... and what can be done to improve it.

First a little preface: it is not possible to "perfect balance" 40K, it is not even possible to "good enough" balance it, not with point system anyway. Just plain abstract math is enough to prove that. I have tried to explain that in couple specific threads already, but I think it deserves a separate thread. The core problem is that it is not possible to reasonably ("good enough") approximate multidimensional phase space of statlines and rules interactions with a linear point cost and any good game developer knows this. To remedy this various tools have been historically used to change this linear approximation to n-dimensional solution or otherwise increase balance. Here is a quick list of mechanics/changes that can be applied to a system:

- include non-static win conditions (ITC and Kill Team: Arena or Open War instant death options), the more degrees of freedom here the higher your n is and as you can see GW have already adapted this solution in some form.

- include sideboards - the bigger percentage of overall point limit the sideboard is and the more unrestricted content of the sideboard is, the more dynamic your solution to the problem is. Cooperative listbuilding done by some narrative players is a variant of this with 100% of point cap being an unrestricted sideboard that is iteratively refined over a finite number of steps. GW ponders with the idea via pre-paid summoning of demons and recently assasins.

- decrease number of dimensions of this hyperspace to approximate at game time - this is what mission packs do (rigid win conditions and terrain layout known prior to building a list define a subspace of entire hyperspace that will contain valid solutions). The problem with this solution is that it does not decrease total volume of said hyperspace and is static, so bad choices are possible for each win condition/terrain combination. This is what naturally occurs and is called "competetive meta" and "competetively valid choices". This is also what narrative players use in reverse when designing a scenario that equalizes relative strenght of forces. GW could codify that in a list of all unit choices that are considered valid but to stop complaining they would have to stop introducing new units or only ever introduce valid units (GW kinda does the opposite in some rare cases, by only publishing power level for units they deem unsuitable). This will always be a subset of entire range existing nowadays unless you also adapt the next method or strip model range, which GW won't ever do as it is direct contradiction to their business model.

- increase unpredictability of win conditions - GW mission packs are based on this principle. It works by forcing players to "stick to the middle" of as large subspace of choices as possible, but comes as a cost of being only statistically fair. Bad matchups and impossible odds are a part of this approach.

- decrease number of dimensions of this hyperspace permanently - this is what faction sameness does (40K indexes, Infinity, pretty much all non-campaign based skirmishes and closed game system), as well as removing wargear/customisation options or remove game interactions (also known as streamlining: removing armour facings and fire arcs, removing blasts, removing targeting freedom, removing rock-paper-scissors type of interactions, decrease number of unique abilities etc). This is the only static solution that (mildly) increases usefullness of linear point approximation and at the same time one that cripples landscape of the game and thus narrative possibilities the most.

Point cost changes improve aproximation only coupled with well defined and rigid win conditions and terrain setups and the more narrow the scope of those missions the better the approximation but the more sudden failure of this approximation when you deviate from said win conditions and terrain (this is currently best illustrated by ITC vs CA18 schism). Core rule changes that are not streamlining do not change the volume of this hyperspace, only shift the topology of it, so broken combos and OP/UP choices remain, they are only in different places.

Here, there is nothing trivial in balancing 40K and nothing subjective in impossibility of balancing 40K while retaining it's 40k-ness. It is objectivelly not possible to balance this game in it's entirety, never was, never will be. But the list above is not a comprehensive list of all possible solutions to the problem, so for the sake of future rants and discussions I welcome everyone to post other methods of improving overall balance, preferably without sacrificing unique flavour of 40K.

So, what else can be done?

Sidenote: some other solutions to improve tournament skill measuring exist, but they are unsuitable for "everyday use". One of those is the use of premade lists, other would be draft method similar to MTG format. I intentionally left those out as they undermine current nature of clashing personal collections against one another

EDIT: due to popular demand and to stop this discussion running in circles, I copy a metric by AlexTroy here as a workable definition of "good enough":

The game will have "good enough" balance when the following are true:
The winner of a game cannot be reliably determined by the Faction(s) of the two armies
The units taken in any army cannot be consistently determined by the Faction(s) and subfaction(s) (Chapter Tactics and the like) of that army.

It has also been proposed that a) it is enough for a faction to have only two practical builds using two different sets of units to satisfy the second condition; b) that any "good enough" metrics should satisfy at least 50% of playerbase.

In my personal opinion the above metrics is weak, that is it is way below perfect balance and leaves enough room for modern levels of discontent, bad purchase choices and endless balance discussions and that the closest the 40K has been to be "good enough" by such metric was early 5th. This metrics, byt he virtue of using Faction(s) as a basis has also huge problems with meaningfull results for soup lists.

My position is that to go above this metrics you need to introduce dynamic balancing mechanism that are not points related and happen at mission choice or game time, which was the intended focus of this thread.

To further improve the metrics above and make it impervious to "two trick pony" solution third condition can be added: that "every codex entry can have a place in a working list without lowering reliability of the first condition when said unit is present in the list." This turns this metrics from weak to hard and limits balance complaints and discussions greatly, but it is way, way harder to satisfy using even dynamic mechanisms.

Using a system similar to golfing Handicap works in a semi-closed group.

Player A wins, Player B loses. Next game, Player A is only allowed 98% of the agreed point value. Player B is allowed 102% of the agreed point limit.

This can be a publicly posted handicap. 2% +/- per win/loss net. I’ve won 2 more games than I’ve lost, I get -4% points. My opponent has lost 10 more games, they get +20% points.

This system is fluid. As a person’s skill increases, they will naturally move towards no modifier, or even a negative modifier. It takes a few games, maybe going with a 5% modifier for the first 5 games could sort position more quickly.

While it may not be suitable for tournaments, as an ongoing league it would work.

Overall:

1) Reduce RNG to the absolute minimum.

A weapon doing 2D6 damage is much harder to balance than one with 4D3 damage which is more unbalanced than one doing 6 damage
the average damage is similar, 7, 8 and 6 but 2D6 doing 2-12 damage which means is unbalanced 90% of the the time or will cost too much points to be an option

And yes some people will say that this kills the fun. I disagree as not knowing what your units can do makes tactical play much harder (and just saying the it is absolute random who wins because of the high amount of RNG is most fun, there are better boardgames out there for such kind of gameplay)


2) Increase diversity and use Rock/Paper/Scissor/Lizard/Spock

As soon as it is possible that every model in game can kill every other model in game, the game gets impossible to balance if units are different.
40k has units with high amount of Health Points and some with high defensive stats with low amount of Health but as everything can wound everything those units with high rate of fire are good against both and no dedicated weapons against the high defensive ones.
It is not something impossible to fix but makes it much harder because as soon as a weapon/unit reaches a specific threshold, it gets better than anything else.

similar in defence, offensive stats don't matter als long as the units can suck up the same amount of damage if the only use is to be a meat shield. Point cost cannot fix it as the unit will either be better or worse than other options and never be equal.

So how does increasing diversity helps?

If there are 2 models fulfilling the same role one will always be better, so instead of having all units being as similar as possible, making them as different as possible decrease this problem.
This means also changing the profile and using the full range available. If there is a Marine unit dedicated for Close Combat, one for Ranged Combat and one Universal, adjusting the profile would be mandatory (WS7, BS3 A5 for CC, WS3, BS7 A1 for ranged and WS5, BS5, A3 for universal)

and of course adjusting the to hit and to wound table to make use of the full range of the profile instead of having an effective range from 2-5

increase unpredictability of win conditions

No, you don't add balance just because you make the outcome of the game random and remove the influence from the player.

You negate imbalance of the basic/codex rules by adding another layer of rules but this does not bring balance back. It just makes it unbalanced on a level were the player ha no influence which is the worst of all

Ummmm...

What is "good enough" balance?

You never actually say what good enough balance is.

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:
Ummmm...

What is "good enough" balance?

You never actually say what good enough balance is.

I did not define it, because it is not my term - it is commonly used in dakka balance discussions to construct "no one is talking about perfect balance" strawman and dismiss any valid criticism of point system based balance. It can range from "IG+Castellan vs Ynnari soup is good enough because all top table players have equal knowledge about what is good at the moment" to "any not randomly generated list should have at least 40-60 chance of winning assuming equal player skill". You can assume any own definition as long as you explicitly state it, after all this thread can be alternatively utilized as a platform to establishing "what exact level of balance can be reasonably expected from GW" kind of discussion.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 greatbigtree wrote:
Using a system similar to golfing Handicap works in a semi-closed group.

Player A wins, Player B loses. Next game, Player A is only allowed 98% of the agreed point value. Player B is allowed 102% of the agreed point limit.

This can be a publicly posted handicap. 2% +/- per win/loss net. I’ve won 2 more games than I’ve lost, I get -4% points. My opponent has lost 10 more games, they get +20% points.

This system is fluid. As a person’s skill increases, they will naturally move towards no modifier, or even a negative modifier. It takes a few games, maybe going with a 5% modifier for the first 5 games could sort position more quickly.

While it may not be suitable for tournaments, as an ongoing league it would work.

I like it, as (in principle) it is codified iterative version of how cross tailoring works, so it most definitely ends with working ranking, but as you said, it is incompatible with tournaments and pick-up culture. But it has a benefit of not only accomodating large spectrum of players and builds, but also creates a clear "ranking ladder" to climb on. But that said, I could name at least a couple of dakka members who would see it as an unacceptable rigging the game or insult. Also, it assumes some common confines of terrain layout and mission set used and improves upon that foundation.

nou wrote:
...removing armour facings and fire arcs, removing blasts, removing targeting freedom, removing rock-paper-scissors type of interactions, decrease number of unique abilities etc

Is ultimately counterproductive IMO, particularly things like armour facings, fire arcs, and blasts.

When you have something as varied and random as 40ks armies and dice rolling your best bet for balancing is to maximize the impact of the players decisions on the game. The position of the unit, its formation, and its facing for instance.

 kodos wrote:
Overall:

1) Reduce RNG to the absolute minimum.

A weapon doing 2D6 damage is much harder to balance than one with 4D3 damage which is more unbalanced than one doing 6 damage
the average damage is similar, 7, 8 and 6 but 2D6 doing 2-12 damage which means is unbalanced 90% of the the time or will cost too much points to be an option

And yes some people will say that this kills the fun. I disagree as not knowing what your units can do makes tactical play much harder (and just saying the it is absolute random who wins because of the high amount of RNG is most fun, there are better boardgames out there for such kind of gameplay)


2) Increase diversity and use Rock/Paper/Scissor/Lizard/Spock

As soon as it is possible that every model in game can kill every other model in game, the game gets impossible to balance if units are different.
40k has units with high amount of Health Points and some with high defensive stats with low amount of Health but as everything can wound everything those units with high rate of fire are good against both and no dedicated weapons against the high defensive ones.
It is not something impossible to fix but makes it much harder because as soon as a weapon/unit reaches a specific threshold, it gets better than anything else.

similar in defence, offensive stats don't matter als long as the units can suck up the same amount of damage if the only use is to be a meat shield. Point cost cannot fix it as the unit will either be better or worse than other options and never be equal.

So how does increasing diversity helps?

If there are 2 models fulfilling the same role one will always be better, so instead of having all units being as similar as possible, making them as different as possible decrease this problem.
This means also changing the profile and using the full range available. If there is a Marine unit dedicated for Close Combat, one for Ranged Combat and one Universal, adjusting the profile would be mandatory (WS7, BS3 A5 for CC, WS3, BS7 A1 for ranged and WS5, BS5, A3 for universal)

and of course adjusting the to hit and to wound table to make use of the full range of the profile instead of having an effective range from 2-5

increase unpredictability of win conditions

No, you don't add balance just because you make the outcome of the game random and remove the influence from the player.

You negate imbalance of the basic/codex rules by adding another layer of rules but this does not bring balance back. It just makes it unbalanced on a level were the player ha no influence which is the worst of all

@1: this is an approach based on chessifying 40K and does not work as effective efficiency of your listbuilding choices directly relies on your opponent listbuilding choices which are not known to you at any moment. What this achieves is easier solvable meta but requires rigid mission and terrain conditions and is already covered in initial post.

@2: this is excatly how you got impossible matchups in 7th ed - it is impossible to point cost haywire or poison special rules in a game where all vehicle IK and all meat Tyranid lists exist. Also, this solution only changes topology of hyperspace, not really solving overall balance, only shifting it to new places.

@3: as explained (maybe not clear enough, I agree) this solution works only in perspective of many games and it most certainly works, that's how most card games are balanced. But it has evident drawbacks of impossible matchups in heavily skewed meta and works best in "everyone plays TAC lists" meta and requires really lot of games to equilize outcome.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

A.T. wrote:

nou wrote:
...removing armour facings and fire arcs, removing blasts, removing targeting freedom, removing rock-paper-scissors type of interactions, decrease number of unique abilities etc

Is ultimately counterproductive IMO, particularly things like armour facings, fire arcs, and blasts.

When you have something as varied and random as 40ks armies and dice rolling your best bet for balancing is to maximize the impact of the players decisions on the game. The position of the unit, its formation, and its facing for instance.

What you say is true only if players have equal access to spectrum of possible decisions, wich isn't true in game with flavoured factions. Of course one can argue that a vital part of winning strategy is choosing a faction in the first place (and I agree here), but it is a root cause of many, many frustrustrations of players who value aesthetics/feel/lore at least as much as desire to win games. So this solution, paradoxically, lands in the bag of chessification and decreasing variety and is not possible without losing 40k feel of 40k. Unless of course you can establish reasonable balance between e.g. all deep striking assault army vs static gunlines or any other extreme matchup that presents both players with completely different set of decissions to make during the game.

nou wrote:

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:
Ummmm...

What is "good enough" balance?

You never actually say what good enough balance is.

I did not define it, because it is not my term - it is commonly used in dakka balance discussions to construct "no one is talking about perfect balance" strawman and dismiss any valid criticism of point system based balance. It can range from "IG+Castellan vs Ynnari soup is good enough because all top table players have equal knowledge about what is good at the moment" to "any not randomly generated list should have at least 40-60 chance of winning assuming equal player skill". You can assume any own definition as long as you explicitly state it, after all this thread can be alternatively utilized as a platform to establishing "what exact level of balance can be reasonably expected from GW" kind of discussion.

LOL okay so uh. You have no definition...also its impossible.

How do you know it's impossible if you have no definition?

What if the minimal amount of balance needed to maintain the hobby population is completely obtainable?

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

nou wrote:

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:
Ummmm...

What is "good enough" balance?

You never actually say what good enough balance is.

I did not define it, because it is not my term - it is commonly used in dakka balance discussions to construct "no one is talking about perfect balance" strawman and dismiss any valid criticism of point system based balance. It can range from "IG+Castellan vs Ynnari soup is good enough because all top table players have equal knowledge about what is good at the moment" to "any not randomly generated list should have at least 40-60 chance of winning assuming equal player skill". You can assume any own definition as long as you explicitly state it, after all this thread can be alternatively utilized as a platform to establishing "what exact level of balance can be reasonably expected from GW" kind of discussion.

LOL okay so uh. You have no definition...also its impossible.

How do you know it's impossible if you have no definition?

What if the minimal amount of balance needed to maintain the hobby population is completely obtainable?

The minimal amount of balance needed to mantain the hobby population in widely defined brackets existed since the very begining of 40K and continues to exist. That does not stop people to be permanently discontent about state of said balance. As for me not providing "good enough" definition it is because I personally don't think you actually can define it in any objective and usefull way nor then achieve it. If it sounds like dodging your question then I can only direct you to abstract math courses...

nou wrote:

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

nou wrote:

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:
Ummmm...

What is "good enough" balance?

You never actually say what good enough balance is.

I did not define it, because it is not my term - it is commonly used in dakka balance discussions to construct "no one is talking about perfect balance" strawman and dismiss any valid criticism of point system based balance. It can range from "IG+Castellan vs Ynnari soup is good enough because all top table players have equal knowledge about what is good at the moment" to "any not randomly generated list should have at least 40-60 chance of winning assuming equal player skill". You can assume any own definition as long as you explicitly state it, after all this thread can be alternatively utilized as a platform to establishing "what exact level of balance can be reasonably expected from GW" kind of discussion.

LOL okay so uh. You have no definition...also its impossible.

How do you know it's impossible if you have no definition?

What if the minimal amount of balance needed to maintain the hobby population is completely obtainable?

The minimal amount of balance needed to mantain the hobby population in widely defined brackets existed since the very begining of 40K and continues to exist. That does not stop people to be permanently discontent about state of said balance. As for me not providing "good enough" definition it is because I personally don't think you actually can define it in any objective and usefull way nor then achieve it. If it sounds like dodging your question then I can only direct you to abstract math courses...

I mean, how much balance is needed to maintain the game.

That is the minimal amount. With out the ability to maintain the population of the game there is no game.

I was always a fan of crowd computing. Look at results of major tournaments and balance based on those.

A bunch of dedicated nerds will be better than you at finding balance skewness, always. Use them for what they're worth. Seems pretty straightforward to identify some elements that could use some... correction these days.

nou wrote:

A.T. wrote:
When you have something as varied and random as 40ks armies and dice rolling your best bet for balancing is to maximize the impact of the players decisions on the game. The position of the unit, its formation, and its facing for instance.

What you say is true only if players have equal access to spectrum of possible decisions, wich isn't true in game with flavoured factions. / Unless of course you can establish reasonable balance between e.g. all deep striking assault army vs static gunlines or any other extreme matchup that presents both players with completely different set of decissions to make during the game.

The original function of the FoC was to prevent these extreme match-ups. It went downhill with tank squadrons, massed heavy weapons in troop slots, scoring bikes, etc, but the principle was sound.

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

nou wrote:

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

nou wrote:

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:
Ummmm...

What is "good enough" balance?

You never actually say what good enough balance is.

I did not define it, because it is not my term - it is commonly used in dakka balance discussions to construct "no one is talking about perfect balance" strawman and dismiss any valid criticism of point system based balance. It can range from "IG+Castellan vs Ynnari soup is good enough because all top table players have equal knowledge about what is good at the moment" to "any not randomly generated list should have at least 40-60 chance of winning assuming equal player skill". You can assume any own definition as long as you explicitly state it, after all this thread can be alternatively utilized as a platform to establishing "what exact level of balance can be reasonably expected from GW" kind of discussion.

LOL okay so uh. You have no definition...also its impossible.

How do you know it's impossible if you have no definition?

What if the minimal amount of balance needed to maintain the hobby population is completely obtainable?

The minimal amount of balance needed to mantain the hobby population in widely defined brackets existed since the very begining of 40K and continues to exist. That does not stop people to be permanently discontent about state of said balance. As for me not providing "good enough" definition it is because I personally don't think you actually can define it in any objective and usefull way nor then achieve it. If it sounds like dodging your question then I can only direct you to abstract math courses...

I mean, how much balance is needed to maintain the game.

That is the minimal amount. With out the ability to maintain the population of the game there is no game.

I get you, but that isn't useful definition - this game has been continuously existing in seven different iterations (I'm excluding RT as it had different goal than 2nd and later editions), always maintaining population large enough for continuous sales and development. Your definition is so broad it is trivially fulfilled by 40K having more to it than balance and drawing enough people based on aesthetics and lore alone to occasionally throw some dice and have a good time. And if that is your goal then yes, obviously that level of balance is clearly and objectively achievable but I don't think that all that many players would agree that it is what "good enough" stands for.

Your "proof" doesn't even bother to quantifiably define what "good enough" balance is, all I see is a lot of words and self-congratulation over a very weak argument.

Well good enough seems to be the moment when there can be a large enough sample of an army found among multiple tiers of different ways of playing the game.

If IG for example are found in some way among the worlds best, but also among new people starting the play, then the faction seems to be good enough.

If it is impossible to even find data, if someone plays a certain army or unit, then it is probably not balanced. Because it means that even if people liked them, they still aren't playing with them, which means they have to be realy bad for that to be true.

A.T. wrote:

nou wrote:

A.T. wrote:
When you have something as varied and random as 40ks armies and dice rolling your best bet for balancing is to maximize the impact of the players decisions on the game. The position of the unit, its formation, and its facing for instance.

What you say is true only if players have equal access to spectrum of possible decisions, wich isn't true in game with flavoured factions. / Unless of course you can establish reasonable balance between e.g. all deep striking assault army vs static gunlines or any other extreme matchup that presents both players with completely different set of decissions to make during the game.

The original function of the FoC was to prevent these extreme match-ups. It went downhill with tank squadrons, massed heavy weapons in troop slots, scoring bikes, etc, but the principle was sound.

Agreed, limiting army structure is good mechanism of limiting the volume of phase space (I did not explicitly mentioned it in my initial post but it falls into "permanently limiting the volume" bag of tools). But as FOC based editions have shown it still leaves enough room for impossible matchups and unacceptable imbalance, so it is most definitely not enough to achieve "good enough". Even with rigid missions and explicit terrain placement rules neither 4th or 5th were balanced and still had much less variety in them that we have nowadays.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:
Your "proof" doesn't even bother to quantifiably define what "good enough" balance is, all I see is a lot of words and self-congratulation over a very weak argument.

See my answers to Thousand-Sons-Sorcerer.

And if you think this argument is so weak you should have no problems with coming up with "good enough" definition that is at the same time, well, good enough, achievable and not easily countered by practical example. You perfectly know I think you, of all people, most certainly cannot perform such a feat.

torblind wrote:
I was always a fan of crowd computing. Look at results of major tournaments and balance based on those.

A bunch of dedicated nerds will be better than you at finding balance skewness, always. Use them for what they're worth. Seems pretty straightforward to identify some elements that could use some... correction these days.

It's, not that simple. Models taken in conjunction with each other cause them to become worth more points, with out actually paying points. What we need is something that everyone can benefit from, has not points cost and benefits "Elite" armies more.

So something like "The High Ground-for every inch of elevation add 1" of range to the weapon being fired."

nou wrote:
See my answers to Thousand-Sons-Sorcerer.

And if you think this argument is so weak you should have no problems with coming up with "good enough" definition that is at the same time, well, good enough, achievable and not easily countered by practical example. You perfectly know I think you, of all people, most certainly cannot perform such a feat.

Some people claim that 40k's current balance is "good enough", so by their standards not only is "good enough balance" achievable in theory GW has already achieved it. And no, I don't owe you a definition, this is your argument and it's not my job to write it for you. If you can't bother to define all of your terms then we can just lock up the pointless word salad and be done with it.

 Peregrine wrote:

nou wrote:
See my answers to Thousand-Sons-Sorcerer.

And if you think this argument is so weak you should have no problems with coming up with "good enough" definition that is at the same time, well, good enough, achievable and not easily countered by practical example. You perfectly know I think you, of all people, most certainly cannot perform such a feat.

Some people claim that 40k's current balance is "good enough", so by their standards not only is "good enough balance" achievable in theory GW has already achieved it. And no, I don't owe you a definition, this is your argument and it's not my job to write it for you. If you can't bother to define all of your terms then we can just lock up the pointless word salad and be done with it.

Hes got a point...

Karol wrote:
Well good enough seems to be the moment when there can be a large enough sample of an army found among multiple tiers of different ways of playing the game.

If IG for example are found in some way among the worlds best, but also among new people starting the play, then the faction seems to be good enough.

If it is impossible to even find data, if someone plays a certain army or unit, then it is probably not balanced. Because it means that even if people liked them, they still aren't playing with them, which means they have to be realy bad for that to be true.

That is one way to test if we already have "good enough" balance for set condition, yes. But it is just a method of establishing verification procedure and it gives us no clue about what exactly it means in terms of game parameters and whether or not those parameters required are consistent and not contradictory. Which leaves the question if "good enough" balance is achievable open while some folks insist that "good enough" balance is obviously achievable despite noone being able to actually define what it means. It most certainly have never been achieved in the last 30 years despite using even such advanced list building restriction tools as non-linear comp systems.

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

torblind wrote:
I was always a fan of crowd computing. Look at results of major tournaments and balance based on those.

A bunch of dedicated nerds will be better than you at finding balance skewness, always. Use them for what they're worth. Seems pretty straightforward to identify some elements that could use some... correction these days.

It's, not that simple. Models taken in conjunction with each other cause them to become worth more points, with out actually paying points. What we need is something that everyone can benefit from, has not points cost and benefits "Elite" armies more.

So something like "The High Ground-for every inch of elevation add 1" of range to the weapon being fired."

So why not have progresive unit costs. A unit could cost X points, two of it could cost X+some procentage extra. The higher the trouble from taking the same unit the higher the unit cost would get. At the same time some units that are safe, could always just cost X, or have added unit cost if you really go ham with them and take like 6. Same could be done with really problematic units that work in combos. Taking a farseer in a soup list could be rising the point cost of all of your units in an army. Then GW could also make pre build detachments with costs that may not follow the patern, but the mono build nature of such detachments, and I assume a lot of testing by GW, could keep such combinations safe.

So while lets say a combination of termintors and oblits in a chaos list could follow the x+% cost, a detachment of NL termintors that wouldn't get access to cultists, marks etc would cost less and probably come with some extra rules to sweeten the deal. Less flexible, but more characterful, and if given enough extra rules maybe worth playing.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

nou wrote:

Karol wrote:
Well good enough seems to be the moment when there can be a large enough sample of an army found among multiple tiers of different ways of playing the game.

If IG for example are found in some way among the worlds best, but also among new people starting the play, then the faction seems to be good enough.

If it is impossible to even find data, if someone plays a certain army or unit, then it is probably not balanced. Because it means that even if people liked them, they still aren't playing with them, which means they have to be realy bad for that to be true.

That is one way to test if we already have "good enough" balance for set condition, yes. But it is just a method of establishing verification procedure and it gives us no clue about what exactly it means in terms of game parameters and whether or not those parameters required are consistent and not contradictory. Which leaves the question if "good enough" balance is achievable open while some folks insist that "good enough" balance is obviously achievable despite noone being able to actually define what it means. It most certainly have never been achieved in the last 30 years despite using even such advanced list building restriction tools as non-linear comp systems.

nie rozumiem, za trudne dla mnie. sorki.

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

nou wrote:
See my answers to Thousand-Sons-Sorcerer.

And if you think this argument is so weak you should have no problems with coming up with "good enough" definition that is at the same time, well, good enough, achievable and not easily countered by practical example. You perfectly know I think you, of all people, most certainly cannot perform such a feat.

Some people claim that 40k's current balance is "good enough", so by their standards not only is "good enough balance" achievable in theory GW has already achieved it. And no, I don't owe you a definition, this is your argument and it's not my job to write it for you. If you can't bother to define all of your terms then we can just lock up the pointless word salad and be done with it.

Hes got a point...

Then ask him why he is the most vocal person to shout that 40K has always been and remains an unbalanced mess. He is known to switch goalposts to whatever suits him best and here you have an example of eristic manouver to dismiss a valid challenge he cannot undertake.

If "good enough" can be universally defined as "some folks agree to it" then this thread fulfilled it's purpose and any future balance discussion can end in first post by just linking this reply as we obviously can now dismiss any balance complaint because I can most certainly name few dakkanauts who are indeed content with GW balance of the game. You see how ridiculous such definition is?

nou wrote:
Then ask him why he is the most vocal person to shout that 40K has always been and remains an unbalanced mess. He is known to switch goalposts to whatever suits him best and here you have an example of eristic manouver to dismiss a valid challenge he cannot undertake.

I can't undertake a challenge when you haven't defined the terms of the challenge. It's like yelling I PROVE THAT YOU CAN'T DRIVE TO YOUR LOCAL GW FAST ENOUGH without even bothering to define what "fast enough" means. There's no point in getting a car and a timer and trying to prove you wrong until you define what the conditions for success or failure are.

If "good enough" can be universally defined as "some folks agree to it" then this thread fulfilled it's purpose and any future balance discussion can end in first post by just linking this reply as we obviously can now dismiss any balance complaint because I can most certainly name few dakkanauts who are indeed content with GW balance of the game. You see how ridiculous such definition is?

You're missing the point entirely. I'm not defining "good enough" at all or stating whether I agree with the people who claim it's currently good enough, I'm simply pointing out that by the definitions some people use your argument has already been proven wrong. By other definitions of "good enough" your argument might be right. Until you quantifiably define what "good enough" means there's no point in trying to evaluate whether your claim is true or false. You've posted poorly defined word salad in an attempt to show off how smart you are, and it isn't working.

Karol wrote:

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

torblind wrote:
I was always a fan of crowd computing. Look at results of major tournaments and balance based on those.

A bunch of dedicated nerds will be better than you at finding balance skewness, always. Use them for what they're worth. Seems pretty straightforward to identify some elements that could use some... correction these days.

It's, not that simple. Models taken in conjunction with each other cause them to become worth more points, with out actually paying points. What we need is something that everyone can benefit from, has not points cost and benefits "Elite" armies more.

So something like "The High Ground-for every inch of elevation add 1" of range to the weapon being fired."

So why not have progresive unit costs. A unit could cost X points, two of it could cost X+some procentage extra. The higher the trouble from taking the same unit the higher the unit cost would get. At the same time some units that are safe, could always just cost X, or have added unit cost if you really go ham with them and take like 6. Same could be done with really problematic units that work in combos. Taking a farseer in a soup list could be rising the point cost of all of your units in an army. Then GW could also make pre build detachments with costs that may not follow the patern, but the mono build nature of such detachments, and I assume a lot of testing by GW, could keep such combinations safe.

So while lets say a combination of termintors and oblits in a chaos list could follow the x+% cost, a detachment of NL termintors that wouldn't get access to cultists, marks etc would cost less and probably come with some extra rules to sweeten the deal. Less flexible, but more characterful, and if given enough extra rules maybe worth playing.

That is exactly how army comp systems work and Peregrine here was always first to argue, that they simply shift imbalance to different combos and did not result in truly improved balance.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

nou wrote:

Karol wrote:
Well good enough seems to be the moment when there can be a large enough sample of an army found among multiple tiers of different ways of playing the game.

If IG for example are found in some way among the worlds best, but also among new people starting the play, then the faction seems to be good enough.

If it is impossible to even find data, if someone plays a certain army or unit, then it is probably not balanced. Because it means that even if people liked them, they still aren't playing with them, which means they have to be realy bad for that to be true.

That is one way to test if we already have "good enough" balance for set condition, yes. But it is just a method of establishing verification procedure and it gives us no clue about what exactly it means in terms of game parameters and whether or not those parameters required are consistent and not contradictory. Which leaves the question if "good enough" balance is achievable open while some folks insist that "good enough" balance is obviously achievable despite noone being able to actually define what it means. It most certainly have never been achieved in the last 30 years despite using even such advanced list building restriction tools as non-linear comp systems.

nie rozumiem, za trudne dla mnie. sorki.

To co opisales to bardzo dobra metoda sprawdzenia, czy udalo sie uzyskac satysfakcjonujaca rownowage, ale nie daje zadnych wskazowek jak podejsc do samego problemu osiagniecia owej rownowagi. Natomiast to co skomentowalem powyzej to juz proba mechanizmu rownowazacego (army comp), ktory moznaby przetestowac statystycznie i wyciagnac wnioski.

nou wrote:
That is exactly how army comp systems work and Peregrine here was always first to argue, that they simply shift imbalance to different combos and did not result in truly improved balance.

No, that's not what comp systems are at all. Comp was a system where you were scored on how "competitive" or "fun" your list was, often based on the TO's personal opinions about what a "fluffy" army should look like. You could still take the exact same overpowered list and ruin everyone's day, you'd just get a WAAC TFG label and a 0/10 comp score (and probably a 0/10 sportsmanship score). They inevitably failed to improve balance because they were almost always based on personal opinions about the fluff and hatred of "spam" rather than any significant understanding of balance issues. That's not at all the same as a variable point cost system where unit costs increase based on certain combos making them more powerful and the overpowered list is no longer possible to build.

In fact, what you are describing is the exact system that comp advocates were deliberately avoiding. For some reason they got this bizarre idea that it isn't "real 40k" if you change point costs of overpowered units, so they tacked on a pesudo-sportsmanship score to shame people into avoiding the overpowered stuff. At the time I stated quite clearly that I was in favor of making point cost adjustments and that this would be a far more effective way of improving balance.

Karol wrote:

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

torblind wrote:
I was always a fan of crowd computing. Look at results of major tournaments and balance based on those.

A bunch of dedicated nerds will be better than you at finding balance skewness, always. Use them for what they're worth. Seems pretty straightforward to identify some elements that could use some... correction these days.

It's, not that simple. Models taken in conjunction with each other cause them to become worth more points, with out actually paying points. What we need is something that everyone can benefit from, has not points cost and benefits "Elite" armies more.

So something like "The High Ground-for every inch of elevation add 1" of range to the weapon being fired."

So why not have progresive unit costs. A unit could cost X points, two of it could cost X+some procentage extra. The higher the trouble from taking the same unit the higher the unit cost would get. At the same time some units that are safe, could always just cost X, or have added unit cost if you really go ham with them and take like 6. Same could be done with really problematic units that work in combos. Taking a farseer in a soup list could be rising the point cost of all of your units in an army. Then GW could also make pre build detachments with costs that may not follow the patern, but the mono build nature of such detachments, and I assume a lot of testing by GW, could keep such combinations safe.

So while lets say a combination of termintors and oblits in a chaos list could follow the x+% cost, a detachment of NL termintors that wouldn't get access to cultists, marks etc would cost less and probably come with some extra rules to sweeten the deal. Less flexible, but more characterful, and if given enough extra rules maybe worth playing.

That is just a strait points increase, plus building your army becomes an algebra test which people wont be too keen on.

Like I said adding rules which benefit Elite armies more then horde armies will be the best way to go.

nou wrote:
But as FOC based editions have shown it still leaves enough room for impossible matchups and unacceptable imbalance, so it is most definitely not enough to achieve "good enough".

I can only think of one impossible match-up offhand in early editions, that being 3e daemonhunters with sanctuary vs 4e daemons - a result of outdated rules.In any case the FoC itself was not the cause of imbalance, other than perhaps by not scaling with the game.

3rd through to early 5th (before designers started to 'cheat' the FoC) the issues were more to do with unassailable targets, the early edition equivalents of invisible deathstars, and the game scoring rules. The game still has both of these issues without the FoC.

And to iterate once more - I do not provide definition of "good enough" because I firmly believe that all such definitions are either insufficient, easily countered or so limited in scope that they are useless. In the last three years of my discussing balance theory here on dakka nobody ever gave one that could get widely agreed upon other than "any army which was given enough consideration should have at least 40-60 chance of winning assuming equal player skill" or variations on something similarily vague (and definitions like this can usually be countered by showcasing some uderdog army that in order to balance it would have to either become something completely different or become something already existing). I most certainly cannot provide one exactly because I don't think anything close to static balance can be achieved in a sandbox game. Not perfect, not "good enough" to not bump into frustrating matchups or purchase choices. If I knew how to construct such nontrivial definition I would obviously provide one.

 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:


That is just a strait points increase, plus building your army become an algebra test which people wont be too keen on.

Like I said adding rules which benefit Elite armies more then horde armies will be the best way to go.

But I thought everyone loves math? IMO progresive costing can deal with combos,unwanted spaming . Elite armies could technicly get really good rules to balance horde, but the rules would have to be REALLY good . The little expiriance I have with GW rules makes me a bit sceptic about it really happening.

To co opisales to bardzo dobra metoda sprawdzenia, czy udalo sie uzyskac satysfakcjonujaca rownowage, ale nie daje zadnych wskazowek jak podejsc do samego problemu osiagniecia owej rownowagi. Natomiast to co skomentowalem powyzej to juz proba mechanizmu rownowazacego (army comp), ktory moznaby przetestowac statystycznie i wyciagnac wnioski.

ok. I don't know what a comp system is. So can't comment on that.

 Peregrine wrote:

nou wrote:
That is exactly how army comp systems work and Peregrine here was always first to argue, that they simply shift imbalance to different combos and did not result in truly improved balance.

No, that's not what comp systems are at all. Comp was a system where you were scored on how "competitive" or "fun" your list was, often based on the TO's personal opinions about what a "fluffy" army should look like. You could still take the exact same overpowered list and ruin everyone's day, you'd just get a WAAC TFG label and a 0/10 comp score (and probably a 0/10 sportsmanship score). They inevitably failed to improve balance because they were almost always based on personal opinions about the fluff and hatred of "spam" rather than any significant understanding of balance issues. That's not at all the same as a variable point cost system where unit costs increase based on certain combos making them more powerful and the overpowered list is no longer possible to build.

In fact, what you are describing is the exact system that comp advocates were deliberately avoiding. For some reason they got this bizarre idea that it isn't "real 40k" if you change point costs of overpowered units, so they tacked on a pesudo-sportsmanship score to shame people into avoiding the overpowered stuff. At the time I stated quite clearly that I was in favor of making point cost adjustments and that this would be a far more effective way of improving balance.

I'm talking about e.g. australian community comp, which was an elaborate nonlinear army composition system for 7th ed with progressive cost of units and other list building restrictions, not a comp score on tournaments.

nou wrote:
And to iterate once more - I do not provide definition of "good enough" because I firmly believe that all such definitions are either insufficient, easily countered or so limited in scope that they are useless.

That's fine and all, but that being the case don't use the term.

Otherwise you might as well be saying " it is not possible to 'perfect balance' 40K, it is not even possible to 'pickleweasel' it, not with point system anyway."

nou wrote:
And to iterate once more - I do not provide definition of "good enough" because I firmly believe that all such definitions are either insufficient, easily countered or so limited in scope that they are useless. In the last three years of my discussing balance theory here on dakka nobody ever gave one that could get widely agreed upon other than "any army which was given enough consideration should have at least 40-60 chance of winning assuming equal player skill" or variations on something similarily vague (and definitions like this can usually be countered by showcasing some uderdog army that in order to balance it would have to either become something completely different or become something already existing). I most certainly cannot provide one exactly because I don't think anything close to static balance can be achieved in a sandbox game. Not perfect, not "good enough" to not bump into frustrating matchups or purchase choices. If I knew how to construct such nontrivial definition I would obviously provide one.

Not wanting to give a definition, does not change the fact that we kind of need one.

For me personally 33% win rate is the cut off, assuming 2 well versed opponents of equal skill.

A.T. wrote:

nou wrote:
And to iterate once more - I do not provide definition of "good enough" because I firmly believe that all such definitions are either insufficient, easily countered or so limited in scope that they are useless.

That's fine and all, but that being the case don't use the term.

Otherwise you might as well be saying " it is not possible to 'perfect balance' 40K, it is not even possible to 'pickleweasel' it, not with point system anyway."

And that is fine by me, as I said, I firmly believe that you cannot construct a "good enough" or 'pickelweasel' definition that is sufficient, achievable and be widely accepted as a satisfactory measure of balance. And exact phrase of "good enough" is used here because this is what turns up in every balance discussion as a counter to any argument about practical limitations of any balancing mechanism: "Nobody asks for perfect balance, good enough is enough". My mistake was to assume that "good enough" is a phrase recognizable enough to be clear what my critique is aimed at.

@T-S-S: 33% win rate is fine by you, not a problem, we can assume that it is universally accepted threshold. Now tell me - do we balance this game towards progressive or end game scoring? Do we assign points based on planet bowling ball, moderate terrain coverage or tightly packed terrain? How we cost assault abilities on any on those tables and how we cost indirect firing abilities if they can be irrelevant or crucial to the outcome of the game? How you account for units usefulness depending on opposing army composition? How do we cost support units, auras and other non-independent abilities? That is where my initial post comes in, it is impossible because what you want to develop is a method of projecting a multidimensional hyperspace of all game interactions onto a linear point system with loss of information resulting in no more than 33% uncertainty. Even for three parameters, offense, defense and movement that is impossible - you cannot draw a line through a cube and say that you can then recreate the cube from such information. And with 40K proper you want to draw a best line through an n-dimensional hypercube. And whether you approach to establishing those points cost based on game statistics or elaborate algebra doesn't matter - you will always end up with a single point having to represent relative power of movement, defense, offense, variability, size, target opportunities, terrain placement, objective placement, everything. You will end up with bunch of 100 pts models/units that are impossible to directly compare and having performance peaks in different areas and yet point system treats all of them as the same 100 pts of value. My initial post describes some methods various games actually use to "thicken" this line or to change it to a plane or a hypercube of highest possible number of dimensions that are practical to implement, but you always end up with your projection being lossy. No matter what you try. Mathematically speaking, perfect balance is encoding all in game information in a point cost, that is why perfect balance equals zero uncertainty of game outcome - it should always be a draw if you play optimally. "Good enough" balance would have to leave only a small number of variables not encoded into a point system and bolt on non-point tools so that player choices are sufficient to compensate for any leftover uncertainty of recreating this original space. And with 40K the difference in number of dimensions between existing game parameters and even the most elaborate projection still useful to actually utilize is simply too large. Even if you get rid of all free variables and everyone ever would play a single possible build on single possible terrain in single possible mission (basically chess) you still end up with a (slightly) biased game that cannot be reduced to static point costs (point cost systems for chess exist but they are not static and are not linear - combination of pieces is not worth a sum of individual pieces).

nou wrote:
And to iterate once more - I do not provide definition of "good enough" because I firmly believe that all such definitions are either insufficient, easily countered or so limited in scope that they are useless. In the last three years of my discussing balance theory here on dakka nobody ever gave one that could get widely agreed upon other than "any army which was given enough consideration should have at least 40-60 chance of winning assuming equal player skill" or variations on something similarily vague (and definitions like this can usually be countered by showcasing some uderdog army that in order to balance it would have to either become something completely different or become something already existing). I most certainly cannot provide one exactly because I don't think anything close to static balance can be achieved in a sandbox game. Not perfect, not "good enough" to not bump into frustrating matchups or purchase choices. If I knew how to construct such nontrivial definition I would obviously provide one.

So what you're saying is that it it is impossible to have "good enough" balance, but also that "good enough" can't be defined in any useful way. If you can't even define such basic concepts of your argument then how can you be so confident that it is impossible to meet that standard?

I'll wander out on a limb for everyone. The game will have "good enough" balance when the following are true:

The winner of a game cannot be reliably determined by the Faction(s) of the two armies

The units taken in any army cannot be consistently determined by the Faction(s) and subfaction(s) (Chapter Tactics and the like) of that army

 alextroy wrote:
I'll wander out on a limb for everyone. The game will have "good enough" balance when the following are true:

The winner of a game cannot be reliably determined by the Faction(s) of the two armies

The units taken in any army cannot be consistently determined by the Faction(s) and subfaction(s) (Chapter Tactics and the like) of that army

It's not perfect, but it's a start.

That is a good measure indeed, but as with Karol’s one earlier, this is a measure. Now what I claim is that those conditions cannot be met for any freely definable static win condition/terrain setups (mission package) without introducing dynamic match balancing mechanism and/or heavily limiting existing unit choices and most certainly cannot be achieved by any static point system.

nou wrote:
That is a good measure indeed, but as with Karol’s one earlier, this is a measure. Now what I claim is that those conditions cannot be met for any freely definable static win condition/terrain setups (mission package) without introducing dynamic match balancing mechanism and/or heavily limiting existing unit choices and most certainly cannot be achieved by any static point system.

How do you know that this is true if you haven't bothered to define the conditions for whether something does or does not meet your requirement?

Good enough is when all factions, mono and soup combinations are all within one STD of each other for win rate in ANY tournament format.

Nou is speaking in terms of “direction” and is not trying to empirically “define something in a box”.

Whether “good enough” is any list having at least a 20% chance of winning, or 40% chance, or whatever definition you choose - Nou’s OP statements hold true.

 KiloFiX wrote:
Whether “good enough” is any list having at least a 20% chance of winning, or 40% chance, or whatever definition you choose - Nou’s OP statements hold true.

Except that's not true at all. As I said before, some people believe that 40k's balance is "good enough" right now and by that standard their statements are absolutely not true. They could set a higher standard for "good enough", of course, and reject that criticism but that would require defining their terms instead of just posting word salad about I DON'T KNOW WHAT GOOD ENOUGH IS BUT I DO KNOW THAT IT DOESN'T EXIST I WIN.

 KiloFiX wrote:
Nou is speaking in terms of “direction” and is not trying to empirically “define something in a box”.

Whether “good enough” is any list having at least a 20% chance of winning, or 40% chance, or whatever definition you choose - Nou’s OP statements hold true.

Exactly. That is because with level of mathematical complexity of 40k no static solution to this problem exist. You need dynamic balancing at match time, either in form of win conditions tailoring to accomodate forces and terrain; forces tailoring to mission package or terrain tailoring for forces and win conditions. Every possible faction vs faction matchup (more than 400) requires a slightly different setup to meet any given metric with any of those approches thus cannot be reduced to a single universal codification. You can balance a singular matchup but not a system as a whole.

nou wrote:
Exactly. That is because with level of mathematical complexity of 40k no static solution to this problem exist. You need dynamic balancing at match time, either in form of win conditions tailoring to accomodate forces and terrain; forces tailoring to mission package or terrain tailoring for forces and win conditions. Every possible faction vs faction matchup (more than 400) requires a slightly different setup to meet any given metric with any of those approches thus cannot be reduced to a single universal codification. You can balance a singular matchup but not a system as a whole.

How can you so confidently assert that you need dynamic balancing when you don't even have any way to evaluate if a game is balanced enough? How can you know that it isn't balanced enough before dynamic balancing?

Ahh yes the joys of trying to comunicate on the internet. Try to say something complex and ever barking dog comes out to nit pick, deny, and deliberately misunderstand what you are trying to say.

For those asking "dur how can you say its not balanced if you don't know what balance is?" Why don't you ask your self that question and you can rejoin the conversation when you figure out the answer.


For my understanding of 'balance'.

-The game is balanced when you actually have to play.

Many games now you set up the board, define win contitions and house rules, show each other your army lists. Then you agree who wins, shake hands say good game and go home. Sometimes you have to deploy.

-balance is also when you can tell someone your faction and they can't tell you your list.


And the OP is claiming that isn't true now and never really can be?

Sure maybe. Its pretty balanced though. And I would say player skill is more varible and more unbalancing than faction choice. Except on the margins. The top 10% and bottem 20% of factions or lists over whelm player skill, but the middle 70% is fine. At the top tables list would have more effect becuase player skill is approaching a constant.

Also winning first turn (or second if thats what you want) is often a bigger deal than faction choice.


I don't think the game can be balanced and I don't want it to be. I am happy with highs and lows in the topography. But there is one specific spike I tjink could be pounded a little flatter. Just because it is so specific and so dominant. The second spike Ynarri needs some work too.

 alextroy wrote:
I'll wander out on a limb for everyone. The game will have "good enough" balance when the following are true:

The winner of a game cannot be reliably determined by the Faction(s) of the two armies

The units taken in any army cannot be consistently determined by the Faction(s) and subfaction(s) (Chapter Tactics and the like) of that army

Start of 5th wasn't far off that. Consolidate the points/structure of the various power armour books at the time and you could probably find at least two different effective ways of running each book - even the minimalistic DE and Cron books could field kabal vs cult and warrior blob vs destroyer spam. Top book would be... chaos marines probably.
Simpler days and deeply flawed rules of course.

Headlss wrote:
Ahh yes the joys of trying to comunicate on the internet. Try to say something complex and ever barking dog comes out to nit pick, deny, and deliberately misunderstand what you are trying to say.

For those asking "dur how can you say its not balanced if you don't know what balance is?" Why don't you ask your self that question and you can rejoin the conversation when you figure out the answer.


For my understanding of 'balance'.

-The game is balanced when you actually have to play.

Many games now you set up the board, define win contitions and house rules, show each other your army lists. Then you agree who wins, shake hands say good game and go home. Sometimes you have to deploy.

-balance is also when you can tell someone your faction and they can't tell you your list.


And the OP is claiming that isn't true now and never really can be?

Sure maybe. Its pretty balanced though. And I would say player skill is more varible and more unbalancing than faction choice. Except on the margins. The top 10% and bottem 20% of factions or lists over whelm player skill, but the middle 70% is fine. At the top tables list would have more effect becuase player skill is approaching a constant.

Also winning first turn (or second if thats what you want) is often a bigger deal than faction choice.


I don't think the game can be balanced and I don't want it to be. I am happy with highs and lows in the topography. But there is one specific spike I tjink could be pounded a little flatter. Just because it is so specific and so dominant. The second spike Ynarri needs some work too.

I most certainly agree, that the current state of the game (as well as almost entire 40k history) is playable and that players can utilize their knowledge of the highs and lows of the system or any and all balancing strategies from the OP to have a “good enough” balanced game experience and consciously or unconsciously avoid problems. While the amount of skill to do that depends on pure mathematical balance of the system, most problems are either common knowledge or trivially easy to overcome even by relatively new players or can be overcome by social skills and communication. No disagreement here at all. This thread is aimed at perpetual malcontents that claim that 40k balance should be bulletproof, ideally purely point system based and not require any considerations, self imposed restrictions or houserules regardless of faction or list matchup (sometimes with added claim that achieving that state is trivially easy and it is only the lack of care from GW that we don’t live in that world already).

 Peregrine wrote:

nou wrote:
Exactly. That is because with level of mathematical complexity of 40k no static solution to this problem exist. You need dynamic balancing at match time, either in form of win conditions tailoring to accomodate forces and terrain; forces tailoring to mission package or terrain tailoring for forces and win conditions. Every possible faction vs faction matchup (more than 400) requires a slightly different setup to meet any given metric with any of those approches thus cannot be reduced to a single universal codification. You can balance a singular matchup but not a system as a whole.

How can you so confidently assert that you need dynamic balancing when you don't even have any way to evaluate if a game is balanced enough? How can you know that it isn't balanced enough before dynamic balancing?

This is the inherent problem. There is literally no way to properly define balance in this game without making some extremely arbitrary decisions.

There should be some skill in list building right? You shouldn't be able to just shove any old crap together and get a tournament winning list. There should be some consideration of faction synergies, the mission, and the meta, do we agree on that?

So what level of list building skill should be required to get a 50% winrate?

I don't think that is an answerable question. So it has to be "good enough", and good enough is inherently subjective.

Clearly it's not good enough for you. It's good enough for lots of people though.

Maybe we should be aiming have balance that >50% of people consider "good enough"? Still hugely arbitrary, but something along those lines is probably the best metric we can get.

A.T. wrote:

 alextroy wrote:
I'll wander out on a limb for everyone. The game will have "good enough" balance when the following are true:

The winner of a game cannot be reliably determined by the Faction(s) of the two armies

The units taken in any army cannot be consistently determined by the Faction(s) and subfaction(s) (Chapter Tactics and the like) of that army

Start of 5th wasn't far off that. Consolidate the points/structure of the various power armour books at the time and you could probably find at least two different effective ways of running each book - even the minimalistic DE and Cron books could field kabal vs cult and warrior blob vs destroyer spam. Top book would be... chaos marines probably.
Simpler days and deeply flawed rules of course.

I wasn’t there during 5th so I cannot comment on how true that description is and how long exactly such state existed, but the trick you do here is satisfying the second condition only in the most strict sense of being unable to predict which of the two possible lists will be present for the most underdog factions. You can still reliably predict that it would be one of the two, reliability of the exact list just drops by half and lots of game content still falls outside validity. That is pretty much how 40k was for the majority of factions for the majority of 40k history. And since balance complaints never stopped this would indicate that the proposed metrics of balance is, while valid, rather weak.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Stux wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

nou wrote:
Exactly. That is because with level of mathematical complexity of 40k no static solution to this problem exist. You need dynamic balancing at match time, either in form of win conditions tailoring to accomodate forces and terrain; forces tailoring to mission package or terrain tailoring for forces and win conditions. Every possible faction vs faction matchup (more than 400) requires a slightly different setup to meet any given metric with any of those approches thus cannot be reduced to a single universal codification. You can balance a singular matchup but not a system as a whole.

How can you so confidently assert that you need dynamic balancing when you don't even have any way to evaluate if a game is balanced enough? How can you know that it isn't balanced enough before dynamic balancing?

This is the inherent problem. There is literally no way to properly define balance in this game without making some extremely arbitrary decisions.

There should be some skill in list building right? You shouldn't be able to just shove any old crap together and get a tournament winning list. There should be some consideration of faction synergies, the mission, and the meta, do we agree on that?

So what level of list building skill should be required to get a 50% winrate?

I don't think that is an answerable question. So it has to be "good enough", and good enough is inherently subjective.

Clearly it's not good enough for you. It's good enough for lots of people though.

Maybe we should be aiming have balance that >50% of people consider "good enough"? Still hugely arbitrary, but something along those lines is probably the best metric we can get.

Your proposition is effectively equal to the one posted earlier, that balance should support a minimal number of players accepting it as “good enough” for the game and company making it to not collapse and as such this metric has always been satisfied. It may indeed be the best metrics that is both definable and satisfyable at the same time. And I personally think it is in fact a lot closer to “the best one” than more strict ones.

nou wrote:

I wasn’t there during 5th.

Than you should take some time to read/learn stuff from that edition.
It was not perfect balance and some Codex books were better than others, (and in tournaments balance was off if the outdated victory conditions of the previous editions were used)

But it was the one edition were a good player could win against others no matter what faction he used and the problems started in the end when codex power creep hit and 6th launched that took it on another level (there was a reason why 6th was replaced very fast)

but the trick you do here is satisfying the second condition only in the most strict sense of being unable to predict which of the two possible lists will be present for the most underdog factions

No, but as I said above take some time to dig in 5th edition list building and results
even with the very limited list for Sisters of Battle of that time, you never saw the exact same list twice

nou wrote:
I wasn’t there during 5th so I cannot comment on how true that description is and how long exactly such state existed, but the trick you do here is satisfying the second condition only in the most strict sense of being unable to predict which of the two possible lists will be present for the most underdog factions. You can still reliably predict that it would be one of the two, reliability of the exact list just drops by half and lots of game content still falls outside validity. That is pretty much how 40k was for the majority of factions for the majority of 40k history. And since balance complaints never stopped this would indicate that the proposed metrics of balance is, while valid, rather weak.

You create goalposts where none were previously placed.
This is the trouble of not defining what "good enough" means - you argue that something doesn't match the conditions by creating conditions that it doesn't match.

Aside from that only having a few core builds is not inherently a bad thing. Consider something like starcraft where each faction only had a few main strategies for each faction and the variation came in being strong early vs strong late, the proportions and support units, low risk vs high risk/reward, and so on. Compromises rather than clear choices.

I don't see why its impossible to get "close enough".

For example do you think the game was more balanced before, or after CA18? I think its clearly more balanced for say Necrons, who were garbage before, and are now at least reasonable (if not obviously tournament winning). Therefore GW have made a step towards being "close enough" - even if some Necron units are still trash tier.

On pure thought experiments - I think basic Tactical Marines are a bad unit and Guardmen are a good units.
This is however a function of the guardsman being four points and the Marine being 13 points. If Marines were 11-12 points, and Guardsmen were 5 points, the situation would immediately become closer. If Guardsmen were suddenly made 13 points, they would clearly be rubbish units.

All units can be considered on a pair of offensive and defensive axes. There is then some consideration of battlefield flexibility - typically movement, range, and the ability to do multiple things as required.

The third one is hard to quantify - the first two are not. Bad units are typically identified quickly - and accurately - by having inferior damage output, being incredibly easy to kill, or both. Units which are good are the opposite. This can be shown mathematically - over a reasonable number of games the statistics will tend to come out. Since this is all mathematical, I don't really see why you can't assign points to it. If one unit has the damage/defensive probability curve for X points, and another unit has a worse set of curves for X points or more than X points, its an inferior unit.

You might need a supercomputer to work out marines are "really" worth 11.749202 points exactly in context to the rest of the game, and guardsmen should be 4.839393 points - but really, we can get close enough by eye.

A.T. wrote:

nou wrote:
I wasn’t there during 5th so I cannot comment on how true that description is and how long exactly such state existed, but the trick you do here is satisfying the second condition only in the most strict sense of being unable to predict which of the two possible lists will be present for the most underdog factions. You can still reliably predict that it would be one of the two, reliability of the exact list just drops by half and lots of game content still falls outside validity. That is pretty much how 40k was for the majority of factions for the majority of 40k history. And since balance complaints never stopped this would indicate that the proposed metrics of balance is, while valid, rather weak.

You create goalposts where none were previously placed.
This is the trouble of not defining what "good enough" means - you argue that something doesn't match the conditions by creating conditions that it doesn't match.

Aside from that only having a few core builds is not inherently a bad thing. Consider something like starcraft where each faction only had a few main strategies for each faction and the variation came in being strong early vs strong late, the proportions and support units, low risk vs high risk/reward, and so on. Compromises rather than clear choices.

Oh, you missunderstood - I agree that you have satisfied this particular proposed metric, no goalpost shift was intended here, I should perhaps be more verbose in my reply. We could now combine your solution with the one posted by Stux and measure if it is “good enough” for at least 50% of players and we would indeed have a reasonably established baseline for rules/balance changes and improvements. My only critique here is that with dakka balance discussions history I don’t think this is indeed “good enough” to stop complaining about GW design team and condition of the game. As far as this thread goes I really value your input.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 kodos wrote:

nou wrote:

I wasn’t there during 5th.

Than you should take some time to read/learn stuff from that edition.
It was not perfect balance and some Codex books were better than others, (and in tournaments balance was off if the outdated victory conditions of the previous editions were used)

But it was the one edition were a good player could win against others no matter what faction he used and the problems started in the end when codex power creep hit and 6th launched that took it on another level (there was a reason why 6th was replaced very fast)

but the trick you do here is satisfying the second condition only in the most strict sense of being unable to predict which of the two possible lists will be present for the most underdog factions

No, but as I said above take some time to dig in 5th edition list building and results
even with the very limited list for Sisters of Battle of that time, you never saw the exact same list twice

I have read 5th ed BRB and codices for factions I play and I did not get the impression that it was all that different at it’s core to overcome the projection onto linear measure problem. And judging from various polls and discussions here, while it is most commonly pointed as the best edition it also has a significant opposition. It is often named as better balanced than later editions due to a significantly smaller scope and variation, which I have adressed in the OP already as a reasonable way of improving balance. It is however unnaceptable to revert to it for every single Imperial Knight player out there.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tyel wrote:
I don't see why its impossible to get "close enough".

For example do you think the game was more balanced before, or after CA18? I think its clearly more balanced for say Necrons, who were garbage before, and are now at least reasonable (if not obviously tournament winning). Therefore GW have made a step towards being "close enough" - even if some Necron units are still trash tier.

On pure thought experiments - I think basic Tactical Marines are a bad unit and Guardmen are a good units.
This is however a function of the guardsman being four points and the Marine being 13 points. If Marines were 11-12 points, and Guardsmen were 5 points, the situation would immediately become closer. If Guardsmen were suddenly made 13 points, they would clearly be rubbish units.

All units can be considered on a pair of offensive and defensive axes. There is then some consideration of battlefield flexibility - typically movement, range, and the ability to do multiple things as required.

The third one is hard to quantify - the first two are not. Bad units are typically identified quickly - and accurately - by having inferior damage output, being incredibly easy to kill, or both. Units which are good are the opposite. This can be shown mathematically - over a reasonable number of games the statistics will tend to come out. Since this is all mathematical, I don't really see why you can't assign points to it. If one unit has the damage/defensive probability curve for X points, and another unit has a worse set of curves for X points or more than X points, its an inferior unit.

You might need a supercomputer to work out marines are "really" worth 11.749202 points exactly in context to the rest of the game, and guardsmen should be 4.839393 points - but really, we can get close enough by eye.

Using only two or three axis model gives you Terminators problem, that is that singular point cost which tries to weight offense and defense fails to reasonably cover a space with units of such a large skew between large survivability and miserable damage output per model. With defense being a factor of combined save and wound count you end up with point system being blind to whether you use single terminator, two tacticals or couple of guardsmen but ruleset interactions are not indifferent to this an you always end up with optimal and suboptimal choices. What my initial post uses as a basis for reasoning is extending the model you describe onto any concievable and meaningfull dimension and showing that no matter how hard you try to project it onto point system you will fail and you will need army composition restrictions, strictly defined mission packs with fluid win conditions, sideboards, self imposed social contracts, etc...

Perfect balance is not possible. That much is true.
But then you start talking about good enough being impossible, without defining what you mean with "good enough".
Good enough for both to field a army, good enough for all games being 50%, good enough for not being able to tell who is going to win based on faction?
This makes you entire post a tirade with a moot point.

 Wibe wrote:
Perfect balance is not possible. That much is true.
But then you start talking about good enough being impossible, without defining what you mean with "good enough".
Good enough for both to field a army, good enough for all games being 50%, good enough for not being able to tell who is going to win based on faction?
This makes you entire post a tirade with a moot point.

Most of this thread to this point revolves around this very problem and I and others have already adressed it and expanded on it numerous times. Read it.

 kodos wrote:
Overall:

1) Reduce RNG to the absolute minimum.

A weapon doing 2D6 damage is much harder to balance than one with 4D3 damage which is more unbalanced than one doing 6 damage
the average damage is similar, 7, 8 and 6 but 2D6 doing 2-12 damage which means is unbalanced 90% of the the time or will cost too much points to be an option

And yes some people will say that this kills the fun. I disagree as not knowing what your units can do makes tactical play much harder (and just saying the it is absolute random who wins because of the high amount of RNG is most fun, there are better boardgames out there for such kind of gameplay)

2D6 is 2 to 12
4D3 is 4 to 12

4D3 average is 8. There is nothing wrong with 2D6 as long as it comes with appropriate cost.

nou wrote:

 Wibe wrote:
Perfect balance is not possible. That much is true.
But then you start talking about good enough being impossible, without defining what you mean with "good enough".
Good enough for both to field a army, good enough for all games being 50%, good enough for not being able to tell who is going to win based on faction?
This makes you entire post a tirade with a moot point.

Most of this thread to this point revolves around this very problem and I and others have already adressed it and expanded on it numerous times. Read it.

I have. You used the term, you then claim it's not your term so you don't have to define the term. All part of your tirade with a moot point.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 kodos wrote:
Overall:

1) Reduce RNG to the absolute minimum.

A weapon doing 2D6 damage is much harder to balance than one with 4D3 damage which is more unbalanced than one doing 6 damage
the average damage is similar, 7, 8 and 6 but 2D6 doing 2-12 damage which means is unbalanced 90% of the the time or will cost too much points to be an option

And yes some people will say that this kills the fun. I disagree as not knowing what your units can do makes tactical play much harder (and just saying the it is absolute random who wins because of the high amount of RNG is most fun, there are better boardgames out there for such kind of gameplay)

2D6 is 2 to 12
4D3 is 4 to 12

4D3 average is 8. There is nothing wrong with 2D6 as long as it comes with appropriate cost.

2d6 is a lot better than 1d6 for sure.

Heavy weapons you've paid a lot of points for that do 1d6 shots is a problem. 2d3 would be a lot better in these instances.

 Wibe wrote:

nou wrote:

 Wibe wrote:
Perfect balance is not possible. That much is true.
But then you start talking about good enough being impossible, without defining what you mean with "good enough".
Good enough for both to field a army, good enough for all games being 50%, good enough for not being able to tell who is going to win based on faction?
This makes you entire post a tirade with a moot point.

Most of this thread to this point revolves around this very problem and I and others have already adressed it and expanded on it numerous times. Read it.

I have. You used the term, you then claim it's not your term so you don't have to define the term. All part of your tirade with a moot point.

Read again then, it has been adequately adressed why I don't define "good enough" by myself and few others.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tyel wrote:
I don't see why its impossible to get "close enough".

For example do you think the game was more balanced before, or after CA18? I think its clearly more balanced for say Necrons, who were garbage before, and are now at least reasonable (if not obviously tournament winning). Therefore GW have made a step towards being "close enough" - even if some Necron units are still trash tier.

On pure thought experiments - I think basic Tactical Marines are a bad unit and Guardmen are a good units.
This is however a function of the guardsman being four points and the Marine being 13 points. If Marines were 11-12 points, and Guardsmen were 5 points, the situation would immediately become closer. If Guardsmen were suddenly made 13 points, they would clearly be rubbish units.

All units can be considered on a pair of offensive and defensive axes. There is then some consideration of battlefield flexibility - typically movement, range, and the ability to do multiple things as required.

The third one is hard to quantify - the first two are not. Bad units are typically identified quickly - and accurately - by having inferior damage output, being incredibly easy to kill, or both. Units which are good are the opposite. This can be shown mathematically - over a reasonable number of games the statistics will tend to come out. Since this is all mathematical, I don't really see why you can't assign points to it. If one unit has the damage/defensive probability curve for X points, and another unit has a worse set of curves for X points or more than X points, its an inferior unit.

You might need a supercomputer to work out marines are "really" worth 11.749202 points exactly in context to the rest of the game, and guardsmen should be 4.839393 points - but really, we can get close enough by eye.

There is one other direct, so maybe more clearly understandable modern example: you cannot adequately and universally point cost a Castellan, because large part of it's efficiency comes from a context it is taken in (stratagems and CP amount) and you would have to have at least two point costs, one for mono IK and one for IG+Castellan for it to be adequately balanced in both contexts.

Thank you for starting up this conversation nou. As a semi-amateur rules writer, topics like this make my day. I believe that there are a lot of ways to make the balance of 40k more accurate, more multi-dimensional and more dynamic. First of all, some assertions for a baseline of a hypothetical 9th edition that would address these issues:

1. Point costs are used for internal codex balance, independent of opponent and assuming a specific standard mission (used as a baseline) and a specific set of guidelines for terrain set-up (also used as a baseline). The points would need to be calculated based on a final gear load-out, not added together during list creation as they currently are. (A storm bolter is more useful on a Captain than a tactical sergeant and a jump pack is more useful on a model with a Thunder Hammer than one with an MC Boltgun.)

2. Command Points would need to have an approximately equivalent value from army to army, though of course this would swing wildly depending on context. I will discuss context related changes below, but I will save general CP balancing discussions for a more appropriate thread.

3. Every mission would need to have expanded rules allowing the objectives/command points generated to shift depending on the force composition of each side (for example, on missions that generate victory points for slain Heavy Support choices, Heavy Support choices should either generate CP or they should score a bonus VP whenever they are used to slay enemy Heavy Support choices).

4. There would need to be a new set of table/terrain guidelines that altered CP generated or created/modified objectives based on unit functionality within that terrain. (Example: on boards more than 1/3 covered by ruins; non-infantry units of a certain size/cost might generate CP or gain objective secured.)

5. There would need to be similar modifications done based on inter-army interactions. (Example: Pure Deathwatch armies (which struggle to take down Knights) might score a VP or gain a CP when they slay a VEHICLE that is TITANIC.)

6. Lastly stratagems would need to vary cost/function based upon their target to help equalize the value of a CP. (Example: Rotate Ion Shields should cost more on the bigger Knights and less on the small ones.)

There are, of course, always more ways to make it multi-dimensional (for example, having stratagems that varied cost/effect based on mission/terrain), but overall I think my idea is pretty much just in the logic of, “GW has made all of these variables that could be changed after list building; why don’t we change them after list-building to increase balance, supplementing points?”

Thoughts? (Questions/comments/concerns? Bitches/gripes/complaints?)

I agree that context is important, which is why the cost of a unit must be considered as it’s maximum potential.

The downside to this is that any situation in which the optimal environment is not being taken advantage of (CP battery for Castellan) the model will seem overpriced. Which creates a weird situation in which taking some cheap Guardsmen becomes effectively mandatory. Taking a Farseer on Jetbike to support a Wraithknight is effectively mandatory. (Why wouldn’t you? )

It has always seemed strange to me that jump pack marines have cheap jump packs. Once upon a time, jump packs doubled your movement. While that does not necessarily mean doubling the points, it’s awfully close. Yet jump packs were roughly 1/4 of the price of a Marine. I never understood that.

So appropriately pricing models based on ideal circumstances has the “drawback” of limiting competitive build structures (which I’m ok with) to a small number of effectively pre-selected groupings. Which, to be fair is exactly what happens now anyway. To me, the interesting thing is that it levels the playing field between these pre-selected groupings. Two equally skilled opponents using armies constructed of these idealized groupings (maximizing army potential) should achieve a 60-40 win / loss ratio, over time.

I also agree with the above, that some kind of terrain setup suggestion should be given. Something like for every 500 points, a minimum of 3 large pieces of LOS blocking terrain (6” cube, for example) should be present. This terrain should be deployed starting near the centre of the board in a “web” to ensure the potential for meaningful movement and tactical options through the centre of the board.

This might require a bit of a return to 4 th edition concepts like trees being infinitely tall, in order to ensure that not all LOS blocking terrain is ruins... but I’d say that’s ok.

40k will never be balanced as long as the primary focus is kept on firepower and killing units, rather than strategy. Some units will always be mathematically better at killing than others, especially in a game with this many model choices.

Having a system where the majority of games are decided by turn 2 simply because one side killed more then the other side is just bad design

InquisitorKnickers wrote:
Thoughts? (Questions/comments/concerns? Bitches/gripes/complaints?)

Too much added complexity / paperwork / things to remember and keep track of for a tabletop game. Just having to go back and forth between the unit entry and points list is a step too far for many.

nou wrote:
I have read 5th ed BRB and codices / And judging from various polls and discussions here, while it is most commonly pointed as the best edition it also has a significant opposition.

The wound allocation could be abused (but easily fixed), the mission scoring conditions were very poor, they made vehicles tougher and cheaper, didn't sync up changes book to book, and as the edition went on the game saw rampant codex creep.
It's a good start for an oldhammer system, but needs a lot of work to bring the 5e codex releases into line.

nou wrote:
There is one other direct, so maybe more clearly understandable modern example: you cannot adequately and universally point cost a Castellan, because large part of it's efficiency comes from a context it is taken in (stratagems and CP amount) and you would have to have at least two point costs, one for mono IK and one for IG+Castellan for it to be adequately balanced in both contexts.

The thing is that this "two points value dilemma" isn't a real problem outside of pure theory. Some people really don't like canned strategy - but I don't think its a problem if certain combinations can only be played together. Its a shame if a model never has a competitive combo - but its not the end of the world. Not nearly as much as a too powerful combination.

Sure, if I say "every Castellan turns up with Cawls Wrath, a 4++ and a bank of CPs to burn" you can say "well not all Castellans" - but its a bit meaningless. In a competitive world they do because its the best thing to do with the resources available for you. Things have to be pointed on the assumption that people will optimise their lists, not that they grab anything to hand and see how it does.

Balance isn't in some weird idea that anyone should be able to spend X points in any book, and have a 50/50 chance to win against any other list in the game. You can't have a complex game and have that as the objective. Now I'd argue there shouldn't be trap choices in any codex - units which are so eye-wateringly bad for their points you are only taking them of you really don't know how the game works - but by and large (and its a work in progress, but at least they are now trying) GW is acting to get rid of them. But the very fact they can get rid of them suggests that yes, things can be balanced by points.

You could also balance it by fundamentally altering the game (whether its limiting soups or completely changing how missions are won or lost etc) but it isn't inherently necessary.

I don't really see your argument on Terminators either. The problem with Terminators was that for their points they had crap damage output, crap movement - and actually nothing special on defense as well. With the CA18 points drops and things like the beta bolter rules the regular stormbolter/fist build is a bit better - but still not amazing for what you pay. I don't see how it represents a problem with the axes approach. Most models which are mathematically good are good.

InquisitorKnickers wrote:
Thank you for starting up this conversation nou. As a semi-amateur rules writer, topics like this make my day. I believe that there are a lot of ways to make the balance of 40k more accurate, more multi-dimensional and more dynamic. First of all, some assertions for a baseline of a hypothetical 9th edition that would address these issues:

1. Point costs are used for internal codex balance, independent of opponent and assuming a specific standard mission (used as a baseline) and a specific set of guidelines for terrain set-up (also used as a baseline). The points would need to be calculated based on a final gear load-out, not added together during list creation as they currently are. (A storm bolter is more useful on a Captain than a tactical sergeant and a jump pack is more useful on a model with a Thunder Hammer than one with an MC Boltgun.)

2. Command Points would need to have an approximately equivalent value from army to army, though of course this would swing wildly depending on context. I will discuss context related changes below, but I will save general CP balancing discussions for a more appropriate thread.

3. Every mission would need to have expanded rules allowing the objectives/command points generated to shift depending on the force composition of each side (for example, on missions that generate victory points for slain Heavy Support choices, Heavy Support choices should either generate CP or they should score a bonus VP whenever they are used to slay enemy Heavy Support choices).

4. There would need to be a new set of table/terrain guidelines that altered CP generated or created/modified objectives based on unit functionality within that terrain. (Example: on boards more than 1/3 covered by ruins; non-infantry units of a certain size/cost might generate CP or gain objective secured.)

5. There would need to be similar modifications done based on inter-army interactions. (Example: Pure Deathwatch armies (which struggle to take down Knights) might score a VP or gain a CP when they slay a VEHICLE that is TITANIC.)

6. Lastly stratagems would need to vary cost/function based upon their target to help equalize the value of a CP. (Example: Rotate Ion Shields should cost more on the bigger Knights and less on the small ones.)

There are, of course, always more ways to make it multi-dimensional (for example, having stratagems that varied cost/effect based on mission/terrain), but overall I think my idea is pretty much just in the logic of, “GW has made all of these variables that could be changed after list building; why don’t we change them after list-building to increase balance, supplementing points?”

Thoughts? (Questions/comments/concerns? Bitches/gripes/complaints?)

Thank you for this much welcomed change of pace All interesting points all around and your last sentence nicely sums up how can we get past this static "good enough" metric we so painfully derived earlier in the thread.

Mission/terrain specific alterations have actually existed in 40K in form of attacker/defender stratagems prior to 8th edition and have proven usefull tool in flavourfully equalizing intentionally skewed narrative and 8th expanded on that already. You're right that this is a good dynamic tool at game time. Faction specific win conditions have also existed in 7th in form of faction specific Tactical Objectives, but entire Maelstrom concept suffers from huge community objections (partially warranted by poor GW execution of the concept). One thing you may find interesting, which I have been using for a long time in my "universal mission template" - if you allow to copy/steal cards drawn by your opponent as an alternative to random generation on top of the turn you can get consistenly close games with very natural wargame feel of strategic decision making "on the top of command chain". I vastly prefer it to CCG nature of direct, unit specific stratagems in 8th.

As to other dynamic tools I use at gameplay: tactical objective generation based on area control with objective placement specificaly tailored in conjunction with terrain - this enables balance of even the most skewed landscapes and adds a lot to movement/countermovement/movement denial, so switches a lot of balance from mathhammer to player agency. On top of all that I have not played a symmetrical main objectives mission for years now - it is just too great tool for both storytelling and balancing lists performance, both if used after lists are made to accomodate for discrepancies or prior to list construction to enable problem solving approach. But I do play narratively, so never really thought about trying to objectively codify all those tools. Your ideas of altering CP generation and dynamic changes to unit types utility based on terrain are IMHO very promising if somwehat elusive to grasp on how exactly they could/should be implemented.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

A.T. wrote:

InquisitorKnickers wrote:
Thoughts? (Questions/comments/concerns? Bitches/gripes/complaints?)

Too much added complexity / paperwork / things to remember and keep track of for a tabletop game. Just having to go back and forth between the unit entry and points list is a step too far for many.

nou wrote:
I have read 5th ed BRB and codices / And judging from various polls and discussions here, while it is most commonly pointed as the best edition it also has a significant opposition.

The wound allocation could be abused (but easily fixed), the mission scoring conditions were very poor, they made vehicles tougher and cheaper, didn't sync up changes book to book, and as the edition went on the game saw rampant codex creep.
It's a good start for an oldhammer system, but needs a lot of work to bring the 5e codex releases into line.

I have probably adressed a lot of those concerns in "myhammer" rework of 7th, as 5th is at it's core a stripped down version of it in many respects and I have changed a lot by now.

At much added complexity / paperwork complaint I have actually discussed this once before and the solution is reachable - most people now own a smarphone, much of more dynamic tools could be app-ified. In theory, it could also be utilized for dynamic pricing based on faction matchup on the fly, but I know at least few posters that would strongly object to taking away definite number crunching at listbuilding time.

The problem of perfect balancing is NP hard and so for larger problem instances not solvable.
What we see are approximate solutions of GW, weakly tries not more.
Dont blame GW.

Tyel wrote:

nou wrote:
There is one other direct, so maybe more clearly understandable modern example: you cannot adequately and universally point cost a Castellan, because large part of it's efficiency comes from a context it is taken in (stratagems and CP amount) and you would have to have at least two point costs, one for mono IK and one for IG+Castellan for it to be adequately balanced in both contexts.

The thing is that this "two points value dilemma" isn't a real problem outside of pure theory. Some people really don't like canned strategy - but I don't think its a problem if certain combinations can only be played together. Its a shame if a model never has a competitive combo - but its not the end of the world. Not nearly as much as a too powerful combination.

Sure, if I say "every Castellan turns up with Cawls Wrath, a 4++ and a bank of CPs to burn" you can say "well not all Castellans" - but its a bit meaningless. In a competitive world they do because its the best thing to do with the resources available for you. Things have to be pointed on the assumption that people will optimise their lists, not that they grab anything to hand and see how it does.

Balance isn't in some weird idea that anyone should be able to spend X points in any book, and have a 50/50 chance to win against any other list in the game. You can't have a complex game and have that as the objective. Now I'd argue there shouldn't be trap choices in any codex - units which are so eye-wateringly bad for their points you are only taking them of you really don't know how the game works - but by and large (and its a work in progress, but at least they are now trying) GW is acting to get rid of them. But the very fact they can get rid of them suggests that yes, things can be balanced by points.

You could also balance it by fundamentally altering the game (whether its limiting soups or completely changing how missions are won or lost etc) but it isn't inherently necessary.

I don't really see your argument on Terminators either. The problem with Terminators was that for their points they had crap damage output, crap movement - and actually nothing special on defense as well. With the CA18 points drops and things like the beta bolter rules the regular stormbolter/fist build is a bit better - but still not amazing for what you pay. I don't see how it represents a problem with the axes approach. Most models which are mathematically good are good.

If you don't get how Terminators (and distraction carnifexes) are an epitome of linear projection problem by now then there is really very little I can expand upon to make it more apparent for you. Last attempt - if I tell you a number of points, say 80, and nothing more except game conditions to use it in, can you tell me how much and how exactly will they infulence a game and how they will interact with rules? The other way around it is much more simple and perfectly doable, you can name a unit and then assume some set of game conditions and establish a fairly reasonable, momentary point value of said unit because you have a vast array of variables given to crunch, not a single variable. It would change depending on said conditions, but for any narrowly defined circumstances you actually can do that to a reasonable accuracy. But because point projection is lossy, you cannot do this in any reasonable way when all I tell you is point value.

But you touch another important problem in that post - namely a desired level of balance to leave list building and number crunching a meaningful part of the game. It has been best showcased by Auticus' AOS point system attempt - most of the players actually frowned upon statistically too equalized point system, because they could not show off their knowledge and insight of the system by hunting down optimal choices. So the "optimal enough" level of balance would have to be somewhere between "good enough" metrics derived earlier (which I think is very bottom estimate and pretty low for practical considerations) and significantly lower than chess level of "perfect balance" where all list choices are obvious or rigidly given. And the more "optimal balance" differs from "perfect" the more utility in game time dynamic tools.

redboi wrote:
40k will never be balanced as long as the primary focus is kept on firepower and killing units, rather than strategy. Some units will always be mathematically better at killing than others, especially in a game with this many model choices.

Having a system where the majority of games are decided by turn 2 simply because one side killed more then the other side is just bad design

But gap is something that could be change. Right now the gap between the best and the worse army, is so large, both armies could as well be playing different games.

Karol wrote:

redboi wrote:
40k will never be balanced as long as the primary focus is kept on firepower and killing units, rather than strategy. Some units will always be mathematically better at killing than others, especially in a game with this many model choices.

Having a system where the majority of games are decided by turn 2 simply because one side killed more then the other side is just bad design

But gap is something that could be change. Right now the gap between the best and the worse army, is so large, both armies could as well be playing different games.

It's actually a more even playing field than at many times in the past of the game. End of 7e especially!

I don't know how 7th looked like. From my point of view the army power difference is huge. Something like and eldar or IG army can beat my army even if I get free 500pts in re-rolls and the limit to use them only once per turn is lifted. If GK in 7th were worse then they are now, which I assume could have been the case, then GW should have either removed them fromt he game or should have really writen a good codex for them.
From what I understand eldar were good in 7th ed, somehow GW with little time and few people to write and test, could write two very good eldar books and one book that is workable in soup.

 greatbigtree wrote:
I agree that context is important, which is why the cost of a unit must be considered as it’s maximum potential.

The downside to this is that any situation in which the optimal environment is not being taken advantage of (CP battery for Castellan) the model will seem overpriced. Which creates a weird situation in which taking some cheap Guardsmen becomes effectively mandatory. Taking a Farseer on Jetbike to support a Wraithknight is effectively mandatory. (Why wouldn’t you? )

It has always seemed strange to me that jump pack marines have cheap jump packs. Once upon a time, jump packs doubled your movement. While that does not necessarily mean doubling the points, it’s awfully close. Yet jump packs were roughly 1/4 of the price of a Marine. I never understood that.

So appropriately pricing models based on ideal circumstances has the “drawback” of limiting competitive build structures (which I’m ok with) to a small number of effectively pre-selected groupings. Which, to be fair is exactly what happens now anyway. To me, the interesting thing is that it levels the playing field between these pre-selected groupings. Two equally skilled opponents using armies constructed of these idealized groupings (maximizing army potential) should achieve a 60-40 win / loss ratio, over time.

I also agree with the above, that some kind of terrain setup suggestion should be given. Something like for every 500 points, a minimum of 3 large pieces of LOS blocking terrain (6” cube, for example) should be present. This terrain should be deployed starting near the centre of the board in a “web” to ensure the potential for meaningful movement and tactical options through the centre of the board.

This might require a bit of a return to 4 th edition concepts like trees being infinitely tall, in order to ensure that not all LOS blocking terrain is ruins... but I’d say that’s ok.

Infinitely tall visibility limitations were actually introduced in CA18 in the form of Pillars Of Smoke in Urban Battlezone: Conflagration. But as those are narrative rules their very existence will be largely ignored.


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Karol wrote:
I don't know how 7th looked like. From my point of view the army power difference is huge. Something like and eldar or IG army can beat my army even if I get free 500pts in re-rolls and the limit to use them only once per turn is lifted. If GK in 7th were worse then they are now, which I assume could have been the case, then GW should have either removed them fromt he game or should have really writen a good codex for them.
From what I understand eldar were good in 7th ed, somehow GW with little time and few people to write and test, could write two very good eldar books and one book that is workable in soup.

Eldars have been good since the begining of the game largely because fundamental design concept behind this faction and how it interacts with every ruleset to date: they are an army of single task specialists, so have minmaxing built in unit design and you can then further optimize on that with minmaxing lists. That they had some really broken formations in 7th didn't help either and made them borderline easy to break and the most hated faction, perhaps on par with Tau.

nou wrote:
If you don't get how Terminators (and distraction carnifexes) are an epitome of linear projection problem by now then there is really very little I can expand upon to make it more apparent for you. Last attempt - if I tell you a number of points, say 80, and nothing more except game conditions to use it in, can you tell me how much and how exactly will they infulence a game and how they will interact with rules? The other way around it is much more simple and perfectly doable, you can name a unit and then assume some set of game conditions and establish a fairly reasonable, momentary point value of said unit because you have a vast array of variables given to crunch, not a single variable. It would change depending on said conditions, but for any narrowly defined circumstances you actually can do that to a reasonable accuracy. But because point projection is lossy, you cannot do this in any reasonable way when all I tell you is point value.

I don't understand what you mean by "linear projection" or what you are asking me to do with 80 points. Terminators were bad in 8th because they were overcosted. At 40 points a model they were bad in every respect - even toughness. At 34 points they are better, although still not amazing. If they were to drop to say 20~ points I'm sure you would see some players max out on them. Everything is relative to everything else.

I'll maybe accept that you can't so easily compare units which operate in a in a totally different manner and for this you need a degree of iteration. You can't for instance easily look at assault marines and say "if they are X points, a Storm Raven is worth Y".
We are however involved in this iterative process. Through playing the game over and over we can see which units are good and which are bad, and therefore you can tighten the points up - as GW have done through the CA releases. The Storm Raven may not be comparable to assault marines - but its comparable to a range of other flyers or units which perform a similar function on the table.

You have set out in the original post that this process to get "close enough" is impossible. Its obviously not because its happening. Could it be better? Yes - I think GW have missed numerous tricks and I hope they resolve them next time round - but that's a million miles away from your position.

just so you know GK termintors still cost around 40pts. Even if they cost 20pts or strikes were primaris with stormbolters, I don't think people would suddenly swarm to playing them. 20pts is still a lot.

Tyel wrote:

You have set out in the original post that this process to get "close enough" is impossible. Its obviously not because its happening. Could it be better? Yes - I think GW have missed numerous tricks and I hope they resolve them next time round - but that's a million miles away from your position.

You confuse getting better with getting acceptably good here and if you think you "obviously" have to achieve better balance the longer you do this, you should read about asymptotes and strange atractors.

nou wrote:

Tyel wrote:

You have set out in the original post that this process to get "close enough" is impossible. Its obviously not because its happening. Could it be better? Yes - I think GW have missed numerous tricks and I hope they resolve them next time round - but that's a million miles away from your position.

You confuse getting better with getting acceptably good here and if you think you "obviously" have to achieve better balance the longer you do this, you should read about asymptotes and strange atractors.

Have you tried a cloud-based blockchain solution to provide strategic synergy with your hyperphase analysis? CHECKMATE GAME DESIGNERS.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

4D3 average is 8. There is nothing wrong with 2D6 as long as it comes with appropriate cost.

This is the problem, damage is always priced for maximum or average

And as you see in the graphic, 4D3 priced for average damage are much more balanced as you are more likely to see the average result. And both minimum+average results are closer to the Maximum, making it more reliable which means you more likley get what you paid for.

A 40k weapon with 1D6 damage should be price equal or less than a 2 damage weapon to be appropriate priced. But this won't happen so keeping the point cost and change them to 2D3 or fixed 4 damage would be the better solution

nou wrote:

I have read 5th ed BRB and codices for factions I play and I did not get the impression that it was all that different at it’s core to overcome the projection onto linear measure problem. And judging from various polls and discussions here, while it is most commonly pointed as the best edition it also has a significant opposition. It is often named as better balanced than later editions due to a significantly smaller scope and variation, which I have adressed in the OP already as a reasonable way of improving balance. It is however unnaceptable to revert to it for every single Imperial Knight player out there.

Of course you cannot go back, but this is not the point.

A reason why 5th was seen better balanced was because there were less options but units were more different.
No codex had more than 2 options for chaff or other specialists which meant that one unit would have always been better than the other

the attitude from GW "we make no mistakes so we need no Errata/rules changes" is a reason for the opposition, but 5th edition with similar treatment like 8th in rules and point adjustments would have been the 40k with good enough balance

 kodos wrote:


A reason why 5th was seen better balanced was because there were less options but units were more different.
No codex had more than 2 options for chaff or other specialists which meant that one unit would have always been better than the other

the attitude from GW "we make no mistakes so we need no Errata/rules changes" is a reason for the opposition, but 5th edition with similar treatment like 8th in rules and point adjustments would have been the 40k with good enough balance

Decreasing the size of the game and keeping it frozen in size as a valid approach to increase balance, that at the same time directly contradicts GW business model so it cannot happen has been explicitly covered in the OP, so I don't know what else to get from this more than "if this was possible 5th would be the basis of it", which I do not disagree with.

nou wrote:

 kodos wrote:


A reason why 5th was seen better balanced was because there were less options but units were more different.
No codex had more than 2 options for chaff or other specialists which meant that one unit would have always been better than the other

the attitude from GW "we make no mistakes so we need no Errata/rules changes" is a reason for the opposition, but 5th edition with similar treatment like 8th in rules and point adjustments would have been the 40k with good enough balance

Decreasing the size of the game and keeping it frozen in size as a valid approach to increase balance, that at the same time directly contradicts GW business model so it cannot happen has been explicitly covered in the OP, so I don't know what else to get from this more than "if this was possible 5th would be the basis of it", which I do not disagree with.

This wont work, even if they froze everything now there are already too many factors to take into account for them to properly balance the game they would have to remove a lot of the factions which they can't do at this point.

@Nou I have remained in the same position the whole time. I agree points are not the answer.

Even if you can't come up with a good enough definition for "good enough balance" you should still lay one out.

One option you have not put forward is non-liner non-point related rules.

For example "Units with 5 or less models gain +1" movement, and units with 11 or more models -1" of movement."

Rules like this would have an impact on the game, but are not based on points at all. Some units would have the option of benefits from the start, while others wont.

Points are a good base to build from, they allow you to control how much is put on the table, which helps keep armies "feeling" like they should, lots of Guardsman, few Space marines for example. They do not let you control what is put on the board.

What's more as long as you use the original reference point to determine the points cost of anything new then it would come out reasonably balanced.

40k can be balanced. It requires many changes, such as removing some factions, and recognizing that points alone do not create balance. The rules really do need to be more complex for this to happen, with tradeoffs in units' capabilities, a decent suppression system, and so on. And alternating activation, of course. There just isn't room in 8th, or 7th, or 6th...... for units' to contribute to the battle using different means, and decisions to matter.

nou wrote:
... and what can be done to improve it.

First a little preface: it is not possible to "perfect balance" 40K, it is not even possible to "good enough" balance it, not with point system anyway. Just plain abstract math is enough to prove that.

If you're going to make an absurdly pedantic thread to basically create a couple bullet points, where the entire thread could be effortlessly reduced to 1 or 2 sentences, you should at least establish how quality of balance is measured and what is considered acceptable.

 Marmatag wrote:

nou wrote:
... and what can be done to improve it.

First a little preface: it is not possible to "perfect balance" 40K, it is not even possible to "good enough" balance it, not with point system anyway. Just plain abstract math is enough to prove that.

If you're going to make an absurdly pedantic thread to basically create a couple bullet points, where the entire thread could be effortlessly reduced to 1 or 2 sentences, you should at least establish how quality of balance is measured and what is considered acceptable.

And this has been established on first two pages why I did not and then suitable tests of quality of varying sensitivity and treshold of balance have been already proposed and accepted as usable. This is going in circles because people do not bother to read the thread before posting...


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 Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote:

nou wrote:

 kodos wrote:


A reason why 5th was seen better balanced was because there were less options but units were more different.
No codex had more than 2 options for chaff or other specialists which meant that one unit would have always been better than the other

the attitude from GW "we make no mistakes so we need no Errata/rules changes" is a reason for the opposition, but 5th edition with similar treatment like 8th in rules and point adjustments would have been the 40k with good enough balance

Decreasing the size of the game and keeping it frozen in size as a valid approach to increase balance, that at the same time directly contradicts GW business model so it cannot happen has been explicitly covered in the OP, so I don't know what else to get from this more than "if this was possible 5th would be the basis of it", which I do not disagree with.

This wont work, even if they froze everything now there are already too many factors to take into account for them to properly balance the game they would have to remove a lot of the factions which they can't do at this point.

@Nou I have remained in the same position the whole time. I agree points are not the answer.

Even if you can't come up with a good enough definition for "good enough balance" you should still lay one out.

One option you have not put forward is non-liner non-point related rules.

For example "Units with 5 or less models gain +1" movement, and units with 11 or more models -1" of movement."

Rules like this would have an impact on the game, but are not based on points at all. Some units would have the option of benefits from this while others wont.

Points are a good base to build from, they allow you to control how much is put on the table, which helps keep armies "feeling" like they should, lots of Guardsman, few Space marines for example. They do not let you control what is put on the board.

What's more as long as you use the original reference point to determine the points cost of anything new then it would come out reasonably balanced.

As you can see what “good enough” means varies greatly from person to person and even establishing our low bottom line test requires a community vote to see if it produces game state that is deemed balanced “good enough”. Me providing some arbitrary definition of “good enough” doesn’t change static linear projection a bit and I can bet you, that even if I have provided such arbitrary definition first two pages of this thread would be a debate on adequacy of said definition, not a debate on non-linear mechanism... And at this moment in the thread we already have a working baseline test established and it still has not been practically satisfied, early 5th came as close as possible to this metrics, with what - half of modern model line?

As for your movement proposal, I assume that this is to be fluid during game time, so the more casaulties the better the squad? Otherwise it is a blanket change on movement stat or at most a kind of a comp rule but few units can vary in size from 5 to 20+. Elaborate comp systems are better than simple FOCs and are a good way to non-point based balance army balance, yes. They however do not account for terrain or mission impacting the gameplay so I’m more keen on mission time dynamics than listbuilding time dynamics, as mission time dynamics allow for greater spectrum of unit choices to be drawn into viability space.

As to “new units can be point costed” - only if they do not introduce any new kind of game interaction, like Ynnari or GSC did when first released in late 7th. On such occasions you have to rebalance the whole system to accomodate new interactions, especially when those are army wide special abilities and affect all 400+ faction vs faction individual balance spaces.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I have updated OP to include metrics proposed by AlexTroy (with some commentary) as a basis of "goog enough" subdiscusiions.

Honestly this discussion doesn't make much sense to me. I started out playing MtG before jumping in to 40k. There are hundreds of thousands of cards, and even hundreds of thousands of more combos. Magic apparently can never be balanced according to this thread, and yet more often than not, it is considered so by its own player base.

Why?

Because balance is considered achieved when the competitive playing field offers a wide variety of options to choose from. Not every choice will be balanced, competitive, or even necessarily playable at any given time. But you can still have a balanced meta.

Right now, I'd say the presence of imperial soup for command points (specifically loyal 32) and the castellan heavily warps balance; in magic this is the equivalent of a certain card call treasure cruise, it allowed you jump through some hoops to pay limited resources for card draw that could be slotted into any deck; even those whose main weakness was lack of card draw. Fix command points primarily, and I think you'll find a diverse enough field of contenders to be called "balanced" as huge command point batteries stop being mandatory for imperial armies and stop giant death balls from sucking down 15 cp in a single game. From there, we can worry about reeling in outliers towards the median.

It can be balanced from a competitive sense. Casual balance is an oxymoron.

The issue is that by the definitions offered 40k is fairly balanced. You cant say "play Imperial soup - win". At least 20% or so of lists at the LVO were imperial soup. Do we think they only lost to mirror matches? Were they all the same? No.

There are some internal balancing issues with some factions. Some are stronger and skew your odds. But I am sure this happens in MTG and its what fuels evolution in the meta. The weakness is that there is not an exlicitly anti-Knight plug in for many factions. Often there is in Card Games. GW can however add such much more easily than completely re-writing the game from the ground up. I mean where were Knights in the first year of 8th? Points matter. If the Castellan was 900 points it would likely cease to be meta relevant immediately.

cerberus_ wrote:
Honestly this discussion doesn't make much sense to me. I started out playing MtG before jumping in to 40k. There are hundreds of thousands of cards, and even hundreds of thousands of more combos. Magic apparently can never be balanced according to this thread, and yet more often than not, it is considered so by its own player base.

Why?

Because balance is considered achieved when the competitive playing field offers a wide variety of options to choose from. Not every choice will be balanced, competitive, or even necessarily playable at any given time. But you can still have a balanced meta.

Right now, I'd say the presence of imperial soup for command points (specifically loyal 32) and the castellan heavily warps balance; in magic this is the equivalent of a certain card call treasure cruise, it allowed you jump through some hoops to pay limited resources for card draw that could be slotted into any deck; even those whose main weakness was lack of card draw. Fix command points primarily, and I think you'll find a diverse enough field of contenders to be called "balanced" as huge command point batteries stop being mandatory for imperial armies and stop giant death balls from sucking down 15 cp in a single game. From there, we can worry about reeling in outliers towards the median.

It can be balanced from a competitive sense. Casual balance is an oxymoron.

IT cannot be balanced satisfactorily for most players at a competitive level (or at least has not shown to be able to do so) The problem with the MTG comparison is that the buy in to be competitive is no where near the same (not talking money necessarily but time as well). IN a game where modeling, and painting matter, having "balance" where say 4 builds can compete, is (at least to me) unacceptable, but that might be fine in MTG. Not every unit need be balanced necessarily, but every faction should be.

Breng77 wrote:

cerberus_ wrote:
Honestly this discussion doesn't make much sense to me. I started out playing MtG before jumping in to 40k. There are hundreds of thousands of cards, and even hundreds of thousands of more combos. Magic apparently can never be balanced according to this thread, and yet more often than not, it is considered so by its own player base.

Why?

Because balance is considered achieved when the competitive playing field offers a wide variety of options to choose from. Not every choice will be balanced, competitive, or even necessarily playable at any given time. But you can still have a balanced meta.

Right now, I'd say the presence of imperial soup for command points (specifically loyal 32) and the castellan heavily warps balance; in magic this is the equivalent of a certain card call treasure cruise, it allowed you jump through some hoops to pay limited resources for card draw that could be slotted into any deck; even those whose main weakness was lack of card draw. Fix command points primarily, and I think you'll find a diverse enough field of contenders to be called "balanced" as huge command point batteries stop being mandatory for imperial armies and stop giant death balls from sucking down 15 cp in a single game. From there, we can worry about reeling in outliers towards the median.

It can be balanced from a competitive sense. Casual balance is an oxymoron.

IT cannot be balanced satisfactorily for most players at a competitive level (or at least has not shown to be able to do so) The problem with the MTG comparison is that the buy in to be competitive is no where near the same (not talking money necessarily but time as well). IN a game where modeling, and painting matter, having "balance" where say 4 builds can compete, is (at least to me) unacceptable, but that might be fine in MTG. Not every unit need be balanced necessarily, but every faction should be.

That's not true about price; a competitive standard deck will often cost you about $250 or more every 6 months. Any eternal formats will cost close to $1000 easily; as far as time goes, if you're chasing the meta, you're not in it for a good paint job. Table top standard can be done quite easily. As far as balance goes, it is imbalanced in its current state. When the current format I play saw about 15-20 or more decks circling the metagame with none taking more than 10-20% of the total played, it was considered a healthy format. If you think achieving that is impossible I don't know what to tell you; we already have like what, 8 or so consistently dominant lists in the format? The biggest format warping threat, that forces all lists to built around facing or straight up ignoring, is the castellan backed by a cp battery. Kill those and you open up the format significantly.


Edit- the price might actually be true in 8th now that I think about it; all the rules changes are turning around armies pretty quickly as they patch major holes.

I have played this game from when I was 12 years old in 2nd edition, until today with only 7th as the version I did not really play a lot, and quite frankly, I agree with the original premise of this thread that 40k will never be truly balanced. I think the game is just to complicated with to many variables. However, I feel that 8th edition, for causal play, is the most balanced this game has ever been. I don't care about tournaments being balanced, as I don't play them, I care about whether you can have fun pick up games with a wide variety of lists. So far in 8th edition, barring 1 game where I played with a guy practicing his LVO list and I did not bring a competitive army, every game of 8th I have played has been fun, and not felt like a curb stomping for either side. As opposed the 5th or 6th edition where certain armies where just soooooooooooo much better than others that it did not matter what list was brought, one side just curb stomped the other.

A personal example of this is in 6th edition I ended up having some Eldar. When the new codex dropped, they went from basically unplayable to unstoppable. I would play with lists that I limited myself to no more than 1 of any unit, and not bring some of the more vicious units, and against certain codex it would not matter, I would utterly crush them. It was so unfun that I ended up just selling the Eldar stuff I had, and focused on CSM, who during 6th basically sucked other than maybe one build. Games in 3rd, 4th 5th and 6th were more likely going to be one sided affairs, with the occasional great game. In 8th I feel like the vast majority of games are great, with the occasional unfun game.

Also, except for maybe Grey Knights (I don't play them, and have not played 8th against them recently), none of the other codex feel like they are utter garbage. Yes, some codex are better than others. However I feel like the gap between the best and the worst is far narrower, especially if both players are not maximizing the most effective units.

So while I agree with that 40k will never be truly balanced, I like where the game is today much more so than the past.

I think the next best biggest step in balancing the game will inevitably come from GW adopting an online model for faster rules publishing, distribution and updating.

Having half a codex (or an entire codex) full of units that can't be used in game is money people aren't spending and shelf space being taken up. Its obvious to me that after CA2017 & CA2018 units that were not being used began to be used again or started to be for the first time.

If GW can accelerate that cycle of point adjustments via online updates to an accessible living ruleset we will see more diversity and experimentation as possibilities open up.

Another new development to mention is the specialty detachments. They allow units to be buffed without making point adjustments and also set a narrower field of units for the list to be composed of to hone things in. (I know there is no hard restrictions on what units to bring but if you are spending the command point for a wraithhost detachment I imagine you will be trying to maximize this buff by taking wraith units at the exclusion of others.)

cerberus_ wrote:

Breng77 wrote:

cerberus_ wrote:
Honestly this discussion doesn't make much sense to me. I started out playing MtG before jumping in to 40k. There are hundreds of thousands of cards, and even hundreds of thousands of more combos. Magic apparently can never be balanced according to this thread, and yet more often than not, it is considered so by its own player base.

Why?

Because balance is considered achieved when the competitive playing field offers a wide variety of options to choose from. Not every choice will be balanced, competitive, or even necessarily playable at any given time. But you can still have a balanced meta.

Right now, I'd say the presence of imperial soup for command points (specifically loyal 32) and the castellan heavily warps balance; in magic this is the equivalent of a certain card call treasure cruise, it allowed you jump through some hoops to pay limited resources for card draw that could be slotted into any deck; even those whose main weakness was lack of card draw. Fix command points primarily, and I think you'll find a diverse enough field of contenders to be called "balanced" as huge command point batteries stop being mandatory for imperial armies and stop giant death balls from sucking down 15 cp in a single game. From there, we can worry about reeling in outliers towards the median.

It can be balanced from a competitive sense. Casual balance is an oxymoron.

IT cannot be balanced satisfactorily for most players at a competitive level (or at least has not shown to be able to do so) The problem with the MTG comparison is that the buy in to be competitive is no where near the same (not talking money necessarily but time as well). IN a game where modeling, and painting matter, having "balance" where say 4 builds can compete, is (at least to me) unacceptable, but that might be fine in MTG. Not every unit need be balanced necessarily, but every faction should be.

That's not true about price; a competitive standard deck will often cost you about $250 or more every 6 months. Any eternal formats will cost close to $1000 easily; as far as time goes, if you're chasing the meta, you're not in it for a good paint job. Table top standard can be done quite easily. As far as balance goes, it is imbalanced in its current state. When the current format I play saw about 15-20 or more decks circling the metagame with none taking more than 10-20% of the total played, it was considered a healthy format. If you think achieving that is impossible I don't know what to tell you; we already have like what, 8 or so consistently dominant lists in the format? The biggest format warping threat, that forces all lists to built around facing or straight up ignoring, is the castellan backed by a cp battery. Kill those and you open up the format significantly.


Edit- the price might actually be true in 8th now that I think about it; all the rules changes are turning around armies pretty quickly as they patch major holes.

This makes a couple of what I think are faulty assumptions

1.) People who would like to compete don't care what their army looks like. I don't think this is true at all, plenty of top players have well painted armies. Further their maybe others that would like to compete but don't want to chase the meta because they don't want to have to build and paint a new army.

2.) Table top standard is easily done for all people. I can tell you that for me to get something to look mediocre takes me quite a long time I don't have great fine motor skill (or I could pay someone a lot of money). I would say most armies to get to table top standard take me upwards of 50 hours between building and painting.

I think the time is the big one vs the cost, but if I needed to completely replace an army every year to compete, I think that is about $600 -1000. If we were talking about modifying within a faction where it is adding a unit or 2 it would be ok, but when you have to jump entire factions and build things from scratch it is expensive and time consuming.

Listening to top guys it at times seems like they are guys who can borrow armies to chase the meta, which limits the ability of everyone to reach that level.

I think the balance most people are seeking in 40k would be akin to I play green in magic, I am willing to splash a color here or there, or change cards within green, but I want to be able to compete playing at least a reasonably green deck. So if I play orks, I am fine needing to purchase new ork units (and some allies if any existed) in order to compete, but I don't want the answer to competing to be "play Eldar/Imperium/Etc" It may even not be needing to win a big event, but to win as often as they lose against players of equal skill.

I could be off but to me it feels like that is the minimum level of balance most people want.

Facisminthe41m wrote:
I think the next best biggest step in balancing the game will inevitably come from GW adopting an online model for faster rules publishing, distribution and updating.

I don't necessarily agree. Privateer press have been doing this since the dawn of mk3, and this model has had it since fair share of problems. It might surprise you but gamers don't really want a 'game that's updated faster'. A meta that is constantly in flux can become unstable very quickly, and this isn't attractive to a lot of people.

Facisminthe41m wrote:

Having half a codex (or an entire codex) full of units that can't be used in game is money people aren't spending and shelf space being taken up. Its obvious to me that after CA2017 & CA2018 units that were not being used began to be used again or started to be for the first time.

This may be true for top table competitive games but they don't necessarily represent the majority. this isn't the truth for a large proportion of the gaming population who are 'basement/kitchen table gamers'. Plenty of things that never see the light of day on the competitive scene are constantly duking it out amongst the casual crowd. Gw might be making more than a token effort these days towards the competitive scene, but this isn't necessarily indicative of how a lot of people view the game.

Facisminthe41m wrote:

If GW can accelerate that cycle of point adjustments via online updates to an accessible living ruleset we will see more diversity and experimentation as possibilities open up.

Sadly, I disagree. See my first point. PP have recently adopted this model and it hasn't been a roaring success. Don't get me wrong - i like a 'living' system. On the one hand, to me, it is an attractive proposition to be able to fix problems quickly and not have to wait years for a new codex. But a meta that is constantly in flux and constantly changing is one that is unattractive to a lot of people who want to know what the state of the game is, and who don't want to invest money in stuff only to see it nerfed or broken as soon as they've bought it. Having a sense of 'stability' in a game isn't a bad thing. And rightly or wongly. It is a complaint I've seen more frequently than you'd think about the living rulebook model. Ymmv.

Another point - what about those of us who like books and 'pen and paper'. Not everyone wants to be online. Or require a tablet to play. It's a legitimate point to consider.

To the OP,

Two other things to consider towards 'building' balance is multiple-cost systems in a game. Take the SWC limit in Infinity and unit caps. 'Special weapon cost. It used to be that's for every 50pts of game-size, you got 1 SWC 'point'. In a 'standard' 300pt game, this translated as 6 SWC. Special weapons like heavy machine guns, spitfires or whatever would cost points AND SWC. So, hypothetically, if there was a 30pt model with a heavy machine gun that was broken as all hell, it wouldn't necessarily matter. You wouldn't be able to just take ten of them.

It could be balanced by having a low unit cap- say, one or two max. And even if it didn't, the Model would have an SWC, of maybe 1.5. Meaning you could only ever take a max of 4 of them (if there wasn't a unit cap) and that would mean no other models would be able to have anything other than their pistols or rifles, so no other fancy guns.

Points costs are the final lever to pull in any debate about balancing. You need to look at other areas first.

Breng77 wrote:

cerberus_ wrote:

Breng77 wrote:

cerberus_ wrote:
Honestly this discussion doesn't make much sense to me. I started out playing MtG before jumping in to 40k. There are hundreds of thousands of cards, and even hundreds of thousands of more combos. Magic apparently can never be balanced according to this thread, and yet more often than not, it is considered so by its own player base.

Why?

Because balance is considered achieved when the competitive playing field offers a wide variety of options to choose from. Not every choice will be balanced, competitive, or even necessarily playable at any given time. But you can still have a balanced meta.

Right now, I'd say the presence of imperial soup for command points (specifically loyal 32) and the castellan heavily warps balance; in magic this is the equivalent of a certain card call treasure cruise, it allowed you jump through some hoops to pay limited resources for card draw that could be slotted into any deck; even those whose main weakness was lack of card draw. Fix command points primarily, and I think you'll find a diverse enough field of contenders to be called "balanced" as huge command point batteries stop being mandatory for imperial armies and stop giant death balls from sucking down 15 cp in a single game. From there, we can worry about reeling in outliers towards the median.

It can be balanced from a competitive sense. Casual balance is an oxymoron.

IT cannot be balanced satisfactorily for most players at a competitive level (or at least has not shown to be able to do so) The problem with the MTG comparison is that the buy in to be competitive is no where near the same (not talking money necessarily but time as well). IN a game where modeling, and painting matter, having "balance" where say 4 builds can compete, is (at least to me) unacceptable, but that might be fine in MTG. Not every unit need be balanced necessarily, but every faction should be.

That's not true about price; a competitive standard deck will often cost you about $250 or more every 6 months. Any eternal formats will cost close to $1000 easily; as far as time goes, if you're chasing the meta, you're not in it for a good paint job. Table top standard can be done quite easily. As far as balance goes, it is imbalanced in its current state. When the current format I play saw about 15-20 or more decks circling the metagame with none taking more than 10-20% of the total played, it was considered a healthy format. If you think achieving that is impossible I don't know what to tell you; we already have like what, 8 or so consistently dominant lists in the format? The biggest format warping threat, that forces all lists to built around facing or straight up ignoring, is the castellan backed by a cp battery. Kill those and you open up the format significantly.


Edit- the price might actually be true in 8th now that I think about it; all the rules changes are turning around armies pretty quickly as they patch major holes.

This makes a couple of what I think are faulty assumptions

1.) People who would like to compete don't care what their army looks like. I don't think this is true at all, plenty of top players have well painted armies. Further their maybe others that would like to compete but don't want to chase the meta because they don't want to have to build and paint a new army.

2.) Table top standard is easily done for all people. I can tell you that for me to get something to look mediocre takes me quite a long time I don't have great fine motor skill (or I could pay someone a lot of money). I would say most armies to get to table top standard take me upwards of 50 hours between building and painting.

I think the time is the big one vs the cost, but if I needed to completely replace an army every year to compete, I think that is about $600 -1000. If we were talking about modifying within a faction where it is adding a unit or 2 it would be ok, but when you have to jump entire factions and build things from scratch it is expensive and time consuming.

Listening to top guys it at times seems like they are guys who can borrow armies to chase the meta, which limits the ability of everyone to reach that level.

I think the balance most people are seeking in 40k would be akin to I play green in magic, I am willing to splash a color here or there, or change cards within green, but I want to be able to compete playing at least a reasonably green deck. So if I play orks, I am fine needing to purchase new ork units (and some allies if any existed) in order to compete, but I don't want the answer to competing to be "play Eldar/Imperium/Etc" It may even not be needing to win a big event, but to win as often as they lose against players of equal skill.

I could be off but to me it feels like that is the minimum level of balance most people want.

1.) People who would like to compete don't care what their army looks like. I don't think this is true at all, plenty of top players have well painted armies. Further their maybe others that would like to compete but don't want to chase the meta because they don't want to have to build and paint a new army.

It's not assuming people don't care; I'm saying people can paint quickly to compete if they want. Unfortunately, the hobby aspect is not conducive for competitive; a well painted army could take years to complete, and it only takes one balance change for a meta shift. My belief is if you want to play competitively, you must make sacrifices. I use to play a modern deck in MtG call grixis delver. It was a good deck for about 2-3 years, then a meta shift slowly killed it. I don't play competitive anymore because I won't shell out $800 to salvage the deck. Is the fact that my deck isn't competitive show that the format is unbalanced? Should the design team do something to make it competiive? No the format is healthy, and it can still compete against casual decks.

2.) I think the balance most people are seeking in 40k would be akin to I play green in magic, I am willing to splash a color here or there, or change cards within green, but I want to be able to compete playing at least a reasonably green deck. So if I play orks, I am fine needing to purchase new ork units (and some allies if any existed) in order to compete, but I don't want the answer to competing to be "play Eldar/Imperium/Etc" It may even not be needing to win a big event, but to win as often as they lose against players of equal skill.

TFirstly I'd question if your casual ork lists can compete with a casual imperial, eldar, list, etc. If the answer is yes, then there is no problem. Not every army is going to make a showing at LVO, and that's not a bad thing neccessarily, as long as that army isn't Grey Knights tier on the kitchen table. Right now you have a situation where, barring certain abusive lists and 1 or 2 outliers, most armies are balanced against each other.


I should state my ultimate opinion here so you know where I'm coming from; competitive 40k is not balanced currently due to imperium command batteries and a handful of overperforming units. Removing command point batteries would significantly close the gap between the haves and have nots. Then it should be easier to isolate specific data sheets like the Castellan and go from there. 40k can be balanced competitevly with a little work.

cerberus_ wrote:
Honestly this discussion doesn't make much sense to me. I started out playing MtG before jumping in to 40k. There are hundreds of thousands of cards, and even hundreds of thousands of more combos. Magic apparently can never be balanced according to this thread, and yet more often than not, it is considered so by its own player base.

Why?

Because balance is considered achieved when the competitive playing field offers a wide variety of options to choose from. Not every choice will be balanced, competitive, or even necessarily playable at any given time. But you can still have a balanced meta.

Right now, I'd say the presence of imperial soup for command points (specifically loyal 32) and the castellan heavily warps balance; in magic this is the equivalent of a certain card call treasure cruise, it allowed you jump through some hoops to pay limited resources for card draw that could be slotted into any deck; even those whose main weakness was lack of card draw. Fix command points primarily, and I think you'll find a diverse enough field of contenders to be called "balanced" as huge command point batteries stop being mandatory for imperial armies and stop giant death balls from sucking down 15 cp in a single game. From there, we can worry about reeling in outliers towards the median.

It can be balanced from a competitive sense. Casual balance is an oxymoron.

So not true. Explain platinum Angel ?

MTG is completely unbalanced there are cards so obviously over powered that only certain people have.

Lulz.

Platinum Angel < Disenchant, Shatter, “Destroy Target Creature”, “Destroy All Creatures”, Destroy target Permanent, Destroy all permanents, 4 points of direct damage.

There are near countless solutions to Platinum Angel, outside of a straight race to 7 mana.

Yeah, platinum angel wasn't even that great. It's just a classic case of low-skill casual players whining about "broken cards" because they can't win by mindlessly turning 5+ mana creatures sideways until someone wins.

The Allfather wrote:

cerberus_ wrote:
Honestly this discussion doesn't make much sense to me. I started out playing MtG before jumping in to 40k. There are hundreds of thousands of cards, and even hundreds of thousands of more combos. Magic apparently can never be balanced according to this thread, and yet more often than not, it is considered so by its own player base.

Why?

Because balance is considered achieved when the competitive playing field offers a wide variety of options to choose from. Not every choice will be balanced, competitive, or even necessarily playable at any given time. But you can still have a balanced meta.

Right now, I'd say the presence of imperial soup for command points (specifically loyal 32) and the castellan heavily warps balance; in magic this is the equivalent of a certain card call treasure cruise, it allowed you jump through some hoops to pay limited resources for card draw that could be slotted into any deck; even those whose main weakness was lack of card draw. Fix command points primarily, and I think you'll find a diverse enough field of contenders to be called "balanced" as huge command point batteries stop being mandatory for imperial armies and stop giant death balls from sucking down 15 cp in a single game. From there, we can worry about reeling in outliers towards the median.

It can be balanced from a competitive sense. Casual balance is an oxymoron.

So not true. Explain platinum Angel ?

MTG is completely unbalanced there are cards so obviously over powered that only certain people have.

What? Do you even play magic? Platinum angel hasn't ever been op in any competive format. I don't even think it's ever even seen play in competitive.

Fun in a wombo-combo deck to create the most uttterly untouchable Platinum Angel... and then watch your opponents draw to death.

Or create the ultimate griefer deck by also playing Abyssal Persecutor... Every turn you ask, “Do you wish to continue?” The griefing of course comes in the form that the only way the game can end is in a forfeit.

So how to tie that back to the OP? Hmmm... Magic balances in several ways... the simplest of which is to release cards in the following set that changes the meta. Or banning cards. Or other limiting factors.

Similarly, a living ruleset / points adjustments through CA continues to tip the meta back and forth, hopefully towards better balance. Tougher to do with 40k as there are fewer games being cycled and, to be frank, I think the Magic designers are more concerned with game balance.

cerberus_ wrote:

The Allfather wrote:
[So not true. Explain platinum Angel ?

MTG is completely unbalanced there are cards so obviously over powered that only certain people have.

What? Do you even play magic? Platinum angel hasn't ever been op in any competive format. I don't even think it's ever even seen play in competitive.

In fairness, it did see play alongside Leonin Abunas in Tooth and Nail decks back in Onslaught-Mirrodin Standard (before Darksteel was released) - I had one copy in my deck when I came third in a local 100-man PTQ back in the day.

Of course, MTG could be balanced better - there are always some decks (and some cards) which are better then others. But the issue isn't nearly so bad with MTG as 40K, for several reasons:

- There are multiple MTG formats, allowing people to choose the playstyle that suits them best.
- MTG is more abstract and discrete than 40K - there's no debate about "how much terrain is enough" or "does this model have line of sight".
- MTG's release schedule allows existing decks to pick up new tools every few months, as well as potentially introducing new strategies. This keeps things fresh for all decks.
- Because there's no build-and-paint style time constraints, it's easier for someone to change things around and try new things if they're not happy with it.

I would say overall that I agree 40K cannot be perfectly balanced while being reasonably computable, and it's not feasible to have the game be "well balanced" through static points while allowing for the variety of game sizes and types that GW seem to go for. And I don't think that's a bad thing, or that it means GW aren't doing their jobs; it's just an inevitable result of the number of variables and inter-relationships.

So is this thread done?

torblind wrote:
So is this thread done?

No

I’d say the thread was done on conception. The moment “good enough” was specifically discounted (which was non-sense, good enough is good enough by definition!) it was over.

If balance was good enough the game would be widely accepted as balanced, which it isn’t. Steps seem to be taken to improve balance, and that’s good.