very different execution.
Comparing a FW tank to the one I printed ....let me put it this way, I won't be selling them online for fear of GW lawyers
Right. So you didn't actually design anything, but merely copied someone else's design.
Bharring wrote: For the purposes of the discussion, though, are they a reimplementation of a GW model (mostly), or an implementation of what a Grot Tank should look like?
Because those are two very different things.
Look at Kings of War's High Elves or Empire vs GW's High Elves or Empire. Look at Kromlech Orkz vs GW's Orkz. A fairly generic concept, but a very different execution.
Comparing a FW tank to the one I printed ....let me put it this way, I won't be selling them online for fear of GW lawyers
Right. So you didn't actually design anything, but merely copied someone else's design.
In the same way that GW modeled Leman Russes after WW1 Tanks yes. Or how they modeled Eldar on Elves from dozens of other genres, or how they modeled Catachans on Vietnam era US Soldiers/Marines or how they modeled Vostroyans on Russian infantry from the napoleonic times or (insert dozens of other examples of GW copying others)
You really have no clue about the difference between being inspired by something an directly copying. Furthermore, real history is actually free game; you can in fact produce exact replicas of real Napoleonic infantry without the French government suing you.
Crimson wrote: You really have no clue about the difference between being inspired by something an directly copying. Furthermore, real history is actually free game; you can in fact produce exact replicas of real Napoleonic infantry without the French government suing you.
Ahh, so what I must have done was scanned a Grot tank and used that with a few minor tweeks? Or, did I use the scale as a rough guideline and than use tank features from numerous modern/historical (Mostly WW2) tanks and fill in the dimensions with bitz I liked....like soviet style ridged armor and Sherman tank style turret?
But hey, since GW did it its fine, but feth me If I do it right?
Crimson wrote: You really have no clue about the difference between being inspired by something an directly copying. Furthermore, real history is actually free game; you can in fact produce exact replicas of real Napoleonic infantry without the French government suing you.
Ahh, so what I must have done was scanned a Grot tank and used that with a few minor tweeks? Or, did I use the scale as a rough guideline and than use tank features from numerous modern/historical (Mostly WW2) tanks and fill in the dimensions with bitz I liked....like soviet style ridged armor and Sherman tank style turret?
But hey, since GW did it its fine, but feth me If I do it right?
That's for the court to decide. Combining historical references in a specific visual way is an unique artistic creation.
Crimson wrote: You really have no clue about the difference between being inspired by something an directly copying. Furthermore, real history is actually free game; you can in fact produce exact replicas of real Napoleonic infantry without the French government suing you.
Ahh, so what I must have done was scanned a Grot tank and used that with a few minor tweeks? Or, did I use the scale as a rough guideline and than use tank features from numerous modern/historical (Mostly WW2) tanks and fill in the dimensions with bitz I liked....like soviet style ridged armor and Sherman tank style turret?
But hey, since GW did it its fine, but feth me If I do it right?
That's for the court to decide. Combining historical references in a specific visual way is an unique artistic creation.
SemperMortis wrote: How much does it really cost to develop a cool model? not to much since we can literally do it now ourselves and print them ourselves using 3D printers.
That's an absurd argument.
Yes, you can design and print a model yourself at home. That doesn't make it a negligible expense for a company to do it, any more than we would assume that a baker is overcharging for a professionally decorated cake just because I have an oven and a packet of cake mix.
The company producing the models has to pay for concept art (potentially several iterations before a final design is nailed down, all of which have to be paid for), sculpting (which can range from a few hours to months, depending on the complexity of the kit, and is different for different intended casting materials) and the cost of the mould (relatively cheap and fast for resin or metal production, considerably more expensive and time consuming for plastic injection moulding). Much of this is cheaper for companies that do it in-house, compared to outsourcing it, but it's still all stuff that has to be paid for and isn't cheap if you have anyone competent doing it.
Excommunicatus wrote: Again, people have been forceasting - quite unsuccessfully - that GW will crumble any second now because of those types of decisions for at least fifteen years.
In fact, GW's stock price has steadily risen until recently and you can't blame GW for the electorate's idiocy.
I'm not sure what chart you're looking at, but it fell steadily from January of 2014 to June of 2016. It rose to it's ATH in September of this year and is on the way back down again.
I don't know whether to find it hilarious or sad that GW's idea of soup was units with different keywords in the same detachment. Every tournament player in existence views soup as taking 3 detachments from 3 different codexes, which the battle brothers beta rule actually made more powerful instead of nerfing. Are the people in charge of writing rules really that dense or do they have a marketing guy with a gun to their head?
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BaconCatBug wrote: It's almost like making physical codexes be the basis of your rules is a dumb idea, or something.
It would be so much easier if they could just update an electronic codex once a month as they see fit, but no, they are locked into literally Victorian Era thinking.
That would require utilizing technology, which seems to fall somewhere between arcane knowledge and downright heresy to GW.
You can make whatever silly argument you want. Just let us know when you have a business able to rival GW with similar quality , but cheaper models that aren't direct ripoffs.
BaconCatBug wrote: It's almost like making physical codexes be the basis of your rules is a dumb idea, or something..
It worked just fine for an awful long time before the internet came along.
The problem isn't the rules being in physical books, it's the rushed production schedule resulting in inadequately edited final products. Whether the rules are in physical books or electronic files, I'd much rather they took the time to fix any issues with them before publishing, rather than after.
Toofast wrote: I don't know whether to find it hilarious or sad that GW's idea of soup was units with different keywords in the same detachment. Every tournament player in existence views soup as taking 3 detachments from 3 different codexes, which the battle brothers beta rule actually made more powerful instead of nerfing. Are the people in charge of writing rules really that dense or do they have a marketing guy with a gun to their head?
There was definitely a period in early 8th where soup was being used as a term for a detachment featuring models from multiple armies, united via Imperium/Chaos/Eldar keyword. I'm pretty sure the change to use the term to look at the composition of an army didn't turn up until around the same time as the publication with Battle Brothers, or at least not long beforehand.
I thought this thread was supposed to be about whether CA was a marketing move or not and the last few pages have been discussing the virtues of 3d printing and GW's mark up.
Even the mods have been taken off topic.
If you want to discuss these items I'd suggest that another thread is the place for it. The topic of this thread is: 'was CA a marketing move and not a balance move?' I'm really, really struggling to see how the current discussion is in any way relevant?
An Actual Englishman wrote: I thought this thread was supposed to be about whether CA was a marketing move or not and the last few pages have been discussing the virtues of 3d printing and GW's mark up.
Even the mods have been taken off topic.
If you want to discuss these items I'd suggest that another thread is the place for it. The topic of this thread is: 'was CA a marketing move and not a balance move?' I'm really, really struggling to see how the current discussion is in any way relevant?
But that debate has been settled. It is clearly both because the reality is that to the matched players out there, balancing the game is good for everyone hence it is a form of marketing. GW are using it as a marketing tool saying, we know its not perfect but we will keep trying to make it perfect. The only issue is there idea of perfect doesn't match everyone's but then it is their game and we are still buying their models.
An Actual Englishman wrote: I thought this thread was supposed to be about whether CA was a marketing move or not and the last few pages have been discussing the virtues of 3d printing and GW's mark up.
Even the mods have been taken off topic.
If you want to discuss these items I'd suggest that another thread is the place for it. The topic of this thread is: 'was CA a marketing move and not a balance move?' I'm really, really struggling to see how the current discussion is in any way relevant?
But that debate has been settled. It is clearly both because the reality is that to the matched players out there, balancing the game is good for everyone hence it is a form of marketing. GW are using it as a marketing tool saying, we know its not perfect but we will keep trying to make it perfect. The only issue is there idea of perfect doesn't match everyone's but then it is their game and we are still buying their models.
nah I'm kidding. I was enjoying reading the debate on all things not of this thread until you killed it.
but my point was only my opinion. GW as a company has historically spent very little on marketing. They have heavily relied on word of mouth, white dawrf and their highstreet presence in lieu of actual marketing.
Now they continue this attitude but with a twist. They've restarted their community outreach and have joined forces with community "LEADERS" like Reece et al to help promote them. One of the biggest feedbacks they've recieved from all sources is balance.
Their answer is to balance the game through faq's and points adjustments. I honestly believe these adjustments are great and have a habit of promoting sales. I know that I personally have purchased more models based on their efficiency in the current ruleset. I am also here on Dakka crowing about it.
So in a way their general attitude towards balance via CA and other mediums is their in lieu marketing. Which is why I consider it to be both.
My take is that it's a marketing tool dressed as a balance change. When you think about it, CA is already redundant by the time it releases by virtue of the fact that it is written so far in advance.
Units that exist in the current meta were ignored because CA is prepared so early. So from a balance perspective though attempts have been made to make underperforming units/factions better, ultimately it hasn't addressed the big tickets of the tournament meta. Perhaps that's what the FAQs are for?
However for those people who don't play competitive 40k but enjoy matched play with pals and beers I can see the draw for this product.
It's not a product for me but I suppose it has a market. However as it's impact on balance is outdated as it is released I believe in reality it can't be called a balance tool as much as a marketing one.
Can't disagree with you there but i'd suggest a more nuanced alternative take on what you say.
We will all agree that CA being so far in advance fails to create the necessary effect of balancing the meta/game. It doesn't go far enough for the exact reasons you have stated.
BUT
it has achieved something. The rhetorical question(although I'm interested in your opinion) is, has CA achieved any balancing affect?
Regardless of how small or incomplete that affect is, I think it has balanced the game.
CA hasn't balanced jack, armies that struggled before will still struggle after, anyone playing melee is still facing an up hill struggle and cover rules are still garbage.
hobojebus wrote: CA hasn't balanced jack, armies that struggled before will still struggle after, anyone playing melee is still facing an up hill struggle and cover rules are still garbage.
Lets assume that CA is intended for specific things and not everything and is more than just points. The missions alone are a sweeping change. Was it there intention to fix melee armies or cover rules? I think not. Cover is as you said complete garbage but after multiple updates and tweaks to the rules in which they have chosen not to amend these rules we have to assume that they are as intended. All out melee armies do not have a place in the current 40k and I believe this is absoulutely by enforced design. I think the designers view this as a sci-fi game in which pew pew shooting is stronger than combat. This is no different to modern day warfare. The debate on whether the game should be better for melee is not for this thread.
I think those points you raised are true but not relevant to CA. My point is by addressing points and drastically changing missions CA has balanced some things. Have you looked at or played the new CA missions?
I *have* tried the new CA missions. They are IMHO amazing, but ultimately useless as ITC won't (likely) adopt them, which means the competitive "meta" is still going to be using boring missions designed to keep their listbuilding meta going strong. There's a chance they might after LVO, but I doubt it as they seem to feel that bland tournament missions that you can tailor are better than missions that encourage you to bring a balanced force to mitigate potentially bad scenarios.
Also on the other topic, if GW would move to the modern age they could respond quicker with FAQs and actual updates, maybe even do something like Privateer's CID (which is an amazing idea among all the other old GW-like things that company has done recently) to try to balance things and get more feedback than just from people with an agenda like Reece and co.
Nithaniel wrote: Can't disagree with you there but i'd suggest a more nuanced alternative take on what you say.
We will all agree that CA being so far in advance fails to create the necessary effect of balancing the meta/game. It doesn't go far enough for the exact reasons you have stated.
BUT
it has achieved something. The rhetorical question(although I'm interested in your opinion) is, has CA achieved any balancing affect?
Regardless of how small or incomplete that affect is, I think it has balanced the game.
I suppose it remains to be seen exactly what the effect will be. There's no question in my kind that it's had some impact though. Even if that impact is in the beer and pretzels sphere of play. The bigger question for me is whether there will be an impact on the current top tier lists.
In my heart of hearts I think the answer is no. People who play fluffy or mono lists will be better served and Tau look very strong since the changes but whether those changes are enough to topple the dreaded Imperial/Ynarri soup lists is very unlikely. If those lists aren't toppled the meta will stay as it is.
Nithaniel wrote: We will all agree that CA being so far in advance fails to create the necessary effect of balancing the meta/game. It doesn't go far enough for the exact reasons you have stated.
BUT
it has achieved something. The rhetorical question(although I'm interested in your opinion) is, has CA achieved any balancing affect?
I don't think CA is doing good job with balancing. As you just discussed, CA being prepared so far in advance (6 months or so) before it's release leads to 2 effects (my opinion):
1. Adjustments in CA upon release are either hopelessly late or nonexistent.
2. Long publication cycle forces them to be too careful with the adjustments.
Especially the 2nd point I find extremely problematic. With, lets say, every 3rd month free internet published point values list, i.e. 'free CA', they could balance the points more aggressively and dial back the changes if needed.
Currently they have to do these little adjustments, or alternatively just refuse to do adjustments because the unit is without purpose and GW has no fething idea how to fix them so they opt to do nothing, like Chaos Space Marine Troops which cost elite-level premium but the only the elite thing about them are the conversion options.
Reece on power armour: '.. point cost can't be decreased because they [presumably GW] don't want marines to become horde army.' This is not direct quote, I don't have time to go find exact quote from 2 hour podcast, but I swear the former quote is close enough in spirit of what he said.
So instead we have point decreases for CSM Chosen, Raptors and Warp Talons, among others. Raptors and Warp Talons are other units that kind of struggle with purpose. Raptors don't shoot or melee well, you essentially pay 2 points more per marine for FLY and Deep Strike ability, this is almost akin to admitting normal CSM are useless. Warp Talons are melee unit that is not good in melee (seriously unit of 5 can barely kill 6-7 GEQs, 24-28 pts, a turn unless you boost them with stratagems and auras! Meanwhile one Warp Talon costs 24 points, they are forced to pay 9 points for +1 A over base A 1 and re-roll wound-rolls!!!) while being prohibitively expensive and has special rule of no overwatch after deep-strike+charge after deep striking has been heavily nerfed. To remind you, GW nerfed Deep Strike because some other combos using deep strike were problematic, and that made already mediocre Warp Talons garbage tier. Warp Talons are still utterly broken and CA18 did almost nothing to make them playable, it's still ridiculously expensive unit that is removed as easily as normal power armor (easy is actually not a good adjective here) while struggling to do anything even if ignored. Chosen are ok I guess, but anyone should be careful with them as they don't have box set and GW have indicated/stated they dislike providing unit options that are not in the sold box sets.
So IMHOCA definitely is a marketing move, it can't be called balancing if 'balanced' units are still total trash after the said 'balancing'. And to be specific, by marketing I mean lying, GW are using these perceived balance adjustments to gather customer goodwill but they are doing very little actual balancing and fixing. Meanwhile rules bloat is about as bad as it has ever been and let's just wait and see for the specialist detachments to get out of control like formations did in 7th edition.
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Wayniac wrote: I *have* tried the new CA missions. They are IMHO amazing, but ultimately useless as ITC won't (likely) adopt them, which means the competitive "meta" is still going to be using boring missions designed to keep their listbuilding meta going strong. There's a chance they might after LVO, but I doubt it as they seem to feel that bland tournament missions that you can tailor are better than missions that encourage you to bring a balanced force to mitigate potentially bad scenarios.
Also on the other topic, if GW would move to the modern age they could respond quicker with FAQs and actual updates, maybe even do something like Privateer's CID (which is an amazing idea among all the other old GW-like things that company has done recently) to try to balance things and get more feedback than just from people with an agenda like Reece and co.
In recent podcast with FtN (if I remember right) Reece sounded very in-love with their ITC settings and talked for long time about them, so I wouldn't hold my breath.
Crimson wrote: I think that at this point the ITC policies are actively harmful for the health of the game.
I 100% agree, and have argued about that in the past. It forks the game, it deviates from the norm and changes the meta by existing. It's time for it to go, but judging from the last thread we had discussing it, a lot of people think GW's missions are imbalanced and miss the fact that's the entire point and prefer the bland ITC missions.
Crimson wrote: I think that at this point the ITC policies are actively harmful for the health of the game.
I 100% agree, and have argued about that in the past. It forks the game, it deviates from the norm and changes the meta by existing. It's time for it to go, but judging from the last thread we had discussing it, a lot of people think GW's missions are imbalanced and miss the fact that's the entire point and prefer the bland ITC missions.
Are ITC missions even a widespread thing? I can't say I see people using them. They are a niche within a niche, and if you do consider them to have "forked the game", then one of those forks is so tiny that most people probably don't even know it exists. The ITC has far greater internet representation than real-world adoption.
Crimson wrote: I think that at this point the ITC policies are actively harmful for the health of the game.
I 100% agree, and have argued about that in the past. It forks the game, it deviates from the norm and changes the meta by existing. It's time for it to go, but judging from the last thread we had discussing it, a lot of people think GW's missions are imbalanced and miss the fact that's the entire point and prefer the bland ITC missions.
Are ITC missions even a widespread thing? I can't say I see people using them. They are a niche within a niche, and if you do consider them to have "forked the game", then one of those forks is so tiny that most people probably don't even know it exists. The ITC has far greater internet representation than real-world adoption.
It's pretty huge in the USA tournament scene. That's a pretty big fork
I pretty much exclusively play in the beer and pretzels field where CA undoubtedly makes an impact. The competitive field is where I'm looking to expand more into in 2019 having just bought my LGT ticket.
If we look at the data from tournaments in 2018, the meta chasing gamers have (since big faq 2) started moving away from the castellan and friends list back to y'nari. The mata is not yet mature since Orks haven't made their impact yet.
So you're right we haven't had anytime yet to see the impact of CA2018 on the meta but its clear in the fact that it didn't touch drukhari, the Y'narri soup or the castellan list that much that they will still be big contenders. The top tier lists will still be the top tier lists but I think the top 10 will be filled with the usual suspects plus orks.
I'm sure however that the mid tier of tournament standings will be affected by the changes to CA. Primaris and marine armies will be more competent but not contenders for the top spots but I'm hoping inventive creative players will surprise us.
Have you guys played much of the CA2018 missions? I think they are brilliant.
They've started to adopt (from NOVA and ITC) the idea of prgressive scoring. They've gotten rid of the sudden death rule.
ITC being a variant from the norm is up to ITC and they've proven the field of dreams format of if you build it they will come because LVO is huge and ITC is huge. I have heard but nmot yet attended UK events moving to ITC champs missions.
While ITC and NOVA missions are different from the norm they have had sufficient impact to change the norm.
I urge you guys to play the CA eternal war missions as the changes go some way to shaping this discussion. I believe the missions alone are balancing the game a little
Trickstick wrote: Well the "tournament scene" is already a tiny fork.
Thing is GW relies on tournament results for their balancing efforts, and if half of the tournaments are not even playing the same game than the rest of us, it is kind of a problem...
Trickstick wrote: Well the "tournament scene" is already a tiny fork.
Thing is GW relies on tournament results for their balancing efforts, and if half of the tournaments are not even playing the same game than the rest of us, it is kind of a problem...
This is actually a very valid point. I would counter it by saying that if half of the world is playing by that yardstick then using it to assess balance is valid because of the sheer amount of data that it produces. We could assume that GW is only looking at that half of the world in its assessments but we'd probably be wrong. Don't forget that they run their own tournaments now and have been for a while at warhammer world. This data must also be used.
The reality is balance is comprised of so many things from rules to terrain to points to missions. The variance in terrain I see from tournaments is vast. We've already said terrain rules are garbage. Actual rules are tweaked in FAQ's so we can't judge CA on these two things. What we can judge it on is points and missions. Points changes are too many to really gauge until we see more data from tournaments. Missions have changed big time and warhammer world tournaments will be using these missions as will the LGT.
Trickstick wrote: Well the "tournament scene" is already a tiny fork.
Thing is GW relies on tournament results for their balancing efforts, and if half of the tournaments are not even playing the same game than the rest of us, it is kind of a problem...
This is the entire concern. GW relies on folks like Reece, who think the GW style missions are not balanced and have their own deviant set of missions, to help balance the game as a whole. How can you balance the game as a whole when your set of data is coming from a different set of missions that creates their own meta (as evidenced by the fact GW's Heats do not use ITC missions and have different results and lists showing up) but as a result of their "clout" with GW affect the entire game despite most of their data being directly related to the style of missions they use. Sure, anyone can look at some things and say this is too good/not good enough, but the missions are a huge balancing factor in list design and even gameplay, and I don't think that's being accounted for with GW relying on people who aren't even using their missions as the yard stick.
ITC is not the only culprit here. Nova and Adepticon and the ETC. Everyone who runs a tournament has to make a decision over which missions are used. They all use variations.
We agree that you can't assume a level playing field but how much impact does that have. Are you guys saying that because they use different missions they should not be used to gather data for balancing?
Is it more likely that they are used as sources of data combined with GW's own tournaments?
The ITC is a closed circuit for 12 months. After LVO we will see if Reece chooses to change his missions as he can't change them until the season ends. I have heard him praise the CA 2018 missions though, maybe they will adopt them for the new ITC season
We have no way of knowing just how much they utilise outside information though. It could be loads, it could be a simple "oh those couple of things are bad, we'll look at them" situation. I think "relies on" is probably a bit strong.
We have no way of knowing just how much they utilise outside information though. It could be loads, it could be a simple "oh those couple of things are bad, we'll look at them" situation. I think "relies on" is probably a bit strong.
Absolutely. GW use Nova and Adepticon TO's for feedback as well as a large group of other people. They delayed the BIG FAQ last year following adepticon so they clearly put weight there in decision making as evidenced by the following.
People love to hate Reece for this but he's only one in a large group and whether his words are true or not (since he's on the payroll) he's always said he gives his feedback then doesn't hear anything until the rules are published.
I am not sure about how many people actually bought the CA books and how many use it via battle scribe without having bought it, but the custom mission issues would most likely be solved if GW published a playable set of missions online and free. That way a new standard set of missions could be introduced.
The maelstrom and eternal war missions in the Core Rulebook don't work for different reasons, so custom missions are more or less needed which causes the forking mentioned earlier.
Another take on the thread topic: If GW was trying to market their models efficiently via rules, they would have changed the core rule set for 8th. With the current rules, there is so much redundancy within almost all codexes that no matter how point costs are changed, GW will always have 90% of their range won't be bought for the rules.
With the basic rules of the game, only expected damage per point spent really matters, so only ~10% that score high in that category will sell for the rules.
If you make assault marines (or raptors) and (chaos) bikers cheaper, only one will sell because those units are basically the same. Just like all the melee units for CSM, there is no functional difference between them.
Halving all weapons ranges while keeping movement the same could be a marketing move because it gives all fast units a purpose.
Removing fall back from the game could be a a marketing move because it gives melee a purpose aside from dealing damage, which is done better by lots of shooting units.
BaconCatBug wrote: It's almost like making physical codexes be the basis of your rules is a dumb idea, or something..
It worked just fine for an awful long time before the internet came along.
The problem isn't the rules being in physical books, it's the rushed production schedule resulting in inadequately edited final products. Whether the rules are in physical books or electronic files, I'd much rather they took the time to fix any issues with them before publishing, rather than after.
The internet has been in widespread use for 23-25 years. I think GW has had enough time to adjust. The problem with physical books is the fact that they take so long to compile, edit, print, and ship, that the information in them can be outdated before they've even hit shelves. CA cannot address balance issues that cropped up in September if it releases in December as a physical book. If the rulebook and codexes were subscription based, they could make last minute changes. It takes minutes to push an update to a mobile app or website. Balance issues that weren't addressed in CA2018 will have to wait for CA2019, which again will have the same problem of correcting the meta of January-August because of the print schedule. GW is stuck in the mindset of the 80s when we're going on 2019. This isn't D&D, the internet is a thing that exists, smartphones are things that exist. I think the main reason they don't want to do that is the fact that they can print a book for $2-3 and sell it for $30-60, and everyone that plays the game has to buy it. However, if they charged subscription fees and just sold fluff/picture books, far less people would buy the books. It is purely driven by profit rather than what is best for the game.
Toofast wrote: CA cannot address balance issues that cropped up in September if it releases in December as a physical book.
It wouldn't need to if those balance issues were addressed during playtesting instead of waiting until the rules are published.
Balance issues that weren't addressed in CA2018 will have to wait for CA2019, ...
Or, alternatively, they could stop charging their customers for patches to the rules that they didn't get right the first time around, and just use this newfangled internet for that instead.
Just a thought.
Having said that, I'll point out that in this day and age, I feel that they would be better served dropping the codex model and just including the rules with the models, and/or having downloadable (and updated as necessary) versions for download on the website, which is what we do for Maelstrom's Edge. My contention wasn't that physical books are the best way to present army rules, I was merely opposing the suggestion that it is a 'dumb' way of doing it.
I really don’t get why they went with the free datasheets for AoS and not 40k. I would assume because AoS was a fledgeling IP and they more or less can guarantee their overpriced/instantly outdated codices will sell, but that’s just my assumption.
I really appreciated that with the new edition, the indices were ready to go and every faction had their rules out of the gate. Seemed like a good sign of things to come. Now we have the same codex nonsense that we’ve had in every edition. Granted, they release them fairly quickly, but they still lack cohesion in design philosophy and have varying amounts of creativity.
Of course, writing them all at once is a tall order, and no doubt complicated, but we’re never going to stop having the issues we're having with the same release cycle and format we’ve always had.
In addition, I would guess that separating the factions into their own release “events” may boost sales to some degree. Not sure if that’s accurate, but I’ve seen players complain about the rapid release cycle because they can’t afford to buy everything at once. Why they feel it necessary to buy everything at once, I don’t understand, but it’s certainly a phenomenon for a subset of hobbyists.
Wolf_in_Human_Shape wrote: I really don’t get why they went with the free datasheets for AoS and not 40k. I would assume because AoS was a fledgeling IP and they more or less can guarantee their overpriced/instantly outdated codices will sell, but that’s just my assumption.
I really appreciated that with the new edition, the indices were ready to go and every faction had their rules out of the gate. Seemed like a good sign of things to come. Now we have the same codex nonsense that we’ve had in every edition. Granted, they release them fairly quickly, but they still lack cohesion in design philosophy and have varying amounts of creativity.
Of course, writing them all at once is a tall order, and no doubt complicated, but we’re never going to stop having the issues we're having with the same release cycle and format we’ve always had.
In addition, I would guess that separating the factions into their own release “events” may boost sales to some degree. Not sure if that’s accurate, but I’ve seen players complain about the rapid release cycle because they can’t afford to buy everything at once. Why they feel it necessary to buy everything at once, I don’t understand, but it’s certainly a phenomenon for a subset of hobbyists.
Thing is as soon as AoS started introducing matched play suddenly all the rules for the games weren't free and if you want to play matched play you need all the equivalent books you would in 40k. Books are clearly a huge seller and an entirely free ruleset seems outside of their purview.
I have always loved army books and codexes but do I think a £25 codex plus £25 a year is a bit much for a few buffs and point changes (if that is all that interests you in these books)? Yes definitely. In this day and age there should at least be a cheap online option for the rules alone. I still think they'd sell plenty of books, many like myself just love having and reading through them.
It's a marketing move for CA 2017 because some of the point cost changes to index options from that version are missing in the current copy.
E.g if an Ork player that owns only CA 2018 wants to include Ork warbuggies from the index he is paying 44 points + weapons, 1/3 more than he would if he has access to CA 2017 too.
Personally I don't want to have to lug around and navigate years worth of annuals in addition to other rule books just to keep 'up to date'.
nareik wrote: It's a marketing move for CA 2017 because some of the point cost changes to index options from that version are missing in the current copy.
E.g if an Ork player that owns only CA 2018 wants to include Ork warbuggies from the index he is paying 44 points + weapons, 1/3 more than he would if he has access to CA 2017 too.
Personally I don't want to have to lug around and navigate years worth of annuals in addition to other rule books just to keep 'up to date'.
It's just part of Games Workshop being torn between being model sellers and game sellers I think. If it was all about the game only CA2018 would be 'valid' for serious business games. As they don't want to invalidate models we're all a little unsure of what's intended.
nareik wrote: It's a marketing move for CA 2017 because some of the point cost changes to index options from that version are missing in the current copy.
E.g if an Ork player that owns only CA 2018 wants to include Ork warbuggies from the index he is paying 44 points + weapons, 1/3 more than he would if he has access to CA 2017 too.
Personally I don't want to have to lug around and navigate years worth of annuals in addition to other rule books just to keep 'up to date'.
I'd need to check the verbiage at the start of the Matched Play Points section in CA2018, but I'm fairly sure that it indicates that the only changes which still apply are the ones from CA2018.
Which would mean that, yes, some Index changes have been rolled back.
Whether this is deliberate or an oversight is a question you'd have to pose to GW.
Trickstick wrote: Well the "tournament scene" is already a tiny fork.
Thing is GW relies on tournament results for their balancing efforts, and if half of the tournaments are not even playing the same game than the rest of us, it is kind of a problem...
They should rely on tournament results to balance game, since this are the guys that plays allot and have the resources to create busted builds and show what is really strong in the game.
In friendly games balance does not matter as much, since players will bring suboptimal armies and fractions that are considered bad in the tournament scene.
That is the reason i like CA, they nerfed some of the strongest units(if we don`t count that guard and knights are not susceptible changes) and tried to buff units most players will bring on the table.
I don`t understand why most people are not content with the changes, it`s like they are expecting all their units to be OP and their army to be able to smash every opponent without problem.
If you can`t win games in your local community the problem is most likely you, not your army balance.
Trickstick wrote: Well the "tournament scene" is already a tiny fork.
Thing is GW relies on tournament results for their balancing efforts, and if half of the tournaments are not even playing the same game than the rest of us, it is kind of a problem...
They should rely on tournament results to balance game, since this are the guys that plays allot and have the resources to create busted builds and show what is really strong in the game.
They should rely on tournaments if - and only if - those tournaments are actually playing Warhammer 40,000 as published by GW.
ITChammer, ETChammer, NovaHammer and AdeptiHammer - at a minimum - are four different variants of the game where different units and combinations will stick their heads above water. As a result, they should not be used as anything more than anecdotal evidence for balancing the game. They might give you a pointer for things to keep an eye on in normal games, but that's about it.
Crimson wrote: You really have no clue about the difference between being inspired by something an directly copying. Furthermore, real history is actually free game; you can in fact produce exact replicas of real Napoleonic infantry without the French government suing you.
Ahh, so what I must have done was scanned a Grot tank and used that with a few minor tweeks? Or, did I use the scale as a rough guideline and than use tank features from numerous modern/historical (Mostly WW2) tanks and fill in the dimensions with bitz I liked....like soviet style ridged armor and Sherman tank style turret?
But hey, since GW did it its fine, but feth me If I do it right?
Well, wether you copied/modded real world stuff or ripped of GW, I'd like to see what you came up with. So PM the pics to me already.
Why do 40k tournaments use all these unnecessary custom missions when AoS tournaments generally use mission straight out of the books? Makes no sense to me.
nareik wrote: It's a marketing move for CA 2017 because some of the point cost changes to index options from that version are missing in the current copy.
E.g if an Ork player that owns only CA 2018 wants to include Ork warbuggies from the index he is paying 44 points + weapons, 1/3 more than he would if he has access to CA 2017 too.
Personally I don't want to have to lug around and navigate years worth of annuals in addition to other rule books just to keep 'up to date'.
CA2017 is now obsolete, and is not used for any points values. You just use the latest index/codex values and CA2018.
Mymearan wrote: Why do 40k tournaments use all these unnecessary custom missions when AoS tournaments generally use mission straight out of the books? Makes no sense to me.
Is this a serious question?
If it is:
Scoring in Maelstrom is so decoupled from the rest of the game, it doesn't reward at all the better player for being better. Throwing one die to determine who wins is less random than Maelstrom.
Eternal War don't work for tournaments since with time limits and optimized lists, the objecctives won't matter at all and end of game scoring doesn't come into effect often.
Mymearan wrote: Why do 40k tournaments use all these unnecessary custom missions when AoS tournaments generally use mission straight out of the books? Makes no sense to me.
Is this a serious question?
If it is:
Scoring in Maelstrom is so decoupled from the rest of the game, it doesn't reward at all the better player for being better. Throwing one die to determine who wins is less random than Maelstrom.
Eternal War don't work for tournaments since with time limits and optimized lists, the objecctives won't matter at all and end of game scoring doesn't come into effect often.
The CA18 eternal war missions fix the majority of the issues but it's still doubtful they will be adopted. It is odd that the AoS missions are considered acceptable but the 40k ones are not.
CA is probably more a "here's your token effort at balance" move, which is both a vague attempt at balance and an attempt at marketing (in the sense of making it seem like they're making an effort) combined.
Reading back through some of the points in the thread, I'd be very surprised if they only had 6 rules writers. Unless something has radically changed in the last year then we know they had a team that worked exclusively on specialist games for a start. They most likely have separate teams for AOS and 40k. It's also been explained to death by various former writers that the process starts with model design. So the sales side of the business produces data about what is selling well and what isn't and feed this to the model team. That team produces new models and then feeds that to the game designers who are basically told "make this fit into the game", which then goes back for approval and where balance becomes subordinated on the altar of selling products. It's why you don't get frequent digital balance adjustments, because like it or not, that's not as profitable for GW as codexes and army books and that is unlikely to change anytime soon.
CA seems like their token effort at appeasement as much as anything else.
Mymearan wrote: Why do 40k tournaments use all these unnecessary custom missions when AoS tournaments generally use mission straight out of the books? Makes no sense to me.
Is this a serious question?
If it is:
Scoring in Maelstrom is so decoupled from the rest of the game, it doesn't reward at all the better player for being better. Throwing one die to determine who wins is less random than Maelstrom.
Eternal War don't work for tournaments since with time limits and optimized lists, the objecctives won't matter at all and end of game scoring doesn't come into effect often.
Oh that’s weird. AoS has had progressive scoring missions since like 2016.
That seems to be a likely explanation. And for the most part it seems like they've succeeded on that front, at least in terms of general perception. Hardcore competitive players will look at the numbers from CA2018 and see it for what it is, but from what I've observed the more casual you are the more you have to be enthusiastic about with the points drops.
Kids just don't wanna get stomped by really plain, obvious cheese like 200+ cultists...even though they are probably getting stomped harder by Castellans and either don't realize it or simply don't play in that environment.
If it is:
Scoring in Maelstrom is so decoupled from the rest of the game, it doesn't reward at all the better player for being better. Throwing one die to determine who wins is less random than Maelstrom.
Eternal War don't work for tournaments since with time limits and optimized lists, the objecctives won't matter at all and end of game scoring doesn't come into effect often.
If the tournament is structured so that there is not enough time to play the game properly, then it is a badly arranged tournament.
If it is:
Scoring in Maelstrom is so decoupled from the rest of the game, it doesn't reward at all the better player for being better. Throwing one die to determine who wins is less random than Maelstrom.
Eternal War don't work for tournaments since with time limits and optimized lists, the objecctives won't matter at all and end of game scoring doesn't come into effect often.
If the tournament is structured so that there is not enough time to play the game properly, then it is a badly arranged tournament.
They can`t do 1 week tournament, so you are usually limited to 2-3 days and they can`t wait someone having 6hours games.
If it is:
Scoring in Maelstrom is so decoupled from the rest of the game, it doesn't reward at all the better player for being better. Throwing one die to determine who wins is less random than Maelstrom.
Eternal War don't work for tournaments since with time limits and optimized lists, the objecctives won't matter at all and end of game scoring doesn't come into effect often.
If the tournament is structured so that there is not enough time to play the game properly, then it is a badly arranged tournament.
They can`t do 1 week tournament, so you are usually limited to 2-3 days and they can`t wait someone having 6hours games.
Elephant in the room, but wouldn't the obvious solution be to lower the points then?
They can`t do 1 week tournament, so you are usually limited to 2-3 days and they can`t wait someone having 6hours games.
Elephant in the room, but wouldn't the obvious solution be to lower the points then?
We recently had a fifteen week 'tournament.' Well, a league, really, but basically the same thing. Plenty of time to play the games.
But if you have only two or three days, and there is not enough time to play 2000 point games, then play smaller games. This isn't so hard. Either play the game properly, or don't play at all.
Mymearan wrote: Why do 40k tournaments use all these unnecessary custom missions when AoS tournaments generally use mission straight out of the books? Makes no sense to me.
Is this a serious question?
If it is:
Scoring in Maelstrom is so decoupled from the rest of the game, it doesn't reward at all the better player for being better. Throwing one die to determine who wins is less random than Maelstrom.
Eternal War don't work for tournaments since with time limits and optimized lists, the objecctives won't matter at all and end of game scoring doesn't come into effect often.
Oh that’s weird. AoS has had progressive scoring missions since like 2016.
Maelstrom is progressive scoring as well, it just doesn't work satisfactorily. I don't know about the killiness of AoS, but I think the key problem is that missions where being tables results in a loss don't really make sense if you can easily table your opponent after 3 turns.
If it is:
Scoring in Maelstrom is so decoupled from the rest of the game, it doesn't reward at all the better player for being better. Throwing one die to determine who wins is less random than Maelstrom.
Eternal War don't work for tournaments since with time limits and optimized lists, the objecctives won't matter at all and end of game scoring doesn't come into effect often.
If the tournament is structured so that there is not enough time to play the game properly, then it is a badly arranged tournament.
They can`t do 1 week tournament, so you are usually limited to 2-3 days and they can`t wait someone having 6hours games.
Elephant in the room, but wouldn't the obvious solution be to lower the points then?
How low can you go? At 1000 points, I guess even less armies would be playable. Just imagine playing vs. 1000 points of Death Guard, 1 HQ, 2x Cultists/Poxwalkers for objectives and the rest drones and crawlers. This is the absolute definition of 'not fun'.
Wayniac wrote: Elephant in the room, but wouldn't the obvious solution be to lower the points then?
Took the words right out of my mouth
Then we remember general gradual fall in unit point costs and increase in suggested army points costs and realise it's in the interest of GW to gradually increase amount of models needed for so called 'suggested' match size.
Also smaller match sizes can be problematic for some armies because different codices effectively pay different amounts to get equal amount of CPs.
One should also note that in AoS army options are more restricted and many lists end up bringing similar amounts in points (EDIT!) of battlelines, which differs greatly from 40k.
Mymearan wrote: Why do 40k tournaments use all these unnecessary custom missions when AoS tournaments generally use mission straight out of the books? Makes no sense to me.
Is this a serious question?
If it is: Scoring in Maelstrom is so decoupled from the rest of the game, it doesn't reward at all the better player for being better. Throwing one die to determine who wins is less random than Maelstrom. Eternal War don't work for tournaments since with time limits and optimized lists, the objecctives won't matter at all and end of game scoring doesn't come into effect often.
Oh that’s weird. AoS has had progressive scoring missions since like 2016.
Maelstrom is progressive scoring as well, it just doesn't work satisfactorily. I don't know about the killiness of AoS, but I think the key problem is that missions where being tables results in a loss don't really make sense if you can easily table your opponent after 3 turns..
I would just implement AoS-style missions in 40k then. Progressive scoring with set objectives (no random cards or anything like the Maelstorm nonsense) and tabling is never auto-loss. Generally the missions are great and used by just about every tournament out there. Sure, tabling is a problem with top-tier armies just like in 40k, but not a guaranteed loss late in the match.
Trickstick wrote: Well the "tournament scene" is already a tiny fork.
Thing is GW relies on tournament results for their balancing efforts, and if half of the tournaments are not even playing the same game than the rest of us, it is kind of a problem...
This is the entire concern. GW relies on folks like Reece, who think the GW style missions are not balanced and have their own deviant set of missions, to help balance the game as a whole. How can you balance the game as a whole when your set of data is coming from a different set of missions that creates their own meta (as evidenced by the fact GW's Heats do not use ITC missions and have different results and lists showing up) but as a result of their "clout" with GW affect the entire game despite most of their data being directly related to the style of missions they use. Sure, anyone can look at some things and say this is too good/not good enough, but the missions are a huge balancing factor in list design and even gameplay, and I don't think that's being accounted for with GW relying on people who aren't even using their missions as the yard stick.
Guys...
Missions don't change how effective a unit is at shooting and so on. Missions change how useful a unit might be in context and is not something you base points on as missions change.
Trickstick wrote: Well the "tournament scene" is already a tiny fork.
Thing is GW relies on tournament results for their balancing efforts, and if half of the tournaments are not even playing the same game than the rest of us, it is kind of a problem...
This is the entire concern. GW relies on folks like Reece, who think the GW style missions are not balanced and have their own deviant set of missions, to help balance the game as a whole. How can you balance the game as a whole when your set of data is coming from a different set of missions that creates their own meta (as evidenced by the fact GW's Heats do not use ITC missions and have different results and lists showing up) but as a result of their "clout" with GW affect the entire game despite most of their data being directly related to the style of missions they use. Sure, anyone can look at some things and say this is too good/not good enough, but the missions are a huge balancing factor in list design and even gameplay, and I don't think that's being accounted for with GW relying on people who aren't even using their missions as the yard stick.
Guys...
Missions don't change how effective a unit is at shooting and so on. Missions change how useful a unit might be in context and is not something you base points on as missions change.
So...stop trying to blame ITC?
But it does. Again, you keep ignoring the fact you don't see anywhere near the same type of lists that you see dominating ITC events as you do at say Heat 3 which uses Chapter Approved. That's not to say that we should necessarily blame ITC but it does indicate that the mission does affect quite a bit more than you're giving credit for.
Missions don't change how effective a unit is at shooting and so on. Missions change how useful a unit might be in context and is not something you base points on as missions change.
But that's exactly the thing : Missions change how useful a given unit is within the army, and as a result change the way armies are constructed and used.
So if an event is using non standard missions, any data on the armies used, the composition of those armies and the effectiveness of the units in them is only really applicable to that event.
At best, it gives you skewed results. Nobody is using Army X, or unit Y. Is that because they're sub-standard generally, or is it just because there are better options for this specific event's mission pack?
Add in event-specific FAQs and house rules, and it gets even more confused.
Tournaments are potentially a great resource for fine tuning the game... But only so long as they are playing the same game as the guys writing the rules.
I would like to see examples of a unit that is overperforming in non-GW mission formats (ETC/ITC/etc) but is balanced or underperforming in GW standard missions.
BlaxicanX wrote: I would like to see examples of a unit that is overperforming in non-GW mission formats (ETC/ITC/etc) but is balanced or underperforming in GW standard missions.
Or vice versa.
It doesn't have to OP under ITC and underpowered under GW missions. It just needs to be different. Missions have a big impact on how people build armies and what is and isn't considered competitive.
Case in point, taking a 10 man IG infantry squad under GW missions is fine, but under ITC missions it was a poor choice, the optimal build is to take a heavy weapon team so that there are only 9 models in the unit and therefore didn't give away VPs to your opponent. Looking at this it would seem to suggest that a heavy weapon, regardless of what it is, is a no-brainer, but its only a no-brainer under ITC missions.
Other cases would be taking multiple fast units to complete Maelstrom objectives, whereas under ITC rules you could get most of your points from holding the same single objective all game and killing one enemy unit a turn.
BlaxicanX wrote: I would like to see examples of a unit that is overperforming in non-GW mission formats (ETC/ITC/etc) but is balanced or underperforming in GW standard missions.
Or vice versa.
It doesn't have to OP under ITC and underpowered under GW missions. It just needs to be different. Missions have a big impact on how people build armies and what is and isn't considered competitive.
Case in point, taking a 10 man IG infantry squad under GW missions is fine, but under ITC missions it was a poor choice, the optimal build is to take a heavy weapon team so that there are only 9 models in the unit and therefore didn't give away VPs to your opponent. Looking at this it would seem to suggest that a heavy weapon, regardless of what it is, is a no-brainer, but its only a no-brainer under ITC missions.
Other cases would be taking multiple fast units to complete Maelstrom objectives, whereas under ITC rules you could get most of your points from holding the same single objective all game and killing one enemy unit a turn.
A great example of this is pre-Chapter Approved Celestine.
Because of how her and her Geminae counted for secondary objectives, taking Celestine for an ITC game effectively meant giving away 8 Victory Points, while taking her in a GW game was a great way to deny Slay the Warlord.
Case in point, taking a 10 man IG infantry squad under GW missions is fine, but under ITC missions it was a poor choice, the optimal build is to take a heavy weapon team so that there are only 9 models in the unit and therefore didn't give away VPs to your opponent. Looking at this it would seem to suggest that a heavy weapon, regardless of what it is, is a no-brainer, but its only a no-brainer under ITC missions.
So literally 4 points per squad is playing a different game?
I with Daedalus here. Sounds so strange that ITC is having a huge effect on things based on what you described. I just don't see much point in trying to balance based on mission/terrain. Perhaps because I don't bother with tournaments as well as trying to play a wide variation of mission types and differing terrain setups. The only thing that makes the BRB even worth owning to me is the shear amount of mission element fodder contained within. What is described here sounds like tournaments should implement some sort of Battle Builder (from Dust Warfare is where I used one) where each opponent tries to bid more mission elements more to the favor of their army or at least one that doesn't favor their opponent. That, or random/blind missions for said tournament where it would be in the best interest of the players to make more of a TAC list.
Don't get me wrong. I totally see how knowing the mission and tailoring to it is going to shape your army and don't need a list of examples. However, given that there are so many units that are bad no matter what mission/terrain setup is created, I don't see a need to concern with GW trying to balance a unit that is good for one mission type but bad for another mission type.
Saturmorn Carvilli wrote: I don't see a need to concern with GW trying to balance a unit that is good for one mission type but bad for another mission type.
It's not specifically about a unit being bad for one mission and good for another - that's exactly what should happen, and it's a large part of why missions are randomly chosen.
Where it becomes a potential issue is if tournaments favour a particular mission type, so other mission types are never even considered in their data. Or where tournaments have non-standard scoring that skews either army selection or the way games play out on the table.
So far I am not a big fan of balancing for tournament results.
The outcome of that is usually, that whatever turned out to be the broken combo last few events gets hammered down. Ideally that should eventually get us to spme kind of 'flat' peak with a few different picks competing for the top spot on about equal power level.
This may sound great for tournament players...
But to me, the far greater issue is the huge amount of broken and unusable units that all the armies have. Or sometimes entire armies that are just so bad. This would be much more important to change in a chapter approved.
Instead, the tournament-balance approach seems to make this issue worse. Often that OP soup piece, that gets shafted for tournament abuse, is also the only thing that keeps an otherwise horrible non-tournament army afloat. And by nerfing that one unit, but at the same time not improving anything else for that army, we get yet another completely shafted faction.
This is from the perspective of a player with multiple finished armies who does not want to buy the newest OP of the month all the time, mind you. It would be great if all the pieces we happen to have sitting around were at least somewhat viable in a matchplay setting.
If 'buffing units that don't sell' gets me that, I am ok with it. But so far, I did not see much of that in CA? Did I miss something?
HMint wrote: This is from the perspective of a player with multiple finished armies who does not want to buy the newest OP of the month all the time, mind you. It would be great if all the pieces we happen to have sitting around were at least somewhat viable in a matchplay setting.
If 'buffing units that don't sell' gets me that, I am ok with it. But so far, I did not see much of that in CA? Did I miss something?
Completely agree with you, and especially with this:
It would be great if all the pieces we happen to have sitting around were at least somewhat viable in a matchplay setting.
Which arguably is definition of balanced game. Of course some units can only have some niche uses, but I'm still waiting to hear explanation for niche uses of CSM Mutilators or Warp Talons in current state of rules.
Meanwhile however many posters in various currently hot threads seem perfectly happy with the status quo and seem to consider Castellan, Guardsmen and MEQs and various other units to have balanced rules and point costs. So everything is working as intended, so you, me and everyone else should suck it up, get our wallets out and continue chasing the meta. And meta generally means next new OP thing GW publishes.
At an intellectual LVO tournament level yes, I think the Castellan, Guardsmen, elements of ELdar and Chaos soup etc are too good. I think this is bad for the game because I like that element of the hobby.
But the fact is 99% of games are not against Ynnari or an optomised imperial soup list played by someone "chasing the meta". For a casual player 8th is leagues ahead of 7th, and CA has made that better still. GK are still the weakest faction - and certain units remain clearly inferior - but the broad middle has expanded.
Units not selling? There’s usually a reason for it. Could be awful models (Mutilators), or another unit in the army doing the same job better.
Reducing points can address that. Do enough of them, and you shake up the meta for those that follow it, possibly to the point where they need to resign and buy more.
Tyel is for the most part right. When I am playing in non-tournament and mono-army settings the armies tend to even out much more against each other and even more so with the point changes. However, there are of course some duds and the problem is more that they are trying to support so many units from earlier editions that are now heavily overlapping with each other(or perhaps too specialized in case of Grey Knights) and for those units it is not enough to change points, but they must themselves be fundamentally changed. How that is accomplished I have no idea. With how GW usually runs business I fear that only happens during Codex revamps.
Mutilators always struggled to be relevant. I've not used my chaos this edition but in 6th/7th era they were passable as cheap drop and forget options.
Fluff wise a lot of chaos units are meant to manifest and immediately cause carnage but the core / beta rules don't do much to enable that narrative, in part because unmitigatable alpha strikes make for neither a fun game nor battle of wits.
Personally I'd like a reduction in alpha strike, and it is clear with the beta cover stratagem that the community FAQ team are at least making cursory glances in that direction.
It must be a difficult balance to strike; allowing super heavies et al to be sufficiently devastating while also preventing them from dominating turn 1.
Perhaps they need a turn or two to 'warm up' their main weapon systems, or a limit to how much they can fire at once (the Stompa actually has a few mechanics to this effect).
Well, in terms of Codex Revamps they’re not in a bad position at all.
GSC and Sisters, and that’s all your core armies out in the wild. As well as meaning we’ll likely get new forces (World Eaters etc), it also frees them up to go back and have another crack at existing armies that aren’t quite working.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Well, in terms of Codex Revamps they’re not in a bad position at all.
GSC and Sisters, and that’s all your core armies out in the wild. As well as meaning we’ll likely get new forces (World Eaters etc), it also frees them up to go back and have another crack at existing armies that aren’t quite working.
Which only helps if they understand why they don't work, and they've shown over a year they dont.
Case in point, taking a 10 man IG infantry squad under GW missions is fine, but under ITC missions it was a poor choice, the optimal build is to take a heavy weapon team so that there are only 9 models in the unit and therefore didn't give away VPs to your opponent. Looking at this it would seem to suggest that a heavy weapon, regardless of what it is, is a no-brainer, but its only a no-brainer under ITC missions.
That was specifically fixed in the latest ITC secondaries.
- They removed the ability to score multiple secondaries on models that gave them up easily (like Kingslayer & Headhunter).
- They change 'The Reaper' to be every 20 models killed so taking a bunch of 9 model IS units doesn't do much.
- They added Butcher's Bill to give up 1 point for every two units killed.
You should check into the new rules as the dynamic has changed considerably.
Case in point, taking a 10 man IG infantry squad under GW missions is fine, but under ITC missions it was a poor choice, the optimal build is to take a heavy weapon team so that there are only 9 models in the unit and therefore didn't give away VPs to your opponent. Looking at this it would seem to suggest that a heavy weapon, regardless of what it is, is a no-brainer, but its only a no-brainer under ITC missions.
That was specifically fixed in the latest ITC secondaries.
- They removed the ability to score multiple secondaries on models that gave them up easily (like Kingslayer & Headhunter).
- They change 'The Reaper' to be every 20 models killed so taking a bunch of 9 model IS units doesn't do much.
- They added Butcher's Bill to give up 1 point for every two units killed.
You should check into the new rules as the dynamic has changed considerably.
Hence why I said WAS. Those changes (and such simple changes) made units that were not competitive more so. In your own words, changing the mission parameters has changed the dynamics of the game considerably. Which is our point.
Current ITC rules have more in common with previous ITC rules that GW's standard missions, so surely you can understand where we are coming from by saying ITC is considerably different to GW standard, and that just because something performs poor/well under ITC does not mean GW should take it at face value that it needs to be changed.
Case in point, taking a 10 man IG infantry squad under GW missions is fine, but under ITC missions it was a poor choice, the optimal build is to take a heavy weapon team so that there are only 9 models in the unit and therefore didn't give away VPs to your opponent. Looking at this it would seem to suggest that a heavy weapon, regardless of what it is, is a no-brainer, but its only a no-brainer under ITC missions.
That was specifically fixed in the latest ITC secondaries.
- They removed the ability to score multiple secondaries on models that gave them up easily (like Kingslayer & Headhunter).
- They change 'The Reaper' to be every 20 models killed so taking a bunch of 9 model IS units doesn't do much.
- They added Butcher's Bill to give up 1 point for every two units killed.
You should check into the new rules as the dynamic has changed considerably.
Hence why I said WAS. Those changes (and such simple changes) made units that were not competitive more so. In your own words, changing the mission parameters has changed the dynamics of the game considerably. Which is our point.
Current ITC rules have more in common with previous ITC rules that GW's standard missions, so surely you can understand where we are coming from by saying ITC is considerably different to GW standard, and that just because something performs poor/well under ITC does not mean GW should take it at face value that it needs to be changed.
No.
All the units they took then they still take now. The lists haven't changed much other than game-y issues like 9 man IS going away.
I don`t understand why most people are not content with the changes, it`s like they are expecting all their units to be OP and their army to be able to smash every opponent without problem.
If you can`t win games in your local community the problem is most likely you, not your army balance.
No, people were just expecting the things that dominate at literally every single tournament, Imperial soup w loyal 32 for CP farm, ynnari soup, knights, to be nerfed. Instead those things got no changes while units like crisis suits got buffed from being totally unplayable garbage to maybe you'll take them for fun once in awhile. CA2018 seems to be aimed at allowing casual players to use their whole collection without auto losing rather than balancing the game for tournaments. If they intended CA2018 to balance the game at the top end for tournament players, it would have done something about loyal 32, ynnari soup, and knights. I don't expect *my* army to be super OP, I just don't want to see any army or combination be super OP. As long as you have to run some flavor of Imperial or Ynnari soup to perform well at tournaments, there's a fundamental problem with the game.
As I said in another post, it's both hilarious and sad that GW thinks limiting soup by only allowing 1 faction per detachment is effective. They either can't even comprehend the flaws in their own game system after 1.5 years of tournament results and feedback, or don't care enough to risk losing the sale of 32 guardsmen to every imperial player.
Toofast wrote: CA2018 seems to be aimed at allowing casual players to use their whole collection without auto losing rather than balancing the game for tournaments.
Which is exactly what they should do. If they can balance for the tournaments too, great, but improvements for the casual play should be the priority.
Casual play is by definition inherently fine, though.
If Crisis Suits were 200 points a model, what difference does it make in the world of fluffy beerhammer. You'd take them anyway because they fit your theme or the models look cool or whatever your motivation.
If casual play is the priority then things like CA have no function. The point of living rulesets is to cater to high-level play, where balance actually matters.
BlaxicanX wrote: Casual play is by definition inherently fine, though.
If Crisis Suits were 200 points a model, what difference does it make in the world of fluffy beerhammer. You'd take them anyway because they fit your theme or the models look cool or whatever your motivation.
If casual play is the priority then things like CA have no function. The point of living rulesets is to cater to high-level play, where balance actually matters.
That's just utter nonsense. People who play casually want to have a fair (or at least some!) chance of winning too. Balance actually matters in the top end way less, because there people are perfectly fine with 90% of the stuff being unusable anyway.
Crimson wrote: People who play casually want to have a fair (or at least some!) chance of winning too. Balance actually matters in the top end way less, because there people are perfectly fine with 90% of the stuff being unusable anyway.
How would nerfing loyal 32, castellan, and ynnari soup give casual players less chance at winning? Right now, a casual player still has no chance at winning against one of those lists. They can just use a few more models from their collection without auto losing against other casual lists. Balance matters more in the top end because it's extremely boring to pay hundreds to thousands of dollars to travel to an event, get a hotel room, buy a ticket, pay to eat out for 3 days, just to see 60 out of 120 armies using the same 2 lists. It also prevents more people from getting interested in local events because they realize if they don't play 1 of 3 lists, which they might not happen to like, they might as well not even show up. There's better things to do on a Saturday than get curbstomped by custodes jetbikes, loyal 32 mortar teams and a castellan at your FLGS ITC event because you happen to like Necrons or Grey Knights. Ask guys like Nanavati if they prefer 75% of the factions and 90% of the units in the game being unusable if you're trying to win a competitive event. The best players will still win the big events if everything is viable, they'll just have a lot more fun doing it and be able to play what they like instead of being shoehorned into a specific army build because they want to win.
Crimson wrote: People who play casually want to have a fair (or at least some!) chance of winning too. Balance actually matters in the top end way less, because there people are perfectly fine with 90% of the stuff being unusable anyway.
How would nerfing loyal 32, castellan, and ynnari soup give casual players less chance at winning? Right now, a casual player still has no chance at winning against one of those lists. They can just use a few more models from their collection without auto losing against other casual lists. Balance matters more in the top end because it's extremely boring to pay hundreds to thousands of dollars to travel to an event, get a hotel room, buy a ticket, pay to eat out for 3 days, just to see 60 out of 120 armies using the same 2 lists. It also prevents more people from getting interested in local events because they realize if they don't play 1 of 3 lists, which they might not happen to like, they might as well not even show up. There's better things to do on a Saturday than get curbstomped by custodes jetbikes, loyal 32 mortar teams and a castellan at your FLGS ITC event because you happen to like Necrons or Grey Knights. Ask guys like Nanavati if they prefer 75% of the factions and 90% of the units in the game being unusable if you're trying to win a competitive event. The best players will still win the big events if everything is viable, they'll just have a lot more fun doing it and be able to play what they like instead of being shoehorned into a specific army build because they want to win.
So I guess we should forget balancing, is that what you are suggesting? Cancel the CA boys, we are going back to codex point costs!
Crimson wrote: People who play casually want to have a fair (or at least some!) chance of winning too.
That's already the case in casual play, and has been. There are no unusable units when list min-maxing isn't in play.
I don't think this is right.
Consider 7th edition. Consider a Necron Decurion versus any of the low tier armies - Dark Eldar, CSM, Orks, non-Flyrant spamming Tyranids.
As the non-Necron player you could have turns where you killed literally 3-5 warriors. They meanwhile deleted a third of your list.
By the end of the edition Necrons were at best a mid table codex - but the crap codexes bordered on being unplayable. The massive difference between the relative tier lists meant it was difficult to have a casual game which wasn't one way traffic. The fact that those armies would be even worse against a "I can table you in two turns" Ynnari list - or a "you hit me on 6s, I have a rerollable 2++" super friends list doesn't change that.
Saying "it doesn't matter if crisis suits are 200 points" doesn't make much sense. It does. You likely won't have a fun game if your army is dramatically weaker than your opponents, resulting in you doing no damage and being quickly tabled.
Crimson wrote: People who play casually want to have a fair (or at least some!) chance of winning too.
That's already the case in casual play, and has been. There are no unusable units when list min-maxing isn't in play.
I don't think this is right.
Consider 7th edition. Consider a Necron Decurion versus any of the low tier armies - Dark Eldar, CSM, Orks, non-Flyrant spamming Tyranids.
As the non-Necron player you could have turns where you killed literally 3-5 warriors. They meanwhile deleted a third of your list.
By the end of the edition Necrons were at best a mid table codex - but the crap codexes bordered on being unplayable. The massive difference between the relative tier lists meant it was difficult to have a casual game which wasn't one way traffic. The fact that those armies would be even worse against a "I can table you in two turns" Ynnari list - or a "you hit me on 6s, I have a rerollable 2++" super friends list doesn't change that.
Saying "it doesn't matter if crisis suits are 200 points" doesn't make much sense. It does. You likely won't have a fun game if your army is dramatically weaker than your opponents, resulting in you doing no damage and being quickly tabled.
This says it all. 7th edition was about the worst edition I have played because of the power imbalance and GW not doing anything to alleviate the problem...they did a lot to aggravate it though.
Facing a Triple riptide wing, wraithknights w/Jetbikes/Spider support or the Decurion and the Space Marine Free transport lists was basically me doing my best to end the game on turn 3 instead of turn 2. The fact that I had literally no chance unless the dice gods were almost completely in my favor and my opponent made massive mistakes was what killed 7th for me.
And now in 8th, I run up against The IG Battery powered Knight lists with Slamguines or Eldar Soup lists, its basically the same thing. But here is the thing, 8th isn't ruined and can be fixed with just a simple tweak that will utterly piss off the WAAC/TFG players and make everyone else happy. GET RID OF ALLIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Get rid of allies in matched play and suddenly these problems go away. Sure you can make some special snowflake rules for the factions that can't stand alone (knights, Assassins, Inquisition) but get rid of allies and CP sharing between allies and suddenly the meta changes dramatically. I am not by any means saying this will fix every balance issue in the game, far from it, but what it will do is get rid of the biggest offenders and the ones that most other factions can't even duplicate.
As for friendly games, yeah, go ahead and forge that narrative as hard as you want.
BaconCatBug wrote: The funny thing with balancing for competitive is that it balances casual at the same time. The reverse is not true.
Few man can squish a 20+ pages of rants in to one wise sentance. Here is one. :clap:
That's already the case in casual play, and has been. There are no unusable units when list min-maxing isn't in play.
Maybe if you play eldar and use a strong core, that is used in tournament lists too. Then yes, adding a war walker or a unit of stormguardians probably doesn't matter to quality of game play. But try taking 10 purfires in a GK army and enjoy having a 900pts unit, including buff and transport, that gets killed by something that costs ~150-200pts.
While yes, balancing for competitive results in balancing for casual, I maintain the issue is GW's balancing for competitive is using the wrong information because the missions can change the dynamic so much.
It also seems that GW doesn't quite get the real problem, or is willfully ignoring it. I'm talking, of course, about being able to take a cheap Battalion for CP and using the overall faction keyword (i.e. IMPERIUM, CHAOS, AELDARI, TYRANID) to claim Battleforged. The very fact that they thought the issue was mixing in a single detachment, rather than the entire army, shows that they missed the point.
That's what needs to be fixed: For Matched Play (and only Matched Play), you cannot use IMPERIUM, AELDARI, CHAOS or TYRANID as a keyword for purposes of determining Battle-forged. Which would nip soup in the bud immediately in the way it's currently used, but still allow properly themed armies in some cases (e.g. a force of multiple marine chapters, a God-marked Chaos warband, etc.)
IMNSHO, that plus using the Chapter Approved 2018 Eternal War missions will fix a lot of the issues in the game. But it's up to GW to realize that's the issue and address it, and then it's up to people to adopt the CA missions as the standard rather than use homebrew missions.
Lemondish wrote: Oh, another thread that basically becomes a "kill soup" argument.
Honestly, GW should do it if only to see people realize that soup isn't the problem and the next Boogeyman scapegoat takes over.
That is literally what I said....but why not get rid of soup if its the biggest offender right now? I like working towards a balanced game and right now the biggest opponent to that is Soup.
No it isn't. It is miscosted units. If there are not OP units, soup is not a problem. No one thinks Sisters + Templars soup is a problem. There is a tiny minority of soup builds which cause issues, most of the soup builds are perfectly unproblematic. If your soup is too spicy, it is not inherently problem with all soups, it is the chili you keep putting in it.
Crimson wrote: No it isn't. It is miscosted units. If there are not OP units, soup is not a problem. No one thinks Sisters + Templars soup is a problem. There is a tiny minority of soup builds which cause issues, most of the soup builds are perfectly unproblematic. If your soup is too spicy, it is not inherently problem with all soups, it is the chili you keep putting in it.
I strongly dislike 'one size fits all' fixes.
Reminds me of old whfb house rules and tournaments. Double steam tanks, double hydras and double hell cannons were all very powerful.
Instead of banning (doubling up on) those specific trouble makers everyone would just make a generic "no double rares". Sure it fixed the problem, but it also created new problems, such as 1) making units such as Giants, which required target saturation to ensure one could reach enemy lines, were never taken or 2) preventing completely inoffensive but thematic units such as chaos spawn from being used.
Crimson wrote: No it isn't. It is miscosted units. If there are not OP units, soup is not a problem. No one thinks Sisters + Templars soup is a problem. There is a tiny minority of soup builds which cause issues, most of the soup builds are perfectly unproblematic. If your soup is too spicy, it is not inherently problem with all soups, it is the chili you keep putting in it.
TBH if that were the case then GW nerfs very questionably.
Reminds me of old whfb house rules and tournaments. Double steam tanks, double hydras and double rares were all very powerful.
Instead of banning (doubling up on) those specific trouble makers everyone would just make a generic "no double rares". Sure it fixed the problem, but it also created new problems, such as 1) making units such as Giants, which required target saturation to ensure one could reach enemy lines, were never taken or 2) preventing completely inoffensive but thematic units such as chaos spawn from being used.
Yeah. 100% agreed. I hate blanket fixes which end up hurting a lot of completely innocent builds. For that reason I'm not a fan of the Rule of Three either.
8th isn't ruined and can be fixed with just a simple tweak that will utterly piss off the WAAC/TFG players and make everyone else happy. GET RID OF ALLIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Get rid of allies in matched play and suddenly these problems go away. Sure you can make some special snowflake rules for the factions that can't stand alone (knights, Assassins, Inquisition) but get rid of allies and CP sharing between allies and suddenly the meta changes dramatically.
Competitive players wouldn't mind this at all. It's the beer and pretzels, forge the narrative (tm) fluffhammer players that would cry the loudest if allies were removed, despite the fact that they just houserule everything they don't like and play open play anyway. Also, it will never be done because then an eldar player doesn't have a reason to buy DE units, imperium players are forced to choose between buying IK or the loyal 32 instead of being forced to buy both just to be competitive with the ynnari soup of the month. As a competitive player who mostly plays tournaments, I would love to see allies removed or CP restricted to the detachment that it came from. However, GW will never do anything that might reduce sales in the slightest, despite how many problems it would fix within the game. That's why unusable models got their points reduced, but almost nothing in the entire game got a point increase in this CA. Reducing points on things makes more people buy them. Increasing points of things may cause people to stop buying them. This seems to be their new method of "balancing" the game, just reduce points on models that nobody takes instead of taking a nerf bat to the stuff that will still dominate the game.
It also seems that GW doesn't quite get the real problem, or is willfully ignoring it. I'm talking, of course, about being able to take a cheap Battalion for CP and using the overall faction keyword (i.e. IMPERIUM, CHAOS, AELDARI, TYRANID) to claim Battleforged. The very fact that they thought the issue was mixing in a single detachment, rather than the entire army, shows that they missed the point.
They very much get it, they just don't want to risk losing the sales that they gain from everyone being required to buy units from 2 or 3 different factions now. Even in 7th you would buy from at most 2 factions. The ally system and formations caused issues, so they "fixed" it by allowing you to buy even more models you didn't own before in exchange for just as much of a power benefit as you had from running formations in 7th. Well played, GW!
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Crimson wrote: No it isn't. It is miscosted units. If there are not OP units, soup is not a problem. No one thinks Sisters + Templars soup is a problem. There is a tiny minority of soup builds which cause issues, most of the soup builds are perfectly unproblematic. If your soup is too spicy, it is not inherently problem with all soups, it is the chili you keep putting in it.
If you balance the points of every unit based on their power in a soup list, they become unplayable in a mono list. If you balance their points around a mono list, they become OP in soup. This is why soup is the problem, and you keep completely missing this point in post after post. Are the loyal 32 undercosted in a fluffy guard list? Are custodes jetbikes broken in a mono custodes list? If soup didn't exist, it would be far easier to accurately put a point cost on units.
If you balance the points of every unit based on their power in a soup list, they become unplayable in a mono list. If you balance their points around a mono list, they become OP in soup.
Not true. Though you probably need to flatten the differnt armies ability to generate CP somewhat. Return battalion and brigade to their original levels, and bump the battleforged CP. Or otherwise units must start to to pay points for their ability to generate CP.
Are the loyal 32 undercosted in a fluffy guard list?
Getting rid of soup will simply imbalance the game further - it's a silly, exaggerated response to a truly minor problem.
CP generation and the relative worthlessness of troops aside from that purpose is the real issue.
Make troops the only unit able to claim objectives and adopt the acceptable casualties rule for every mission and you'll start to see people run away from the loyal 32.
Lemondish wrote: Getting rid of soup will simply imbalance the game further - it's a silly, exaggerated response to a truly minor problem.
CP generation and the relative worthlessness of troops aside from that purpose is the real issue.
Make troops the only unit able to claim objectives and adopt the acceptable casualties rule for every mission and you'll start to see people run away from the loyal 32.
This i can get behind. 5th had that rule, and it made troops much more valuable; of course, this further buffs horde armies (that dont need the buff)
Crimson wrote: People who play casually want to have a fair (or at least some!) chance of winning too.
That's already the case in casual play, and has been. There are no unusable units when list min-maxing isn't in play.
I don't think this is right.
Consider 7th edition. Consider a Necron Decurion versus any of the low tier armies - Dark Eldar, CSM, Orks, non-Flyrant spamming Tyranids.
As the non-Necron player you could have turns where you killed literally 3-5 warriors. They meanwhile deleted a third of your list.
By the end of the edition Necrons were at best a mid table codex - but the crap codexes bordered on being unplayable. The massive difference between the relative tier lists meant it was difficult to have a casual game which wasn't one way traffic. The fact that those armies would be even worse against a "I can table you in two turns" Ynnari list - or a "you hit me on 6s, I have a rerollable 2++" super friends list doesn't change that.
Saying "it doesn't matter if crisis suits are 200 points" doesn't make much sense. It does. You likely won't have a fun game if your army is dramatically weaker than your opponents, resulting in you doing no damage and being quickly tabled.
This says it all. 7th edition was about the worst edition I have played because of the power imbalance and GW not doing anything to alleviate the problem...they did a lot to aggravate it though.
Facing a Triple riptide wing, wraithknights w/Jetbikes/Spider support or the Decurion and the Space Marine Free transport lists was basically me doing my best to end the game on turn 3 instead of turn 2. The fact that I had literally no chance unless the dice gods were almost completely in my favor and my opponent made massive mistakes was what killed 7th for me.
And now in 8th, I run up against The IG Battery powered Knight lists with Slamguines or Eldar Soup lists, its basically the same thing. But here is the thing, 8th isn't ruined and can be fixed with just a simple tweak that will utterly piss off the WAAC/TFG players and make everyone else happy. GET RID OF ALLIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Get rid of allies in matched play and suddenly these problems go away. Sure you can make some special snowflake rules for the factions that can't stand alone (knights, Assassins, Inquisition) but get rid of allies and CP sharing between allies and suddenly the meta changes dramatically. I am not by any means saying this will fix every balance issue in the game, far from it, but what it will do is get rid of the biggest offenders and the ones that most other factions can't even duplicate.
As for friendly games, yeah, go ahead and forge that narrative as hard as you want.
Without allies those 4 Knights still stomp all over you, Ynnari still destroys you, DE still destroys you, Craftworld Eldar will still destroy you.
Yes all those lists are better with allies but removing allies doesn't stop them from being amazingly broken. A Castellan doesn't stop being an insane amount of firepower for its points. Dissi Ravers are still amazing without Doom, Talon with 4++ are still bonkers, Allaitoc is still as broken as ever, Strength from Death is still a completely broken rule
Remove allies and you will see less variety of play, not more. It won't 'fix' any balance problems, it will just make more things 'uncompetitive'.
Ordana wrote: Without allies those 4 Knights still stomp all over you, Ynnari still destroys you, DE still destroys you, Craftworld Eldar will still destroy you.
Yes all those lists are better with allies but removing allies doesn't stop them from being amazingly broken. A Castellan doesn't stop being an insane amount of firepower for its points. Dissi Ravers are still amazing without Doom, Talon with 4++ are still bonkers, Allaitoc is still as broken as ever, Strength from Death is still a completely broken rule
Remove allies and you will see less variety of play, not more. It won't 'fix' any balance problems, it will just make more things 'uncompetitive'.
The Castellan isn't as big a problem when it doesn't have 8-15 CP to spend on strats, same with pretty much most soup lists that bring another codex's troops choice to fill battalions to generate CP.
I'd love to face 4 Knights without much CP if any instead of 1-2 Knights with 9 CP each. Being able to kill a knight with my new codex isn't as hard as it was, but being able to kill one that has a constant durability boost and damage boost is a bit harder, especially when its surrounded by the loyal 32.
Ordana wrote: Without allies those 4 Knights still stomp all over you, Ynnari still destroys you, DE still destroys you, Craftworld Eldar will still destroy you.
Yes all those lists are better with allies but removing allies doesn't stop them from being amazingly broken. A Castellan doesn't stop being an insane amount of firepower for its points. Dissi Ravers are still amazing without Doom, Talon with 4++ are still bonkers, Allaitoc is still as broken as ever, Strength from Death is still a completely broken rule
Remove allies and you will see less variety of play, not more. It won't 'fix' any balance problems, it will just make more things 'uncompetitive'.
The Castellan isn't as big a problem when it doesn't have 8-15 CP to spend on strats, same with pretty much most soup lists that bring another codex's troops choice to fill battalions to generate CP.
I'd love to face 4 Knights without much CP if any instead of 1-2 Knights with 9 CP each. Being able to kill a knight with my new codex isn't as hard as it was, but being able to kill one that has a constant durability boost and damage boost is a bit harder, especially when its surrounded by the loyal 32.
It's also far easier to determine how much a knight should cost if you don't have to calculate the 300 other units it could be used in conjunction with. If knights had to be used on their own, or max of 1 as an ally to a single codex detachment, they would be far easier to accurately cost. Instead you have to choose between the appropriate points cost when used in a list with loyal 32 and 10 custodes jetbikes or the appropriate point cost in an all knight army, which are vastly different numbers.
Xenomancers wrote: Watched the video...competitive imperial soup player literally says hed pay up to 735 for the model but thinks the model should be 665...LOL. Dude...
I got 2nd hand embarassment watching him rant for (over 1 minute?) about how he told GW "don't **** this up", "don't increase it's points", "it's not fair" and then turns around and blames GW for sitting on it's hands. And also exactly that disrepancy between his "fair point cost" and the "point cost he would pay" is just hilarious, you get to pick only one! Should GW also balance units by giving them 2 point costs and let players pick whichever they like more?
open markets is sound choice financially.
, the Castellan body point cost relative to Land Raider body is ridiculously cheap with far better associated rules. They would not have these problems if they used somewhat consistently a mathematical procedure to generate vehicle and unit point cost from the durability derived from T, W and Save values, and same with weapons. But I guess I just need to suck it up and accept 
The Stompa went from collecting dust on the shelf, to getting repainted, repaired and made to look pretty.....only to be put right back on the shelf when 
if it takes 6-8 months to write 
I actually brought one with me.
