Been playing off and on for a decent number of years and have basically been hearing the same thing since I started that the game.
That is, “The balance is terrible”.
Don’t really have a dog in the race since I’m casual, but I was wondering does the community have a definition of what a balanced 40K would play like?

This is more a side consideration but would that balanced state favor Casual play or Competitive play?

One where one faction isn't running around with 60-70% winrate and others 30-40% would be good start

tneva82 wrote:
One where one faction isn't running around with 60-70% winrate and others 30-40% would be good start

There will always be people who complain about perceived imbalances because they personally find it unbalanced, but there's more factors in winning and losing that most people are willing to admit, its easier to just blame the rules.

The best solution really is to make each faction more unique in what they do, and limit allies somewhat.

I split balance into three components:

1) External balance - I define this as balanced when all books are played proportionally (e.g. if there are 20 factions, then each faction should be played in roughly 5% of games), and the winrate for every faction is between 45% and 50%. The optimal winrate for a balanced game is much closer to 48%, leaving 2% for draws. This is across the entire playerbase, in an attempt to compensate for skill.

2) Internal balance - this is much harder to quantify, given that units should be split into roles. However, if pressed, I would say this is two things:
a) subfaction balance - of the 5% of all games that this faction is involved in, each subfaction should be represented equally (e.g. if there are 5 subfactions of Chaos Space Marines, then roughly 20% of the total Chaos Space Marine games, or 1% of all games, should be played using a given subfaction's rules).
b) unit balance - this is the struggle. Units have different roles and themes; for example, a Vindicator fits well with Iron Warriors but less well with World Eaters, so I can't slap a number down. But the desire would be specifically to eliminate trap choices, which are choices that are strictly worse to take than an alternative available to the same army.

3) narrative balance - this is the least important form of balance to me, but basically, it is a mechanism by which armies lean into their strengths and avoid their weaknesses. Once the game is balanced internally and externally, subtle and VERY SMALL tweaks can be made to encourage certain builds. Sub-faction rules are a great place to do this, but basically, this is where armies are encouraged to lean into their narrative structures. So if a guard sub-faction specializes in conscripts, for example, then there should be subtle ways that subfaction buffs conscripts. If a CSM faction emphasizes close combat, then that subfaction rule should subtly influence players to lean into finding melee solutions to their problems.

If you wish for an example of a book which I think is rather well balanced, look at the Adepta Sororitas book. Not enough data has been gathered to estimate the overall winrate of the book in the External Balance category, but indications are that internal balance and narrative balance is quite good.

Making each army more equal to each other. Right now some armies lose over 1/2 their games and some win over 1/2. That is terrible no matter what. You don't need the community to agree on it when we have raw data showing this. No army should have a win/lost rate worst than 45/55% If the worst army vs the best is only 10% that is fine. Right now its more like 20-25% difference sometimes.

A lot of the balance issues are mostly b.c 8th core rules are terrible (even GW said this on twitch.. lol, they didn't say its terrible, but they said to few core rules lead to problems). Some things points just can not change, b.c its all or nothing in 8th. Look at Orks, if they were 5ppm you'd see 120 on the table, at 6-7ppm you see almost zero.

There is also enteral codex balance. This would mean there is a lot more room to bring more units and not be so extreme in what is worth it and what isn't (not talking about friendly lists, i'm talking about the extremes).

 Sim-Life wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
One where one faction isn't running around with 60-70% winrate and others 30-40% would be good start

There will always be people who complain about perceived imbalances because they personally find it unbalanced, but there's more factors in winning and losing that most people are willing to admit, its easier to just blame the rules.

Lol how lame attempt at white knighting.

There is no definition and it's unlikely to be able to define one with significant detail.

However, in general, most people would like all units to be able to function in their intended role and not feel like dead weight for their points investment (and not have units like Vanquishers or Deathstrikes that simply don't function effectively) on a consistent basis, and armies to generally have similar win rates in tournaments as close to 50% as possible. Beyond those vague general concepts, I don't think there's much that can be defined in any meaningful way.

Win rates are a fair measure, but not entirely reliable.

In a time limited game, such as in a tournament environment, it’s something the rules aren’t balanced for.

So armies that tend to make quick gains have advantage over slower, possibly more resilient forces which make their gains later on, say around turn 5-6.

That is not a drawback of the game design, but on inherent to strict time limited games. It could be that turns 5&6 can be wrapped up in 30-40 minutes, so still comfortably within an afternoon or evening.

That time limit also discourages certain possible builds. For instance, a Green Tide type affair, with dozens and dozens of foot sloggers. If we argue, for sake of example and example alone, that such a force is the natural counter to ‘top tier’ stuff - the rock to their scissors - we’re just not going to see it, as it’s not a practical build when you know you’ve a set time to get stuff done in.

There’s also the argument of jerks ‘playing for time’ to slow down what they can and run down the clock. Now that absolutely does happen. Give a jerk something to be a jerk with, and they’ll be a jerk. But from what I’ve heard and read about tournaments, I’m not persuaded it’s particularly common. Heck, out of the three, maybe four tournament type things I’ve attended I’ve seen it done once.

The upside of tournament stories is they can largely be verified - so we can place weight on the results/ reports of broken stuff. When it’s someone reporting about a game behind closed doors? Well, we kinda need to treat those with more caution. One litmus test is just how awful their luck actually was. If they’re claiming everything went against them, it’s probably a bit dodgy.

Now, in terms of actual balance? Go play Chess, where it’s almost entirely down to who is the better player. In GW games? There are hundreds upon thousands of different factors in play. Not just stats, buffs, unit abilities etc. The lay of the terrain also factors in, and that’s not really something one can account for.

We also need to consider the impact of ‘meta gaming’ - as in, those chasing The New Hard.

In short, it’s a tricky game to play, Meta is. Because with GW’s release structure, there’s new stuff coming out all the time. New Codecies, expansions like PA, FAQs, Errata and Chapter Approved. All can make or break a given Meta List.

It could be the ‘exploit’ a list relied upon is fixed/changed. Maybe a small point adjustment means you can no longer fit in all the elements that make your list work. Heck, if a key Stratagem goes up in CP, that can break your list’s trick.

Many take such changes in good grace, knowing that some lists are exploiting issues which will, sooner or later, be patched. Others kind get arsed off and cry foul.

Wow you guys are quick!

@MadDoc
I’m personally pretty ok with the general imbalance of the game, that’s why I was wondering what the individuals in the community think. It’s interesting you mention chess for balance as it is something I often have in mind thinking of this. In chess white is favored to win due to the advantage of going first. Im no chess pro and when I first studied the topic it was said to be above 52% and a quick google has it at 52-56% which diminishes in under certain criteria. That is in a system of total symmetry something 40K could never actually achieve due to the extra factors you mentioned. That’s why this is more of a "What would you wish to see" sort of thing.

@Vaktathi
I like where you were at when you mentioned "all units to be able to function in their intended role and not feel like dead weight for their points investment". I personally think the feel is more important than the win rate (I play necrons ) But I have to respectfully disagree with the sentiment that balance can’t be defined in a meaningful way. It sort of has to be defined if you are going to build it into a system with deliberate intent, imo.

To be clear: winrate is the most measurable consequence of good balance. It is not, in itself, balance.

Every army has an equal chance of winning - The dice decide the game and not if your models are wearing power armour or not.

 Halfton wrote:
Wow you guys are quick!

@MadDoc
I’m personally pretty ok with the general imbalance of the game, that’s why I was wondering what the individuals in the community think. It’s interesting you mention chess for balance as it is something I often have in mind thinking of this. In chess white is favored to win due to the advantage of going first. Im no chess pro and when I first studied the topic it was said to be above 52% and a quick google has it at 52-56% which diminishes in under certain criteria. That is in a system of total symmetry something 40K could never actually achieve due to the extra factors you mentioned. That’s why this is more of a "What would you wish to see" sort of thing.

And while that is true, in tournaments the player has to be white and black at times. So the players have the same equal chances. And in many events the "better player" (they have ranks tied to them) will start as black for the first round.

Without those details those stats sounds bad. But chess is always looking to mitigate that as much as possible, where in 40k thats not possible.

Finally if the top army was only a 56% winrate, that would be AMAZING for 40k, normally its 60% or even higher. I'd say 55% would be perfect number to shoot for.


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 Argive wrote:
Every army has an equal chance of winning - The dice decide the game and not if your models are wearing power armour or not.

Ok, so if 1 army has a way to mitigate bad dice rolls and the other army doesn't. That would mean 1 army is better b.c of better RNG. Thus making the rules of an army important. Are you going to stop trolling this topic now? Or at least add something of importance please.

I feel determining balance based purely on win percentages leads you down a peculiar road. I think the only way you can get there is severely curtain player choice - typically by making the outcome of the game much more dependent on luck than decision making.

Its very hard to think of a world where list building doesn't matter - and so the meta doesn't matter. Which isn't to say its a game entirely about list building - but as a rule, good players bring good lists to play with. There isn't much point turning up to a tournament you want to win with a list you know is worse than another you could bring.

Since there is a link between "really wanting to win (and so learning, practising etc)" and "optimising your list" - I'm not sure "good lists" will ever be reduced down to say a 55% win rate.

As said - what you want to avoid is players looking at units and going "this is blatantly too good/too bad for its points compared with the general state of everything else." This has generally been the cause of bad balance in GW games and its usually quite obvious. Some people dislike mathhammer - and I think it can be misused - but if something is the same points as something else, and does 20% less damage, with no other obvious upside, its probably a bad unit and you shouldn't take it. A few simple mathhammer calculations should pick up obvious howlers - and leave units more

Due to the CA points changes, I think 8th has been a better edition for this - certainly miles and miles better than 7th - and major balance issues have been due to bad rules interactions that have themselves usually been changed.

But that isn't to say it can't be better. Iron Hands were obviously ludicrous - and releasing rules that require essentially a day 1 nerf is bad design. Marines in general probably didn't need a 6 month reign to "prove" certain combinations were much better than the average. At the same time GW responding in 6 months is better than going "just hope we change it in 4 years, bye."

There are as many definitions as there are people.

For me, balance is the ability to win for an army 50% of the time, and having different winning strategies available to them.

It's easier to define unbalance however when an army dominates the competitive scene, and many units are so bad that no one want to field them, you know there are problems.

Tyel wrote:
I feel determining balance based purely on win percentages leads you down a peculiar road. I think the only way you can get there is severely curtain player choice - typically by making the outcome of the game much more dependent on luck than decision making.

Its very hard to think of a world where list building doesn't matter - and so the meta doesn't matter. Which isn't to say its a game entirely about list building - but as a rule, good players bring good lists to play with. There isn't much point turning up to a tournament you want to win with a list you know is worse than another you could bring.

Since there is a link between "really wanting to win (and so learning, practising etc)" and "optimising your list" - I'm not sure "good lists" will ever be reduced down to say a 55% win rate.

As said - what you want to avoid is players looking at units and going "this is blatantly too good/too bad for its points compared with the general state of everything else." This has generally been the cause of bad balance in GW games and its usually quite obvious. Some people dislike mathhammer - and I think it can be misused - but if something is the same points as something else, and does 20% less damage, with no other obvious upside, its probably a bad unit and you shouldn't take it. A few simple mathhammer calculations should pick up obvious howlers - and leave units more

Due to the CA points changes, I think 8th has been a better edition for this - certainly miles and miles better than 7th - and major balance issues have been due to bad rules interactions that have themselves usually been changed.

But that isn't to say it can't be better. Iron Hands were obviously ludicrous - and releasing rules that require essentially a day 1 nerf is bad design. Marines in general probably didn't need a 6 month reign to "prove" certain combinations were much better than the average. At the same time GW responding in 6 months is better than going "just hope we change it in 4 years, bye."

The issue with "bad" and "good" lists is that they also restrict player choice. You're saying "The rules restrict player choice is bad!" but if the gameplay balance restricts player choice, then that's just as restrictive...

...except its worse, because then you have units you love and that are published and exist but you can't use because they're bad. In a tighter rule-set, trap units wouldn't exist. You couldn't fall in love with Salamander Scout Vehicles if they simply weren't an option (or if they were an option, taking them wouldn't actively harm your chances of winning).

Essentially you're saying "The players should be able to take whatever units they want" while also saying "Players who take any but the most optimal units deserve to lose lol"

Siegfriedfr wrote:
There are as many definitions as there are people.

For me, balance is the ability to win for an army 50% of the time, and having different winning strategies available to them.

It's easier to define unbalance however when an army dominates the competitive scene, and many units are so bad that no one want to field them, you know there are problems.

I think this is fairly basic way to put as a definition of ballance. Each codex being able to win to a reasonable % with equal skill.

But I do think GW has a far bigger ballance issue, that makes there main ballance much harder. That is, every codex should be able to interact with every phase of the game in a meaningful way. And every army should be required and able to interact at all scales of the game as presented at default. With player choice being how that is changed in each army.
In both of those points I think it’s the creative teams that are letting the game down, with often just Cool being the deciding factor and letting though gaps for the rules teams to create good rules around.
A lot of 8th was probably trying to account for these issues, and have lead to a game that I think is fairly simple to get to even the ballance it is at today.

I think Unit's 3-pronged definition is a pretty good one.

In 40k, the two main issues standing in the way of balance are:

1) rules that affect balance are made based on the fiction of this imaginary universe. The biggest difference here is Allies: Imperial and Chaos factions have the most access to the Allies system, Eldar and Tyranids have some, and Orks, Necrons, and Tau have no allies.

If allies bring you any kind of gameplay advantage, then the latter three factions will always be underpowered as compared to the factions that have access to allies.

2) Rules that affect balance are tied to models produced by games workshop.

Space Marines have orders of magnitude larger model range and therefore more rules than any other faction in the game. Trying to balance a chess game where one player gets 2 rooks, 2 bishops and 2 knights vs a player who only gets 6 bishops is going to be extremely difficult.here is

Another honorable mention to consider is that Games Workshop produces EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE models that cost real-world money as well as in-game points. If you have an army that is sold in a 100$ box set for a full 2k point competitive army, and another competitive army that includes only models sold in 50$-per-10 boxes and those models are 1 point each, theoretically that is a balanced situation, but the player who wants to use the second army has to spend 10,000$ on their army vs 100$ for the other army.

Yes, there is a commonly-accepted definition of 'balance'.

It means that the army I like to play should be buffed and the army that beat me needs to be nerfed, the army that I beat is fine as it is.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

The issue with "bad" and "good" lists is that they also restrict player choice. You're saying "The rules restrict player choice is bad!" but if the gameplay balance restricts player choice, then that's just as restrictive...

...except its worse, because then you have units you love and that are published and exist but you can't use because they're bad. In a tighter rule-set, trap units wouldn't exist. You couldn't fall in love with Salamander Scout Vehicles if they simply weren't an option (or if they were an option, taking them wouldn't actively harm your chances of winning).

Essentially you're saying "The players should be able to take whatever units they want" while also saying "Players who take any but the most optimal units deserve to lose lol"

Maybe I'm expressing myself badly.

As said - I think points should be tweaked so trap options shouldn't exist. If Salamander Scout Vehicles are bad at X points, they would be better "less than X" points. At some point you would reach the standard.

But my point is that to get a perfect 50/50 win rate, you would have to have list building have no impact on the probability of you winning a game. Taken to extremes - this means list tailoring, either against your friend's collection, or the broad meta, shouldn't be possible.

So for example, lets say I knew the "top list" right now was Eldar Flyer spam. I should have units in my codex which are better or worse at dealing with flyers than other units. If I include more of those units that are good at it, I should increase the odds of winning those games versus not taking them. If there is a good chance that when going to a major tournament 2 or 3 of my 5-6 games will be against Eldar Flyer Spam, then taking them is going to skew my overall win percentage - and that of my faction. Now if I don't have such units that is bad design. If I do have those units, but they are "bad", due to being too expensive for their points and therefore not working - then that's bad balance.

Basically what I am saying is that if rock/paper/scissors exists - in whatever form - then you can't go into every game thinking you have a 50/50 chance to win.

The issue with 40k is the balance tends to be rock/paper/scissors/lightning. The top lists crush a lot of lists - and therefore theoretically restrain player choice as you say - but just as importantly they have no bad matchups. You don't see metas really evolve in 40k. There are some who say this is because GW no longer giving players enough time to explore - but I think its safe to say there was no secret Necron, Dark Eldar whatever list that had a 75% win rate against IH Dreads, RG Cents, or going a bit further back the Castellan+Smash Captain+Guard etc. There were lists that could maybe get you towards 50/50 split against these top lists - and so the meta becomes about those lists and their interactions, while they brush aside everyone else.

Basically what I'm trying to say is that I don't think you should be able to bring *any* list to *any* table and feel you have a 50/50 chance to win. Because if you turn up and your opponent has only tanks, and you have no anti-tank, you should be more in trouble than if you did.
And since that applies to individual games, I don't see how it can't equaly apply to faction win rates across the whole competitive 40k scene. This might not perhaps be the case if all factions were infinitely mutable - but if you assume say Tau are likely to play something of a gun line, certain factions (and builds within those factions) are likely to be able to deal with that better than others.

That's exactly why I put all 3 kinds of balance being important.

1) is the most basic, and is winrate related.

2) is more complicated, and is disconnected from winrate somewhat more.

3) is what you are talking about (armies leaning into certain builds based on how they should look narratively). That's much more complicated.

I do think we should compromise 3 to achieve 1 and 2 first, as poisonous trap options are a much worse problem than any list being able to win any game would be.

I like most of the answers given here. I have 2 points to add:

- I feel the closest thing to 'balanced' is when people bring TAC armies. Having a bit of everything instead of just doing X or Y super-well and everything else is unimportant. However, it also makes armies more similar to each other. I don't think it's possible to have a real shot on balancing the game AND making every army real unique, as 1-army-only rules are much harder to balance than shared rules.

- I don't think balance will come as frequently as we'd like to until rules become 100% digital. Although there are Big FAQs twice a year, only with Chapter Approved the big changes really happen (like points). With 100% digital rules, GW could wait for big tourneys to happen (conveniently spaced for that), analyze their data and apply the fixes way faster.
Digital rules also make easier for people worldwide to compare rules and give their input.

I feel like we're over-complicating this (Dakka over-complicate? ... NEVER!)? When you're talking about army vs army balance, any time I've seen that brought up, it's essentially meant that the players want every army to have a fighting chance against every other army (assuming equal, or as close to equal player skill as possible). When you're talking about balance within a codex, they just want to be able to pick any unit and have it perform reasonably well (instead of, for example, having CLEAR LOSERS like Mutilators, etc.).

IMO, I've played since the end of RT and the closest we've come to this was index 40k at the start of 8th. It wasn't perfect, but there weren't any Iron Hands level "easy buttons" or anything like that. My memory is on the foggy side now, but I think part of 5th was pretty decent too prior to some of the later releases (Grey Knights and Dark Eldar for example). It was also boring, but for a time, I remember it being relatively well balanced. Am I recalling that wrong? I feel like I might be.

- I don't think balance will come as frequently as we'd like to until rules become 100% digital. Although there are Big FAQs twice a year, only with Chapter Approved the big changes really happen (like points). With 100% digital rules, GW could wait for big tourneys to happen (conveniently spaced for that), analyze their data and apply the fixes way faster.
Digital rules also make easier for people worldwide to compare rules and give their input.

The way GW has been shown to work, I don't think going 100% digital will make a big difference here for two reasons:

1. If/when they eventually go 100% digital, updates will still likely only occur on the same schedule they've previously followed. The FAQ is already 100% digital and they only update a few times a year anyway.

2. They need to completely change out their current team and completely revamp their process. Using the current team and process, they've shown time and time again that they are incapable of avoiding bloat and imbalance. When this edition released, there was no question that they had cut a ton of bloat (I was very vocal in defending them at the time), but a few short years later, even the "streamlined" 8th edition is a bloated mess. They have fallen right back into all the traps of 7th. Going digital isn't going to help a rules team that, regularly fails to understand its own rules at a fundamental level, uses a process that regularly allows them to miss major issues that most regular players would spot right away, and that regularly misunderstands its own customer base. Going digital won't help a team that appears incapable of learning form its own mistakes.

Very broadly speaking, if you collect and practice with any two given factions you shouldn't find yourself at a huge advantage playing one against the other.

From a single codex perspective there should not be units that are simply irrelevant - for example in the most recent sisters codex there is no particular mechanical reason to ever take crusaders or death cultists, as even if they were fantastic compared to other books they don't do anything that you wouldn't be better off taking arcos for.
At the other end of the same problem you'll have one unit that is so good that all other comparable options are inferior - and it doesn't mean they are bad compared to the rest of the game, just redundant

Rock/paper/scissors/lizard/spock design - that is to say something that is crushingly powerful if it doesn't meet an appropriate counter (i.e. flyers at the start of 6th) is increasingly poor design as you more variants but also goes the other way when you take away the meaning of army composition (anti-infantry anti-tank weapons in 8th). A fair bit of balance comes down to having known targets and expectations which is to say that if you know your opponent will have up to three heavy tanks/monsters then you as a place choose how much to commit to that threat, but without that limitation you can just run blindly into unbalanced fights.

Extra randomness is not balance.

Extra complexity is not balance.

One faction having ten or more times as many options are another is not necessarily unbalanced, but it makes it highly likely given GWs occasional 'throw a dart to determine power level' You just get more chances.


With all that having been said this is DakkaDakka, so most 'the balance is terrible' threads you see probably revolve around someone suggesting a unit from their faction should be twice as powerful for no extra points, because they are the worst unit in the game and definitely so much worse than (insert actually worse unit here).

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Win rates are a fair measure, but not entirely reliable.

I'd agree with that as armies can have various barriers that make them more or less likely to be taken outside of their strength.
Examples would include the various marine factions being heavily represented even when not at the top of the power curve (and resultantly having many low placers pulling down their win rates), and also factions that are expensive or otherwise awkward to take - discontinued forgeworld, etc.

So far it’s been pretty consistent, basically

- Top lists having a ~ 50 - 56% winrate
- All units within each respective codex being playable. In this case I will say “Breaking Even” (Pt Investment is roughly equivalent value-gained). Either other extreme being a point of failure.

The winrate being misleading as many have pointed out. Matchup win-rate is different than the aggragate. That being said, presumabably the winrate of any individual codex matched with any other individual codex should range 46% - 56%.

Tournaments compound fairness issues due to restrictions of the format (timing, lack of multiple games played, unable to fields from a pool of armies, etc).

Although I mostly agree with you @Unit1126PLL I will say that 2-a seems to me to be a non-factor. If the above two qualites are satisfied it dosnt really matter how much representation you see of subfactions as it then just boils down to personal prefrences regarding taste (fluff, colorscheme, etc)

 Halfton wrote:
That being said, presumabably the winrate of any individual codex matched with any other individual codex should range 46% - 56%

Yes, assuming similar skill and uptake.

You'll probably find big tournaments where the average position of marines was lower than a minor faction like sisters - at the same time with marines securing multipletop 16 spots without the minor faction getting close to the final rounds. It can be difficult to separate win rate from skill when you might have one die-hard minor faction player familiar with all their tricks and hundreds of casual players dragging down the average of what is the stronger but also much more widely played codex.

 Halfton wrote:
So far it’s been pretty consistent, basically

- Top lists having a ~ 50 - 56% winrate
- All units within each respective codex being playable. In this case I will say “Breaking Even” (Pt Investment is roughly equivalent value-gained). Either other extreme being a point of failure.

The winrate being misleading as many have pointed out. Matchup win-rate is different than the aggragate. That being said, presumabably the winrate of any individual codex matched with any other individual codex should range 46% - 56%.

Tournaments compound fairness issues due to restrictions of the format (timing, lack of multiple games played, unable to fields from a pool of armies, etc).

Although I mostly agree with you @Unit1126PLL I will say that 2-a seems to me to be a non-factor. If the above two qualites are satisfied it dosnt really matter how much representation you see of subfactions as it then just boils down to personal prefrences regarding taste (fluff, colorscheme, etc)

to me, the real problem with 2a is that there are serious issues caused by subfactions as they are currently implemented into the game.

This is something that gets brought up whenever a particular army is clearly overpowered - take Eldar for example. one of the eldar subfactions (Alaitoc) was so strong and so clearly better than all other options that practically no other subfaction existed within any kind of competitive play. When people proposed reducing the power of a lot of eldar stuff, the counter to that was "only Alaitoc is OP - you never see any Biel-tan lists or Ulthwe lists placing well!"

The same exact thing happened with the bonkers new marines - inflated by the fact that now not only does a marine subfaction come tied with an army wide rule, but also with special doctrines, a psychic power list, 20ish stratagems, relics, wl traits...etc.

it was impossible to tell whether IH had a 70% competitive winrate and UM had a 50% competitive winrate because all the serious competitive players were picking IH, which was clearly the best subfaction, or whether that meant UM were perfectly fine and IH were the only ones who were overpowered, so any balancing measures should only be done to the IH rules.

Agreed. The reason I included point 2a is because you could have the following hypothetical situation:

Codex Hypothetes has a 48% winrate overall, and all the units inside of it are viable...

...but only in one sub faction. The 48% overall winrate is achieved by 3/4 of the subfactions having like a 30% winrate and the remaining 1/4th have a ludicrous winrate.

this is bad for the game, as it makes the 48% winrate of the entire codex misleading (since it's an average of a few badly variant subfactions; I pity all the players that have to play against the subfaction with a super high win rate!) and it makes the less powerful subfactions a trap choice for new players or player who like their narrative.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Halfton wrote:
Wow you guys are quick!

@MadDoc
I’m personally pretty ok with the general imbalance of the game, that’s why I was wondering what the individuals in the community think. It’s interesting you mention chess for balance as it is something I often have in mind thinking of this. In chess white is favored to win due to the advantage of going first. Im no chess pro and when I first studied the topic it was said to be above 52% and a quick google has it at 52-56% which diminishes in under certain criteria. That is in a system of total symmetry something 40K could never actually achieve due to the extra factors you mentioned. That’s why this is more of a "What would you wish to see" sort of thing.

And while that is true, in tournaments the player has to be white and black at times. So the players have the same equal chances. And in many events the "better player" (they have ranks tied to them) will start as black for the first round.

Without those details those stats sounds bad. But chess is always looking to mitigate that as much as possible, where in 40k thats not possible.

Finally if the top army was only a 56% winrate, that would be AMAZING for 40k, normally its 60% or even higher. I'd say 55% would be perfect number to shoot for.


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 Argive wrote:
Every army has an equal chance of winning - The dice decide the game and not if your models are wearing power armour or not.

Ok, so if 1 army has a way to mitigate bad dice rolls and the other army doesn't. That would mean 1 army is better b.c of better RNG. Thus making the rules of an army important. Are you going to stop trolling this topic now? Or at least add something of importance please.

Haven't you sort of pointed out what I was getting at?

I.E both armies NOT having an equal chance of winning BECAUSE one army has a way of mitigating rolls and one DOES NOT...

If you equalize that (re-rolls and modifiers) than all that's left is dice rolls and maneuvering.

Of course you are welcome to disagree but certainly wasn't a troll post on my part.

This does not go to say each army should be equal in all of the phases al of the time but they have to be comparable or the facade of fairness breaks. Its best to flat out accept the concept of balance will never exist and there are some faction which will be just better than others.

I think in the end, it’s like that statement about porn - “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.”

Sometimes, things just seem off from prior experience. Other times, you have to look at overall performance (win/lose can be deceptive to identify individual unit problems, and can be prejudiced by meta-based unit selection)

 Argive wrote:
Every army has an equal chance of winning - The dice decide the game and not if your models are wearing power armour or not.

That might be a well balanced game, but you might as well be tossing coins.

To my mind a well balanced game is one where player skill is the deciding factor the majority of the time. If Bob's Marines are consistently trouncing Joe's Guard, they should be able to trade factions and Bob's Guard should trounce Joe's Marines just as consistently.

The Newman wrote:

 Argive wrote:
Every army has an equal chance of winning - The dice decide the game and not if your models are wearing power armour or not.

That might be a well balanced game, but you might as well be tossing coins.

To my mind a well balanced game is one where player skill is the deciding factor the majority of the time. If Bob's Marines are consistently trouncing Joe's Guard, they should be able to trade factions and Bob's Guard should trounce Joe's Marines just as consistently.

If you remove dice manipulation then what you are left with in my opinion is critically assessing risk v reward and acting on this. Deployment planning and in turn manoeuvring from a generals point of view. So the skills that matter mean the most rather than "Have I put my re-roll combo wombo in my army and ensure I can combo wombo any unit in the game on the first turn and have I deployed all my dudes within 6" of dude a so I can combo wombo".

So yeah. If the dice have equal playing field then whats left ??
To me whats left is the strategic thinking and planning which are quintessential parts of a good balanced war-game.

Im not stating this as fact, its my opinion so YMMV of course.

When I complain about "balance" in 40k I'm grumbling about whether or not there's a good reason to use the available options. You can argue about winrates or player skill all you want but the fundamental problem is the disconnect between whether something is a cool model you might want to use and whether it's actually useful in the game. I don't want every single option to be perfectly equal to every other option, I want the game to stop lying about very basic assumptions. I don't want to have to negotiate a handicap before every game to use the models I like, I want to be able to show up with 2,000pts of stuff, my opponent to show up with 2,000pts of stuff, and us to play a game that doesn't end with one of us blasted off the table in two turns because the people on the design team didn't sit down and have a discussion about what 2,000pts actually means.

I'm going to go way looser and say units don't have to be balanced for standard missions with four pieces of ruins and six pieces of low cover or whatever a tournament standard is. The value of units can change tremendously with terrain, and the game is more varied in it's manifestation in 'standard tournament format', so I'm pretty loose with my requirements points-wise.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I split balance into three components:

1) External balance - I define this as balanced when all books are played proportionally (e.g. if there are 20 factions, then each faction should be played in roughly 5% of games), and the winrate for every faction is between 45% and 50%. The optimal winrate for a balanced game is much closer to 48%, leaving 2% for draws. This is across the entire playerbase, in an attempt to compensate for skill.

2) Internal balance - this is much harder to quantify, given that units should be split into roles. However, if pressed, I would say this is two things:
a) subfaction balance - of the 5% of all games that this faction is involved in, each subfaction should be represented equally (e.g. if there are 5 subfactions of Chaos Space Marines, then roughly 20% of the total Chaos Space Marine games, or 1% of all games, should be played using a given subfaction's rules).

I disagree with all this. Factions and units should not be represented based on how big a percentage of the total number of options available there are, but according to their models and their lore. So if 90% of people like the the Imperial Fists colour scheme and lore but only 10% of people like the Raven Guard colour scheme and lore then it shouldn't be a 50/50 split between the two factions. People should be able to collect and play with what they love, not be forced into a faction or playstyle based on imbalanced rules. Like in League of Legends a champion isn't a failure just because it's not popular, it's a failure if everyone that tries the champion plays it for a few games and then leaves it, but if a few people play it but they then really love that champion then it's okay that not that many people play it.

I agree with your assessment of unit balance, it really sucks to warn people not to buy and paint or try out a unit because the unit might underperform to a degree where it ruins your game. The alternative where you have to warn someone to dial it down for casual settings isn't any better either. Another big problem is balance between options on units, one thing I absolutely never want is to recommend people to tear their minis apart to give them different options, so meltas and plasma guns should both be viable in some kind of list and one shouldn't be a bazillion times better than the other for any given chapter.

 Halfton wrote:
Been playing off and on for a decent number of years and have basically been hearing the same thing since I started that the game.
That is, “The balance is terrible”.
Don’t really have a dog in the race since I’m casual, but I was wondering does the community have a definition of what a balanced 40K would play like?

This is more a side consideration but would that balanced state favor Casual play or Competitive play?

As has been mentioned:

Faction-Faction Balance is most often brought up. This means that the collective win/loss rate of a faction is near 50%. In any given gameplay situation whether competitive or causal, if I look at a list of faction pairings, I shouldn't be able to predict who won based on faction alone.
This is usually a greater problem for competitive players. Competitive players will naturally eschew the trap units and use the strong units, so internal balance isn't as severe a problem is everybody's best lists are well matched against each other.

Internal Balance is the second problem. This is if there's a few units that are drastically better than others, and a few that are drastically worse. If every single IG list has 9 Earthshaker Platforms, or there hasn't been a Stalker on the table in the entire edition, then there's not good internal balance.
This is usually a greater problem for casual players. If you want to use a Stalker or don't want to have an Earthshaker Platform in your army, you don't want to be crippling yourself by bringing "fluffy" or "fun" armies.



Right now, Faction-Faction balance is pretty tight relative to the recent past. Internal balance is at like an all time low. GW had generally be focusing on nerfing overperfoming units and buffing units that they consider "core" and expect to see in the optimal lists from a lore perspective with most of a line left in the "well, if you want" pile unless it starts overperforming. An example is Leman Russes and Grinding Advance, while everything with a Battle Cannon had issues because the Battle Cannon and other heavy AT guns really sucked, the Leman Russ was considered a priority because its iconic and the Vengeance Redoubt or Marcharius were left to be sad. And there are a bunch of weapon options for the Leman Russ, but really only the Battle Cannon is checked for balance and the rest are just "worse Battle Cannons".

Already defined for you, internal vs external balance, in many posts.

There is also easy ways to check whether both are satisfied. Websites like https://www.40kstats.com/ give you counts on both (faction winning sliced up in many ways, units used).

I am glad they are starting to look more into competitive outcomes as a measure of balance, e.g. the whole IH debacle.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Agreed. The reason I included point 2a is because you could have the following hypothetical situation:

Codex Hypothetes has a 48% winrate overall, and all the units inside of it are viable...

...but only in one sub faction. The 48% overall winrate is achieved by 3/4 of the subfactions having like a 30% winrate and the remaining 1/4th have a ludicrous winrate.

this is bad for the game, as it makes the 48% winrate of the entire codex misleading (since it's an average of a few badly variant subfactions; I pity all the players that have to play against the subfaction with a super high win rate!) and it makes the less powerful subfactions a trap choice for new players or player who like their narrative.

A million times this. I've been hearing for a while now that Tau are well-balanced. What this really means is that the one standout build (Triptides and drone spam) has a decent winrate, but the rest of the faction is pretty mediocre. It's misleading to say that a codex is balanced when it really has poor internal balance, but the highest-performing build in it can stand up to other codices.

I like the way you've codified three different types of balance. The difference between category 1 and category 2 is something I've been harping on for a while.

 Halfton wrote:
This is more a side consideration but would that balanced state favor Casual play or Competitive play?

To cover this point (since I don't think anyone has yet), it helps both. Competitively, it puts more onus on in-game player skill than just list-building and Casually it reduces the chances of bad, one-sided games just because one army happens to be OP at the moment.

A well balanced game benefits casual play the most - if all choices have an equal chance at victory then the game is more fun. It makes competition harder because their is no I win button. The same players winning competitive events over and over is a tell tale sign of bad balance.

 Xenomancers wrote:
A well balanced game benefits casual play the most - if all choices have an equal chance at victory then the game is more fun. It makes competition harder because their is no I win button. The same players winning competitive events over and over is a tell tale sign of bad balance.

Not sure about that, really. The same UNITS winning would indicate that.

Martel732 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
A well balanced game benefits casual play the most - if all choices have an equal chance at victory then the game is more fun. It makes competition harder because their is no I win button. The same players winning competitive events over and over is a tell tale sign of bad balance.

Not sure about that, really. The same UNITS winning would indicate that.

Don't wake up the "40k requires no skill" crowd.

 Xenomancers wrote:
The same players winning competitive events over and over is a tell tale sign of bad balance.

Wait, what? Would you apply this to...any other competitive event?

Is Basketball an imbalanced sport because Lebron keeps winning? Is League of Legends an imbalanced game because a korean eight year old could beat me on any champion with their feet? does Ken Jennings finally put the lie to the horrific imbalance of Jeopardy?

To me, a balanced game means two players of roughly equal skill can play against each other with the factions of their choice and each has a reasonable expectation of winning.

the_scotsman wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
The same players winning competitive events over and over is a tell tale sign of bad balance.

Wait, what? Would you apply this to...any other competitive event?

Is Basketball an imbalanced sport because Lebron keeps winning? Is League of Legends an imbalanced game because a korean eight year old could beat me on any champion with their feet? does Ken Jennings finally put the lie to the horrific imbalance of Jeopardy?

Umm Lebron is OP. Basketball is not balanced.

The difference here in 40k is everyone can play with Lebron or some combination of Lebron, Curry, Harden, ect. All at once. So ultimately anyone who doesn't take the super allstar combo is thrown out. This excludes a lot of competitors. So the reality is even if the event has 500 players - only 40-50 actually matter. It would be practically impossible for the same players to place at the top consistently if all armies had an equal chance of victory.

League of legends is kinda weird in this sense. It is very poorly internally balanced. 20-30 champions are just better than the rest. They balance specifically for the competitive meta so the poor internal balance is intentional. Sometimes I wonder if GW rules writters look to games like this for inspiration. If they do it is a mistake. LOL is a very poorly balanced game except for the very narrow microscope they put on competitive play. However - player skill is a serious factor in the game. 40k by comparison has about 1-100th the skill requirement for top tier play.

"The same people keep wining, so therefore its not skill but army imbalances even tho they switch armies"

Wow.... thats... thats our there man. Are you high?

Switching from one top tier army to another is not really switching armies though.

Just because the sheik of dubai buys the second line up of bulgarian weight lifting team, and suddenly dubai starts winning bronze and silver in competition does mean that dubai produces great weight lifters, has goot coachs or med teams .

Its the point they need to be able to pilot different armies, showing it is more skillful than "rolling lucky"

We also are talking about 40k not something that literally has cheaters in it b.c "this drug isn't said to be illegal" Just look at "Insulin Gut" and your 'll see....

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Its the point they need to be able to pilot different armies, showing it is more skillful than "rolling lucky"

We also are talking about 40k not something that literally has cheaters in it b.c "this drug isn't said to be illegal" Just look at "Insulin Gut" and your 'll see....

I'm pretty sure competitive professional sports are far more regulated than competitive 40k. Lance armystrong was a cheater...however - nearly everyone he was competing against was also cheating as well.

 EnTyme wrote:
To me, a balanced game means two players of roughly equal skill can play against each other with the factions of their choice and each has a reasonable expectation of winning.

This, except it would be nice to remove trap units and autotakes.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Its the point they need to be able to pilot different armies, showing it is more skillful than "rolling lucky"

We also are talking about 40k not something that literally has cheaters in it b.c "this drug isn't said to be illegal" Just look at "Insulin Gut" and your 'll see....

I'm pretty sure competitive professional sports are far more regulated than competitive 40k. Lance armystrong was a cheater...however - nearly everyone he was competing against was also cheating as well.

So are you implying that these players are all cheaters? I really don't understand how you can say that the same players win so therefore the game has bad balance. I'm not saying it is balanced, i'm asking how does the same players winning equate to poor balance?

Xeno, I feel like you're conflating 'top players' and 'top units/armies'.

We can pretty much all agree that the same few units/armies shouldn't be constantly winning events. When you're saying 'everyone can take Lebron', this seems to be what you're referring to.

But the idea that highly skilled players shouldn't be able to consistently win a skill-based game is... pretty far out there. I can't even think of a sport where this isn't the case. Like even poker, with its high degree of randomness, has good players and bad players.

I would consider it an optimal state where there's enough depth to the game that a handful of really skilled people can place well year after year, and do so while rotating through a large variety of equally-viable armies.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Its the point they need to be able to pilot different armies, showing it is more skillful than "rolling lucky"

We also are talking about 40k not something that literally has cheaters in it b.c "this drug isn't said to be illegal" Just look at "Insulin Gut" and your 'll see....

I'm pretty sure competitive professional sports are far more regulated than competitive 40k. Lance armystrong was a cheater...however - nearly everyone he was competing against was also cheating as well.

So are you implying that these players are all cheaters? I really don't understand how you can say that the same players win so therefore the game has bad balance. I'm not saying it is balanced, i'm asking how does the same players winning equate to poor balance?

I was just implying that in professional sports they do things like...drug test. What safety measures does ITC take? They don't even check your dice.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 catbarf wrote:
Xeno, I feel like you're conflating 'top players' and 'top units/armies'.

We can pretty much all agree that the same few units/armies shouldn't be constantly winning events. When you're saying 'everyone can take Lebron', this seems to be what you're referring to.

But the idea that highly skilled players shouldn't be able to consistently win a skill-based game is... pretty far out there. I can't even think of a sport where this isn't the case. Like even poker, with its high degree of randomness, has good players and bad players.

I would consider it an optimal state where there's enough depth to the game that a handful of really skilled people can place well year after year, and do so while rotating through a large variety of equally-viable armies.

Well typically its the same player playing the same broken army over and over again or a new broken army comes out and they just switch to that. Nothing against the players for doing that but they aren't winning with bad armies or even average armies because they can't. They win with the best armies. Because overpowered armies and strats exist - it is possible for a player top win nearly every game. Just saying it's a tell tale sign the game is poorly balanced. Especially in a game with such a low skill ceiling as 40k. I love this game but it's hardly dynamic - that is part of the reason I like it - it's not stressing my brain too much to play it. That is what League of Legends is for.

I wouldn't call BA the best army, but Box wins because he builds to beat elite shooting castles.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Its the point they need to be able to pilot different armies, showing it is more skillful than "rolling lucky"

We also are talking about 40k not something that literally has cheaters in it b.c "this drug isn't said to be illegal" Just look at "Insulin Gut" and your 'll see....

I'm pretty sure competitive professional sports are far more regulated than competitive 40k. Lance armystrong was a cheater...however - nearly everyone he was competing against was also cheating as well.

So are you implying that these players are all cheaters? I really don't understand how you can say that the same players win so therefore the game has bad balance. I'm not saying it is balanced, i'm asking how does the same players winning equate to poor balance?

I was just implying that in professional sports they do things like...drug test. What safety measures does ITC take? They don't even check your dice.

LOL this is one of the stupidest convo's i've seen you do now.

Yes they test, again go look at Insulin Gut, b.c 99% the time they test for gak no one is using or don't care about. And the fact that you are "implying" all these players are cheating is just sad "they don't check your dice".

So you are saying the top players are cheaters and that is Proof the game has terrible balance.
News flash! we all know the game is imbalanced, the messed up part is, theres 1000's of pieces of proof and you go to "Cheaters and top players are why".

I was going to ignore you, but this is to golden to pass up.


EDIT: B.c you added more after. You do know that Sean Nayden won with Yncarne and hordes of wyches when everyone said it was bad right? So yes it is with "off armies" sometimes.

Martel732 wrote:
I wouldn't call BA the best army, but Box wins because he builds to beat elite shooting castles.

Not really familiar with his specific tactics but blood angels have been all over the competitive meta for most of the edition. If you can reliably charge from deep strike and ignore over-watch with fly keyword...that is a formula for victory.

The best players I know are using gravity dice.

The easiest way to see if skill is involved in 40k or not is to watch professional games.

If you find yourself going "wow, that was a good move, never would have thought of that myself!" then it was skill.

If you find that their moves are similar to ones that you, yourself, would do (or ones you could have seen coming) and the determining factor of victory is lists and dice, then that game was not determined by skill.

I watched Eldar flyers vs Imperial Guard on twitch at the top tables of a game once, and the Guard player basically just did his best to hide from the flyers, and the eldar player did his best to dismantle the opponent's army with the fliers. Neither one of them made any moves that I didn't expect or pulled any tricks that were "WOW AWESOME of him to spot that weakness!" or whatever.

It basically came down to the last few remaining guardsmen vs. what few ground forces the Eldar player had on objectives, and IIRC the eldar player won because his rolled better / compensated for RNG better once the flyers had dismantled the Guard's heavy friendos.

 Xenomancers wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
I wouldn't call BA the best army, but Box wins because he builds to beat elite shooting castles.

Not really familiar with his specific tactics but blood angels have been all over the competitive meta for most of the edition. If you can reliably charge from deep strike and ignore over-watch with fly keyword...that is a formula for victory.

No, they haven't. And those things alone don't give victory. Not even close.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
The easiest way to see if skill is involved in 40k or not is to watch professional games.

If you find yourself going "wow, that was a good move, never would have thought of that myself!" then it was skill.

If you find that their moves are similar to ones that you, yourself, would do (or ones you could have seen coming) and the determining factor of victory is lists and dice, then that game was not determined by skill.

I watched Eldar flyers vs Imperial Guard on twitch at the top tables of a game once, and the Guard player basically just did his best to hide from the flyers, and the eldar player did his best to dismantle the opponent's army with the fliers. Neither one of them made any moves that I didn't expect or pulled any tricks that were "WOW AWESOME of him to spot that weakness!" or whatever.

It basically came down to the last few remaining guardsmen vs. what few ground forces the Eldar player had on objectives, and IIRC the eldar player won because his rolled better / compensated for RNG better once the flyers had dismantled the Guard's heavy friendos.

Yeah, I've watched Box's games looking for this stuff, but it's really just tripoint: the game. Making SG engineers vs tough foes is cute, but not epicly awesome.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Its the point they need to be able to pilot different armies, showing it is more skillful than "rolling lucky"

We also are talking about 40k not something that literally has cheaters in it b.c "this drug isn't said to be illegal" Just look at "Insulin Gut" and your 'll see....

I'm pretty sure competitive professional sports are far more regulated than competitive 40k. Lance armystrong was a cheater...however - nearly everyone he was competing against was also cheating as well.

So are you implying that these players are all cheaters? I really don't understand how you can say that the same players win so therefore the game has bad balance. I'm not saying it is balanced, i'm asking how does the same players winning equate to poor balance?

I was just implying that in professional sports they do things like...drug test. What safety measures does ITC take? They don't even check your dice.

LOL this is one of the stupidest convo's i've seen you do now.

Yes they test, again go look at Insulin Gut, b.c 99% the time they test for gak no one is using or don't care about. And the fact that you are "implying" all these players are cheating is just sad "they don't check your dice".

So you are saying the top players are cheaters and that is Proof the game has terrible balance.
News flash! we all know the game is imbalanced, the messed up part is, theres 1000's of pieces of proof and you go to "Cheaters and top players are why".

I was going to ignore you, but this is to golden to pass up.


EDIT: B.c you added more after. You do know that Sean Nayden won with Yncarne and hordes of wyches when everyone said it was bad right? So yes it is with "off armies" sometimes.

It obvious you are a fan boy and totally unwilling to accept reality. You are the one that brought up cheating.

Look at your above post. In essence you dismissed my argument because cheating exists in other sports. Yeah...you can't even go there. Cheating exists in all things competitive. It is human nature. Which is why competitive sports regulate their games...have preassigned penalties for cheating that occurs in games and they test for steroids and performance enhancing drugs. Also you are misrepresenting my argument. I didn't even state that cheating is the reason that the top players place consisently. I stated that the same players consistently placing at the top of events is a sign that the game is poorly balanced. This game has very low skill expression.

tneva82 wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
One where one faction isn't running around with 60-70% winrate and others 30-40% would be good start

There will always be people who complain about perceived imbalances because they personally find it unbalanced, but there's more factors in winning and losing that most people are willing to admit, its easier to just blame the rules.

Lol how lame attempt at white knighting.

Wut? How is that white knighting? Do you even know what that term means?

Bringing up the fact that the same people keep winning tournaments is NOT an argument for the idea that the game has low skill expression.

Bringing up the fact that those top players constantly ebay their entire army and buy a new one, and that many top players play essentially the exact same broken army is.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Its the point they need to be able to pilot different armies, showing it is more skillful than "rolling lucky"

We also are talking about 40k not something that literally has cheaters in it b.c "this drug isn't said to be illegal" Just look at "Insulin Gut" and your 'll see....

I'm pretty sure competitive professional sports are far more regulated than competitive 40k. Lance armystrong was a cheater...however - nearly everyone he was competing against was also cheating as well.

So are you implying that these players are all cheaters? I really don't understand how you can say that the same players win so therefore the game has bad balance. I'm not saying it is balanced, i'm asking how does the same players winning equate to poor balance?

I was just implying that in professional sports they do things like...drug test. What safety measures does ITC take? They don't even check your dice.

LOL this is one of the stupidest convo's i've seen you do now.

Yes they test, again go look at Insulin Gut, b.c 99% the time they test for gak no one is using or don't care about. And the fact that you are "implying" all these players are cheating is just sad "they don't check your dice".

So you are saying the top players are cheaters and that is Proof the game has terrible balance.
News flash! we all know the game is imbalanced, the messed up part is, theres 1000's of pieces of proof and you go to "Cheaters and top players are why".

I was going to ignore you, but this is to golden to pass up.


EDIT: B.c you added more after. You do know that Sean Nayden won with Yncarne and hordes of wyches when everyone said it was bad right? So yes it is with "off armies" sometimes.

It obvious you are a fan boy and totally unwilling to accept reality. You are the one that brought up cheating.

Look at your above post. In essence you dismissed my argument because cheating exists in other sports. Yeah...you can't even go there. Cheating exists in all things competitive. It is human nature. Which is why competitive sports regulate their games...have preassigned penalties for cheating that occurs in games and they test for steroids and performance enhancing drugs. Also you are misrepresenting my argument. I didn't even state that cheating is the reason that the top players place consisently. I stated that the same players consistently placing at the top of events is a sign that the game is poorly balanced. This game has very low skill expression.

Actually i was talking to someone else that brought it up and then you commented on that. So no i did not bring up cheating. You can't even get that straight lol.

I asked you about cheated and made a claim b.c you HEAVILY implied it, even stating you implied it, you did not say "no thats not what i meant" even going as far to say "I don't know what you mean" you did not say what you mean and you continue to imply cheating and not skill via "they don't test dice" All you've been doing is implying things and get mad when I call you out on it.

PS. I'm not a fan boy. I play maybe 1 40k game a month and stopped doing events. I've been playing AoS almost non stop, its such a better game, even tho they have imbalances too (some armies are 60% winrates like in 40k) its still WAY more fun. Heck i play BoC the "worst" army in AoS and i still have more fun than 40k.

EDIT: So if the game is low skill, then why isn't more No name players winning large events?

the_scotsman wrote:
Bringing up the fact that the same people keep winning tournaments is NOT an argument for the idea that the game has low skill expression.

Bringing up the fact that those top players constantly ebay their entire army and buy a new one, and that many top players play essentially the exact same broken army is.

I an assuming that when we talk about top players...this is automatically assumed.

I'm afraid I just can't agree. Whenever I watch top players I find them to be very precise - and yes, better than the average player who makes bags of mistakes (or just doesn't see the superior move).

This is why the same people do regularly win - because there is plenty of skill in 40k, even if its doing things you may not like.

If this isn't enough for you I'm not sure what to expect. I feel hoping for something ground breaking - that completely changes how you view 40k - is an illusion. I don't think that happens in any game. At the top end, you just do what everyone else is doing but a bit faster and a bit more accurately.

To get a game where *anyone* with *any army* has a 50/50 chance against *anyone* with *any army* would require the game to be reduced down to the flip of a coin. Which I wouldn't find fun - and certainly wouldn't find interesting.

I guess if you want a beer and pretzels game that you play with some friends every few months, and the fundamental point is to have an enjoyable few hours, rather than do something so vulgar as *try to win*, then I guess such a system might be great. But I feel the miniatures are too expensive, and building/painting them too time consuming, for that to be all the game is.

Tyel wrote:
I'm afraid I just can't agree. Whenever I watch top players I find them to be very precise - and yes, better than the average player who makes bags of mistakes (or just doesn't see the superior move).

This is why the same people do regularly win - because there is plenty of skill in 40k, even if its doing things you may not like.

If this isn't enough for you I'm not sure what to expect. I feel hoping for something ground breaking - that completely changes how you view 40k - is an illusion. I don't think that happens in any game. At the top end, you just do what everyone else is doing but a bit faster and a bit more accurately.

To get a game where *anyone* with *any army* has a 50/50 chance against *anyone* with *any army* would require the game to be reduced down to the flip of a coin. Which I wouldn't find fun - and certainly wouldn't find interesting.

I guess if you want a beer and pretzels game that you play with some friends every few months, and the fundamental point is to have an enjoyable few hours, rather than do something so vulgar as *try to win*, then I guess such a system might be great. But I feel the miniatures are too expensive, and building/painting them too time consuming, for that to be all the game is.

Pretty much this.

A Book even if every unit was perfectly balance still would have "bad lists" b.c the game is more about synergy and working out a plan than just good balanced units.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

Tyel wrote:
I'm afraid I just can't agree. Whenever I watch top players I find them to be very precise - and yes, better than the average player who makes bags of mistakes (or just doesn't see the superior move).

This is why the same people do regularly win - because there is plenty of skill in 40k, even if its doing things you may not like.

If this isn't enough for you I'm not sure what to expect. I feel hoping for something ground breaking - that completely changes how you view 40k - is an illusion. I don't think that happens in any game. At the top end, you just do what everyone else is doing but a bit faster and a bit more accurately.

To get a game where *anyone* with *any army* has a 50/50 chance against *anyone* with *any army* would require the game to be reduced down to the flip of a coin. Which I wouldn't find fun - and certainly wouldn't find interesting.

I guess if you want a beer and pretzels game that you play with some friends every few months, and the fundamental point is to have an enjoyable few hours, rather than do something so vulgar as *try to win*, then I guess such a system might be great. But I feel the miniatures are too expensive, and building/painting them too time consuming, for that to be all the game is.

Pretty much this.

A Book even if every unit was perfectly balance still would have "bad lists" b.c the game is more about synergy and working out a plan than just good balanced units.

Which would be fine. The problem is not and has never been the fact that it's possible to build bad lists. The problem is that there are units that GW sells that are impossible to put into a good list, and Codexes with which it is not possible to make a good list.

Oh yeah for sure. Just look at the Webway gate. How did that even make it into print? I am 100% sure some intern did it that doesn't understand the game, was told to learn the game in 2 weeks and make it, lol. B.c any player from any army would say its a terrible unit. But most players don't take Fortifications anyways, lets hope that changes in 9th with CP modifications.

First off, at Xeno-the same players winning shows that yes, skill matters.

Second off, to me, the ideal balance point is this:

No unit should never be taken. But also, No unit should always be taken.
For instance, Nurgle Daemons. Spoilpox Scriveners are a good unit, in a list with a lot of Plaguebearers. They provide great synergy with that troops choice. But if I went monster mash (GUO) and little boys (Nurglings), suddenly the Sloppity Bilepiper is the superior choice.

Pretty much, in an ideally balance game, you should see every unit represented at the top tables-not in the same lists, but across various different ones. Same with subfactions and whatnot. If the answer is always "Take [UNIT X]," that unit is too good, and therefore not balanced. If the answer is never "Take [UNIT Y]," that unit isn't good enough, and therefore not balanced.

Most experience people have is anecdotal. A large chunk copies the opinions of people they follow online.

Perfect balance would be very dull, but yes - the game can be improved.

 Ishagu wrote:
Most experience people have is anecdotal. A large chunk copies the opinions of people they follow online.

Perfect balance would be very dull, but yes - the game can be improved.

Perfect balance wouldn't be dull, if accomplished well.

It's also impossible.

But better balance? Yes. That's 100% possible, and should be done.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Its the point they need to be able to pilot different armies, showing it is more skillful than "rolling lucky"

We also are talking about 40k not something that literally has cheaters in it b.c "this drug isn't said to be illegal" Just look at "Insulin Gut" and your 'll see....

I'm pretty sure competitive professional sports are far more regulated than competitive 40k. Lance armystrong was a cheater...however - nearly everyone he was competing against was also cheating as well.

So are you implying that these players are all cheaters? I really don't understand how you can say that the same players win so therefore the game has bad balance. I'm not saying it is balanced, i'm asking how does the same players winning equate to poor balance?

I was just implying that in professional sports they do things like...drug test. What safety measures does ITC take? They don't even check your dice.

LOL this is one of the stupidest convo's i've seen you do now.

Yes they test, again go look at Insulin Gut, b.c 99% the time they test for gak no one is using or don't care about. And the fact that you are "implying" all these players are cheating is just sad "they don't check your dice".

So you are saying the top players are cheaters and that is Proof the game has terrible balance.
News flash! we all know the game is imbalanced, the messed up part is, theres 1000's of pieces of proof and you go to "Cheaters and top players are why".

I was going to ignore you, but this is to golden to pass up.


EDIT: B.c you added more after. You do know that Sean Nayden won with Yncarne and hordes of wyches when everyone said it was bad right? So yes it is with "off armies" sometimes.

It obvious you are a fan boy and totally unwilling to accept reality. You are the one that brought up cheating.

Look at your above post. In essence you dismissed my argument because cheating exists in other sports. Yeah...you can't even go there. Cheating exists in all things competitive. It is human nature. Which is why competitive sports regulate their games...have preassigned penalties for cheating that occurs in games and they test for steroids and performance enhancing drugs. Also you are misrepresenting my argument. I didn't even state that cheating is the reason that the top players place consisently. I stated that the same players consisttently placing at the top of events is a sign that the game is poorly balanced. This game has very low skill expression.

Actually i was talking to someone else that brought it up and then you commented on that. So no i did not bring up cheating. You can't even get that straight lol.

I asked you about cheated and made a claim b.c you HEAVILY implied it, even stating you implied it, you did not say "no thats not what i meant" even going as far to say "I don't know what you mean" you did not say what you mean and you continue to imply cheating and not skill via "they don't test dice" All you've been doing is implying things and get mad when I call you out on it.

PS. I'm not a fan boy. I play maybe 1 40k game a month and stopped doing events. I've been playing AoS almost non stop, its such a better game, even tho they have imbalances too (some armies are 60% winrates like in 40k) its still WAY more fun. Heck i play BoC the "worst" army in AoS and i still have more fun than 40k.

EDIT: So if the game is low skill, then why isn't more No name players winning large events?

I don't disagree that sigmar is a better game. I agree it is more fun too. It just feels like I am playing a game with and reacting to my opponent more. 40k does not feel like that. 40k as is about army construction and destruction or in ITC it its Construction and moving to poker chips at the end of your turn. Nether game requires a lot of skill out of list building though. It's not a dig at the players or the game. It's just not designed that way. Plus Sigmars balance is pretty dang bad too. Following the same 40k formula - most the time the newest army rules are the most OP.

I would invite you to look back at our previous posts. It seemed to me you were saying that "competitive weight lifting" is not an apt comparison because there is cheating in that sport. I am just saying get real - there is cheating in every sport. Including 40k. Likely more - because its hard to get caught and the consequences are low with the reward being high.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ishagu wrote:
Most experience people have is anecdotal. A large chunk copies the opinions of people they follow online.

Perfect balance would be very dull, but yes - the game can be improved.

Ehh perfect balance of outcome would be dull. Perfect external and internal balance would be amazing. Could actually play with all our units without autolosing our games.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Ishagu wrote:
Most experience people have is anecdotal. A large chunk copies the opinions of people they follow online.

Perfect balance would be very dull, but yes - the game can be improved.

Ehh perfect balance of outcome would be dull. Perfect external and internal balance would be amazing. Could actually play with all our units without autolosing our games.

You play Marines. You don't have to worry about auto-losing unless you're intentionally taking the worst possible units, like nothing but Servitors and Drop Pods.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Its the point they need to be able to pilot different armies, showing it is more skillful than "rolling lucky"

We also are talking about 40k not something that literally has cheaters in it b.c "this drug isn't said to be illegal" Just look at "Insulin Gut" and your 'll see....

I'm pretty sure competitive professional sports are far more regulated than competitive 40k. Lance armystrong was a cheater...however - nearly everyone he was competing against was also cheating as well.

So are you implying that these players are all cheaters? I really don't understand how you can say that the same players win so therefore the game has bad balance. I'm not saying it is balanced, i'm asking how does the same players winning equate to poor balance?

I was just implying that in professional sports they do things like...drug test. What safety measures does ITC take? They don't even check your dice.

LOL this is one of the stupidest convo's i've seen you do now.

Yes they test, again go look at Insulin Gut, b.c 99% the time they test for gak no one is using or don't care about. And the fact that you are "implying" all these players are cheating is just sad "they don't check your dice".

So you are saying the top players are cheaters and that is Proof the game has terrible balance.
News flash! we all know the game is imbalanced, the messed up part is, theres 1000's of pieces of proof and you go to "Cheaters and top players are why".

I was going to ignore you, but this is to golden to pass up.


EDIT: B.c you added more after. You do know that Sean Nayden won with Yncarne and hordes of wyches when everyone said it was bad right? So yes it is with "off armies" sometimes.

It obvious you are a fan boy and totally unwilling to accept reality. You are the one that brought up cheating.

Look at your above post. In essence you dismissed my argument because cheating exists in other sports. Yeah...you can't even go there. Cheating exists in all things competitive. It is human nature. Which is why competitive sports regulate their games...have preassigned penalties for cheating that occurs in games and they test for steroids and performance enhancing drugs. Also you are misrepresenting my argument. I didn't even state that cheating is the reason that the top players place consisently. I stated that the same players consisttently placing at the top of events is a sign that the game is poorly balanced. This game has very low skill expression.

Actually i was talking to someone else that brought it up and then you commented on that. So no i did not bring up cheating. You can't even get that straight lol.

I asked you about cheated and made a claim b.c you HEAVILY implied it, even stating you implied it, you did not say "no thats not what i meant" even going as far to say "I don't know what you mean" you did not say what you mean and you continue to imply cheating and not skill via "they don't test dice" All you've been doing is implying things and get mad when I call you out on it.

PS. I'm not a fan boy. I play maybe 1 40k game a month and stopped doing events. I've been playing AoS almost non stop, its such a better game, even tho they have imbalances too (some armies are 60% winrates like in 40k) its still WAY more fun. Heck i play BoC the "worst" army in AoS and i still have more fun than 40k.

EDIT: So if the game is low skill, then why isn't more No name players winning large events?

I don't disagree that sigmar is a better game. I agree it is more fun too. It just feels like I am playing a game with and reacting to my opponent more. 40k does not feel like that. 40k as is about army construction and destruction or in ITC it its Construction and moving to poker chips at the end of your turn. Nether game requires a lot of skill out of list building though. It's not a dig at the players or the game. It's just not designed that way. Plus Sigmars balance is pretty dang bad too. Following the same 40k formula - most the time the newest army rules are the most OP.

I would invite you to look back at our previous posts. It seemed to me you were saying that "competitive weight lifting" is not an apt comparison because there is cheating in that sport. I am just saying get real - there is cheating in every sport. Including 40k. Likely more - because its hard to get caught and the consequences are low with the reward being high.

You say that, but yet I haven't lost (nor the Top BoC player) let against DoT or OBR (2 of the 3 new top armies) I haven't had a chance to go against Seraphon yet. AoS is more Rock, Paper Scissor than 40k is. Where a bad army can beat a good one, but it wont beat another bad army b.c how missions/matchups. And some of the top lists are also over $1k which even top players don't wan to pay, bill, and paint, even tho its only 8-10 units, it could still be over 200 models to work with (Example, Chariots are not 1 model but 5 models, there are 50pt chariots that you could take 18 of them, they are battalion, and very good, but that less than 1/2 your army and that alone cost $900).

As for 40k. Apoc was way more fun than both. I didn't play enough to find imbalances i'm sure there are, but damage at the end alone made it better.

 Sim-Life wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
One where one faction isn't running around with 60-70% winrate and others 30-40% would be good start

There will always be people who complain about perceived imbalances because they personally find it unbalanced, but there's more factors in winning and losing that most people are willing to admit, its easier to just blame the rules.

Lol how lame attempt at white knighting.

Wut? How is that white knighting? Do you even know what that term means?

I would also call it white knighting when someone's response to certain factions having abnormally high or low winrates is basically 'the game is fine, you just suck and blame the rules'. It doesn't address the point at all, it's just deflecting criticism of the game by implying the critic is only complaining because they're bad at the game.

 JNAProductions wrote:
First off, at Xeno-the same players winning shows that yes, skill matters.

Second off, to me, the ideal balance point is this:

No unit should never be taken. But also, No unit should always be taken.
For instance, Nurgle Daemons. Spoilpox Scriveners are a good unit, in a list with a lot of Plaguebearers. They provide great synergy with that troops choice. But if I went monster mash (GUO) and little boys (Nurglings), suddenly the Sloppity Bilepiper is the superior choice.

Pretty much, in an ideally balance game, you should see every unit represented at the top tables-not in the same lists, but across various different ones. Same with subfactions and whatnot. If the answer is always "Take [UNIT X]," that unit is too good, and therefore not balanced. If the answer is never "Take [UNIT Y]," that unit isn't good enough, and therefore not balanced.

It matters to a slight extent. I think the going consensus is that 40k is about 5% to 10% player skill and 80% list construction - the rest is luck. A more agreeable place for the game to be would be 1/3 luck 1/3 skill 1/3 construction.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
First off, at Xeno-the same players winning shows that yes, skill matters.

Second off, to me, the ideal balance point is this:

No unit should never be taken. But also, No unit should always be taken.
For instance, Nurgle Daemons. Spoilpox Scriveners are a good unit, in a list with a lot of Plaguebearers. They provide great synergy with that troops choice. But if I went monster mash (GUO) and little boys (Nurglings), suddenly the Sloppity Bilepiper is the superior choice.

Pretty much, in an ideally balance game, you should see every unit represented at the top tables-not in the same lists, but across various different ones. Same with subfactions and whatnot. If the answer is always "Take [UNIT X]," that unit is too good, and therefore not balanced. If the answer is never "Take [UNIT Y]," that unit isn't good enough, and therefore not balanced.

It matters to a slight extent. I think the going consensus is that 40k is about 5% to 10% player skill and 80% list construction - the rest is luck. A more agreeable place for the game to be would be 1/3 luck 1/3 skill 1/3 construction.

I disagree heavily.

Luck should be an element, but a manageable one.
Skill should be the primary factor.
List Construction is a subset of skill, but it should be a MINOR one.

If I, a decent but not amazing player, faced a grand tournament winning player, but we switched lists before the game started, that player should still WRECK ME. It doesn't matter that I have a tournament list and he has a decent but not amazing list-the differences in lists should not be that great.

To put another way, a competently made list versus a tournament list, both piloted by a player of equal skill, shouldn't have more than a 40/60 split in favor of the tourney list. And even that's a little much, to me.

I'd think I say:

Irrespective of almost any meta, each codex has enough depth where it can be competitive, and ideally through at least a couple different strategies.

That might mean, say, under a "we blow up vehicle meta", maybe Knights still could win 40% of the time.

But I think that's what should be achievable in a balanced game. I also think it's incredibly difficult, given how many factions there are, and obviously because Imperium armies have literally dozens of sources to draw on, where others (Orks, Tau) might only have 5 sources (main codex + stuff like PA, Vigilus)

Nope, because there is no single 40K "community".

 Elbows wrote:
Nope, because there is no single 40K "community".

A fair answer.

I mean, some people don't give two patoots about balance, since they don't play-they just paint and build. They might own the Dex, but only for the pics and lore.
Whereas you got others who like the game and don't care overmuch about painting or modeling.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Ishagu wrote:
Most experience people have is anecdotal. A large chunk copies the opinions of people they follow online.

Perfect balance would be very dull, but yes - the game can be improved.

Ehh perfect balance of outcome would be dull. Perfect external and internal balance would be amazing. Could actually play with all our units without autolosing our games.

You play Marines. You don't have to worry about auto-losing unless you're intentionally taking the worst possible units, like nothing but Servitors and Drop Pods.

I could auto lose by playing with basically all vehicles that aren't dreads or venerable dreads. Or any of our flyers minus the storm hawk. All forms of tactical marines. Still some of the most utter gak in the game. The predator is definitely in contention for worst tank in the whole game.

No unit should never be taken. But also, No unit should always be taken.

This ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Xenomancers wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Ishagu wrote:
Most experience people have is anecdotal. A large chunk copies the opinions of people they follow online.

Perfect balance would be very dull, but yes - the game can be improved.

Ehh perfect balance of outcome would be dull. Perfect external and internal balance would be amazing. Could actually play with all our units without autolosing our games.

You play Marines. You don't have to worry about auto-losing unless you're intentionally taking the worst possible units, like nothing but Servitors and Drop Pods.

I could auto lose by playing with basically all vehicles that aren't dreads or venerable dreads. Or any of our flyers minus the storm hawk. All forms of tactical marines. Still some of the most utter gak in the game. The predator is definitely in contention for worst tank in the whole game.

I'll admit, nothing but Rhinos would probably lose you the game too.

But Marines are powerful enough that you really do have to TRY to lose in list-building. It's fully possible to be a crap general and get bodied by a weaker list. But compared to something like GSC? Dark Eldar? Daemons? Yeah, you're spoiled for not just choice, but GOOD choice.

Martel732 wrote:No unit should never be taken. But also, No unit should always be taken.

This ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Thanks Martel.

"because there is plenty of skill in 40k, even if its doing things you may not like."

Yeah, I hate the way Box's lists play, even though they work.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Its the point they need to be able to pilot different armies, showing it is more skillful than "rolling lucky"

We also are talking about 40k not something that literally has cheaters in it b.c "this drug isn't said to be illegal" Just look at "Insulin Gut" and your 'll see....

I'm pretty sure competitive professional sports are far more regulated than competitive 40k. Lance armystrong was a cheater...however - nearly everyone he was competing against was also cheating as well.

So are you implying that these players are all cheaters? I really don't understand how you can say that the same players win so therefore the game has bad balance. I'm not saying it is balanced, i'm asking how does the same players winning equate to poor balance?

I was just implying that in professional sports they do things like...drug test. What safety measures does ITC take? They don't even check your dice.

LOL this is one of the stupidest convo's i've seen you do now.

Yes they test, again go look at Insulin Gut, b.c 99% the time they test for gak no one is using or don't care about. And the fact that you are "implying" all these players are cheating is just sad "they don't check your dice".

So you are saying the top players are cheaters and that is Proof the game has terrible balance.
News flash! we all know the game is imbalanced, the messed up part is, theres 1000's of pieces of proof and you go to "Cheaters and top players are why".

I was going to ignore you, but this is to golden to pass up.


EDIT: B.c you added more after. You do know that Sean Nayden won with Yncarne and hordes of wyches when everyone said it was bad right? So yes it is with "off armies" sometimes.

It obvious you are a fan boy and totally unwilling to accept reality. You are the one that brought up cheating.

Look at your above post. In essence you dismissed my argument because cheating exists in other sports. Yeah...you can't even go there. Cheating exists in all things competitive. It is human nature. Which is why competitive sports regulate their games...have preassigned penalties for cheating that occurs in games and they test for steroids and performance enhancing drugs. Also you are misrepresenting my argument. I didn't even state that cheating is the reason that the top players place consisently. I stated that the same players consisttently placing at the top of events is a sign that the game is poorly balanced. This game has very low skill expression.

Actually i was talking to someone else that brought it up and then you commented on that. So no i did not bring up cheating. You can't even get that straight lol.

I asked you about cheated and made a claim b.c you HEAVILY implied it, even stating you implied it, you did not say "no thats not what i meant" even going as far to say "I don't know what you mean" you did not say what you mean and you continue to imply cheating and not skill via "they don't test dice" All you've been doing is implying things and get mad when I call you out on it.

PS. I'm not a fan boy. I play maybe 1 40k game a month and stopped doing events. I've been playing AoS almost non stop, its such a better game, even tho they have imbalances too (some armies are 60% winrates like in 40k) its still WAY more fun. Heck i play BoC the "worst" army in AoS and i still have more fun than 40k.

EDIT: So if the game is low skill, then why isn't more No name players winning large events?

I don't disagree that sigmar is a better game. I agree it is more fun too. It just feels like I am playing a game with and reacting to my opponent more. 40k does not feel like that. 40k as is about army construction and destruction or in ITC it its Construction and moving to poker chips at the end of your turn. Nether game requires a lot of skill out of list building though. It's not a dig at the players or the game. It's just not designed that way. Plus Sigmars balance is pretty dang bad too. Following the same 40k formula - most the time the newest army rules are the most OP.

I would invite you to look back at our previous posts. It seemed to me you were saying that "competitive weight lifting" is not an apt comparison because there is cheating in that sport. I am just saying get real - there is cheating in every sport. Including 40k. Likely more - because its hard to get caught and the consequences are low with the reward being high.

You say that, but yet I haven't lost (nor the Top BoC player) let against DoT or OBR (2 of the 3 new top armies) I haven't had a chance to go against Seraphon yet. AoS is more Rock, Paper Scissor than 40k is. Where a bad army can beat a good one, but it wont beat another bad army b.c how missions/matchups. And some of the top lists are also over $1k which even top players don't wan to pay, bill, and paint, even tho its only 8-10 units, it could still be over 200 models to work with (Example, Chariots are not 1 model but 5 models, there are 50pt chariots that you could take 18 of them, they are battalion, and very good, but that less than 1/2 your army and that alone cost $900).

As for 40k. Apoc was way more fun than both. I didn't play enough to find imbalances i'm sure there are, but damage at the end alone made it better.

Oh there was massive imbalance present in apoc, I did a large amount of math with it because it was fun to automate the statlines of units, and there were some...truly wacky outliers (An all-grot or all-kroot and kroot accessories army would be hilariously effective in apoc) but it would be vastly easier to tweak the way that apoc costed super-cheap 1W units or units with really high wound counts and really low costs than it would be to balance the mess that is 8th 40k.

Apoc still exists, btw. it's not like it's gone. It's just a complete ruleset, there's not a constant flow of new books to buy.

Apoc Balanace was atrocious. I agree it had a way better turn structure though. I kinda wish 9th edd went that way with it.

We was just playing 200-300PL games for fun b.c we all got tired of 8th. No taught at all just plug and play. When you play like that you ca not see the imbalances at all. We all have large collections and units like Wraithknights, Cobra's, etc.. that never see play, so it was nice to play with them.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

PS. I'm not a fan boy. I play maybe 1 40k game a month and stopped doing events. I've been playing AoS almost non stop, its such a better game, even tho they have imbalances too (some armies are 60% winrates like in 40k) its still WAY more fun. Heck i play BoC the "worst" army in AoS and i still have more fun than 40k.

You should not take advice from people who tell you BoC is the worst army in AoS.

For me the real issue was the cards.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

ccs wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

PS. I'm not a fan boy. I play maybe 1 40k game a month and stopped doing events. I've been playing AoS almost non stop, its such a better game, even tho they have imbalances too (some armies are 60% winrates like in 40k) its still WAY more fun. Heck i play BoC the "worst" army in AoS and i still have more fun than 40k.

You should not take advice from people who tell you BoC is the worst army in AoS.

Is that the army with giant mammoth riders? Cause those are pretty dang good. At one point they were super OP. A lot has changes since then though.

 catbarf wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
One where one faction isn't running around with 60-70% winrate and others 30-40% would be good start

There will always be people who complain about perceived imbalances because they personally find it unbalanced, but there's more factors in winning and losing that most people are willing to admit, its easier to just blame the rules.

Lol how lame attempt at white knighting.

Wut? How is that white knighting? Do you even know what that term means?

I would also call it white knighting when someone's response to certain factions having abnormally high or low winrates is basically 'the game is fine, you just suck and blame the rules'. It doesn't address the point at all, it's just deflecting criticism of the game by implying the critic is only complaining because they're bad at the game.

Thats not what I said.

There isn't a community accepted definition of balance. Balance means something different to everyone.

I'm less bothered than most about internal and external balance, and balance of all things against all other things at all times. Im a lot less bothered about it than I used to be years ago. And not because I'm a white knight or I think everything is fine. Ttgs are limited systems, every single one of them has problems and in my mind, you can only expect so much from them and I simply do not believe things like point values are a good tool of implementing balance. I feel the same about any tools that are used as 'universal structures' that are baked into the game like force org limits, unit caps etc. One size fits all universal/official values to denote the in game worth of things that feeds balance simply does not work in my experience. Context makes a mockery of it. (I'm recently quite intrigued by the game-building structures in pp's upcoming warcaster game, or their monsterpocalype game as they represent a very different shift away from 'count the point values up to a defined total, but this is off topic here)

For me,I think 'good enough balance' is the best that can be realistically expected from any game or game designer. And by good enough, I mean some things, but by no means all things, hold up reasonably well against some other things within certain contexts. And that comes with the expectation that the 'context' is an ever shifting concept, that game-building and list-matching (as opposed to individual/blind 'list-building-for-advantage') on the part of players is an essential element of introducting balance to our games, and that, yes, I might also have to put some work in at the front end, talk to the other guy, I might have to play down or accomodate in some way. If that leads to a fair(er) game and helps give back to my community, then I'm happy to do my bit.

I'm pretty sure there's not a lot of folks here who share my perspective on this, but there you go. My £0.02.

It's not just units. Single shot weapons are total trash in 8th. I can't comprehend how GW thinks this is okay.

Deadnight wrote:
There isn't a community accepted definition of balance. Balance means something different to everyone.

I'm less bothered than most about internal and external balance, and balance of all things against all other things at all times. Im a lot less bothered about it than I used to be years ago. And not because I'm a white knight or I think everything is fine. Ttgs are limited systems, every single one of them has problems and in my mind, you can only expect so much from them and I simply do not believe things like point values are a good tool of implementing balance. I feel the same about any tools that are used as 'universal structures' that are baked into the game like force org limits, unit caps etc. One size fits all universal/official values to denote the in game worth of things that feeds balance simply does not work in my experience. Context makes a mockery of it. (I'm recently quite intrigued by the game-building structures in pp's upcoming warcaster game, or their monsterpocalype game as they represent a very different shift away from 'count the point values up to a defined total, but this is off topic here)

For me,I think 'good enough balance' is the best that can be realistically expected from any game or game designer. And by good enough, I mean some things, but by no means all things, hold up reasonably well against some other things within certain contexts. And that comes with the expectation that the 'context' is an ever shifting concept, that game-building and list-matching (as opposed to individual/blind 'list-building-for-advantage') on the part of players is an essential element of introducting balance to our games, and that, yes, I might also have to put some work in at the front end, talk to the other guy, I might have to play down or accomodate in some way. If that leads to a fair(er) game and helps give back to my community, then I'm happy to do my bit.

I'm pretty sure there's not a lot of folks here who share my perspective on this, but there you go. My £0.02.

I think you can expect more from GW, or should be able to.

For something like MEdge, which is a free rules system made by a relatively small and new group of people, a lot more leeway should be there than a multi-million dollar company that's got decades of experience.

ccs wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

PS. I'm not a fan boy. I play maybe 1 40k game a month and stopped doing events. I've been playing AoS almost non stop, its such a better game, even tho they have imbalances too (some armies are 60% winrates like in 40k) its still WAY more fun. Heck i play BoC the "worst" army in AoS and i still have more fun than 40k.

You should not take advice from people who tell you BoC is the worst army in AoS.

Im one of the top BoC players, i take them to GT's i know how bad they are. By CoS is leaps and bounds better, so much so its not even funny. In events with less than a 40% winrate, the lowest winrate of any battletome. I personally think they are are only a little under powered but the community as a whole knows they are bad outside of board control (which is how you win with them). Its 160 models that only 26 will deal any damage, the other 100+ will move, advance, and put in a place just to die lol.

For those that don't know, its like playing 140 Gants, 3 Neurothropes, 1 genestealer unit, and 1 Warrior Prime. Can it win? Yeah, will it deal a lot of damage? No not really, will it feel good or strong? Not at all. I personally like playing that way so its fine for me, for most players its not fine at all.

I don't understand how GW hasn't written a really tight rules set on accident by now.

Considering this thread is now 4 pages long, we can pretty definitively say: No.

 JNAProductions wrote:

]I think you can expect more from GW, or should be able to.

For something like MEdge, which is a free rules system made by a relatively small and new group of people, a lot more leeway should be there than a multi-million dollar company that's got decades of experience.

I think it's more complicated. Good is good, Bad is bad. Doesn't matter if it comes from small or large. I think it's unfair and more than a bit hypocritical to criticise gw for doing 'x', but then turn a blind eye and turn down the rage when company y does 'x'. Not that gw hasn't done plenty bad things - they have, and do.They're a ruthless profit driven company. Then again, plenty other players in this industry are just as bad. Privateer press are much smaller and have made some spectacularly boneheaded decisions over the last five years, including price gouging, retailer screwing etc. You come across plenty kickstarter horror stories as well. Small =\= heroic, and I will judge them on the quality of their product not the size of their operation.

Now, in terms of expecting more, I could be cheeky and say 'define 'more'?' what do you mean by that? What I expect from gw is great, to outstanding models and a functional rules set that me and my friends can tinker with. I've long since learned never to value gw for their rules. So I don't. So I could therefore say I already get what I want from them. I could argue I don't really need 'more' from them. Smaller games from smaller companies can be great, and I've played plenty to know this. I am not blind to the other offerings of our hobby. Some are true gems.

But I do get what you mean. I could ask for 'more' in some areas. I like my rules to be written clearly. I like rules like I want my power. Green and clean. Gw do have a long way to go here. That said, while other rules sets are technically better, and pp's WMH and Corvus belli's infinity (probably the most technicallly brilliant wargame on the market, at least in my opinion...) come to mind, I am genuinely left cold by them, and just am not interested in playing them. For all the times that i loved playing WMH, I am just not interested in the game any more. As for infinity, the complexity is a genuine turn off for me. Ironically, it's the simpler games that I enjoy now. the most fun I've had in terms of gaming these last few years has been gw games - shadespire and warcry are very good fun and the old lotr sbg is a brilliant little gem if you wield it right. But I'm getting off topic here and I apologise.

Lack of balance in a game to me isn't necessarily the greatest turn off, provided that we, as players have the scope within that game, and it's mechanics to build interesting games, and/or interesting scenarios, that the game allows for immersionor that other things are there that I value equally as much as 'balance'. For me, ninety-something percent stems from a players approach to their game.

Cheers.

Well yes, but different standards apply.

If your friend decides he wants to design a wargame, I wouldn't expect him to make a well-balanced game on his first go, or his second, or his third, or really for quite a long while. Because he's one guy, working with minimal resources.

GW is not that. GW should be held to higher standards than the little guy, because they're the big guy. And, more than that, they charge substantial money for their rules. If I'm paying a premium for rules, I expect a premium product. I don't think that's unreasonable.

Absolutely not. For example, in my group, "balance" is a term of derision. We play scenarios and campaigns and totally ignore points, using 40k power levels and AOS wounds (or open war force points) as a rough guide for playing said scenarios and campaigns. The best part of gaming is the experience.

Plus the fact that GW games are random-dominant and by definition are impossible to achieve a mythological "balance". Even if it had zero random determiners and was a rebranded Chess, there'd be no "balance" unless worldwide ELO was used.

 judgedoug wrote:
Absolutely not. For example, in my group, "balance" is a term of derision. We play scenarios and campaigns and totally ignore points, using 40k power levels and AOS wounds (or open war force points) as a rough guide for playing said scenarios and campaigns. The best part of gaming is the experience.

Plus the fact that GW games are random-dominant and by definition are impossible to achieve a mythological "balance". Even if it had zero random determiners and was a rebranded Chess, there'd be no "balance" unless worldwide ELO was used.

I don't think you understand what's meant by balance.

A balanced game, in this instance, is one in which two players who know the rules playing against each other will have the primary determinant of victory be skill. Yes, sometimes people get lucky or unlucky enough to win/lose a game where there was a hefty skill difference, but that should not be the norm. What it is NOT is saying that two players will always have a 50% win rate against each other.

Given that the thread is about whether or not we all agree on the definition of "balance" I think the fact that we've got people lecturing each other on whether their definition of "balance" is correct indicates that no, we don't.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Given that the thread is about whether or not we all agree on the definition of "balance" I think the fact that we've got people lecturing each other on whether their definition of "balance" is correct indicates that no, we don't.

Most pwoplw will agree on a definition of balance, at least in broad terms. What we have here are the usual naysayers claiming that it is just too hard and disrupting the discussion.

Funny thing is even GW agrees with this general idea of balance (similar win rates, no one unit too prevalent). Their problem is that they either fail to implement it correctly or choose to create imbalance as a way to keep the game “dynamic”.

I am genuinely confused at the people who say "if lists are balanced, why play? It is a coin flip."

The reason to play is to test your *player skill* obviously. It is only a coin flip if you and your opponent are EXACTLY evenly matched skillwise - and then the game would probably actually be quite engaging with fantastic moves on both sides.

I just don't get the criticism of a perfectly balanced game being "boring". It is only boring if the players are automata following a script and have no distinct styles or flourishes of their own...

The whole POINT of being better balanced is to make lists matter less (or not at all) and player skill matter more....

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I am genuinely confused at the people who say "if lists are balanced, why play? It is a coin flip."

To be fair it depends on how much player skill actually matters past that point.

You flip a coin to go first in chess and a good player will beat a bad player either way. You flip a coin to go first in 40k with two equally balanced alpha strike armies and one of you may have just lost, dice willing. It's easy to become jaded.

A.T. wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I am genuinely confused at the people who say "if lists are balanced, why play? It is a coin flip."

To be fair it depends on how much player skill actually matters past that point.

You flip a coin to go first in chess and a good player will beat a bad player either way. You flip a coin to go first in 40k with two equally balanced alpha strike armies and one of you may have just lost, dice willing. It's easy to become jaded.

Which gets to a whole 'nother design paradigm question that's divorced from balance entirely (i.e. turn structure and the role of dice). Generally, though, "perfect balance" is asserted to be boring, which I just don't see. Perfect balance is exactly the condition where tactical, in-game play skill is tested more than mathematical pre-game listbuilding skill.

Some people may prefer pre-game listbuilding be the real challenge of 40k and the execution of game itself to be comparatively irrelevant, but that makes me wonder why we're playing a wargame at all and not just plugging units into spreadsheets with the random() function to represent dicerolls.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

A.T. wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I am genuinely confused at the people who say "if lists are balanced, why play? It is a coin flip."

To be fair it depends on how much player skill actually matters past that point.

You flip a coin to go first in chess and a good player will beat a bad player either way. You flip a coin to go first in 40k with two equally balanced alpha strike armies and one of you may have just lost, dice willing. It's easy to become jaded.

Which gets to a whole 'nother design paradigm question that's divorced from balance entirely (i.e. turn structure and the role of dice). Generally, though, "perfect balance" is asserted to be boring, which I just don't see. Perfect balance is exactly the condition where tactical, in-game play skill is tested more than mathematical pre-game listbuilding skill.

Some people may prefer pre-game listbuilding be the real challenge of 40k and the execution of game itself to be comparatively irrelevant, but that makes me wonder why we're playing a wargame at all and not just plugging units into spreadsheets with the random() function to represent dicerolls.

The usual problem, I think, is that things like chess get held up as examples of well-balanced games, and people start conflating "balance" (a property of a game where you're presented with an interesting variety of choices rather than one obvious choice and a load of bad ones) with "symmetry" (a property of a game where both players have identical starting configurations), and then they start thinking that since balance = symmetry people arguing for balance must necessarily arguing for armies to be bland and identical.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

A.T. wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I am genuinely confused at the people who say "if lists are balanced, why play? It is a coin flip."

To be fair it depends on how much player skill actually matters past that point.

You flip a coin to go first in chess and a good player will beat a bad player either way. You flip a coin to go first in 40k with two equally balanced alpha strike armies and one of you may have just lost, dice willing. It's easy to become jaded.

Which gets to a whole 'nother design paradigm question that's divorced from balance entirely (i.e. turn structure and the role of dice). Generally, though, "perfect balance" is asserted to be boring, which I just don't see. Perfect balance is exactly the condition where tactical, in-game play skill is tested more than mathematical pre-game listbuilding skill.

Some people may prefer pre-game listbuilding be the real challenge of 40k and the execution of game itself to be comparatively irrelevant, but that makes me wonder why we're playing a wargame at all and not just plugging units into spreadsheets with the random() function to represent dicerolls.

The usual problem, I think, is that things like chess get held up as examples of well-balanced games, and people start conflating "balance" (a property of a game where you're presented with an interesting variety of choices rather than one obvious choice and a load of bad ones) with "symmetry" (a property of a game where both players have identical starting configurations), and then they start thinking that since balance = symmetry people arguing for balance must necessarily arguing for armies to be bland and identical.

Yes, and that's maddening. And they keep on doing it.

Martel732 wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
...The usual problem, I think, is that things like chess get held up as examples of well-balanced games, and people start conflating "balance" (a property of a game where you're presented with an interesting variety of choices rather than one obvious choice and a load of bad ones) with "symmetry" (a property of a game where both players have identical starting configurations), and then they start thinking that since balance = symmetry people arguing for balance must necessarily arguing for armies to be bland and identical.

Yes, and that's maddening. And they keep on doing it.

Because we keep throwing "balance" at them without explaining the difference properly. Words may mean different things to different people (compare "fanny" in British English to American English), which is why we're having this discussion.

If someone doesn't understand what you're saying you can try and find another way to say the same thing instead of getting snippy about how you're "correct" and it's their fault for not parsing it the way you meant it.

Maybe. Most of the time no here, it seems like willful ignorance. They know full well what we mean, but they have to get the chess dig in anyway.

Martel732 wrote:
Maybe. Most of the time no here, it seems like willful ignorance. They know full well what we mean, but they have to get the chess dig in anyway.

I'm reasonably certain that you know full well that not everyone plays Blood Angels, but you still love to jump into every thread and complain about how crap they are in your local meta whether or not it's relevant to the discussion.

You think that's comparable? I'm not deliberately misunderstanding words to bolster my viewpoint.

In theory a perfectly balanced game where player skill is the main determinant would be best.

In practice though I'm not sure how you'd ever measure player skill - and the issue is that a system which purely concerns itself with faction win rates would have to reduce the game down to a point where player skill was largely eliminated.

In practice I believe - foolhardy or otherwise - that GW would design a better game, where there were no trap units, there were no trap chapter tactics, there were no trap relics or warlord traits. I doubt however you would get 50-55% win rates in the best factions if this was the case - and a meta is still likely to exist, based on either what certain factions can't counter, or what certain factions are bad at countering. See most computer games.

But if things are close enough, its certainly better than now, and at least would leave you feeling like your army was okay in itself - even if bringing no anti-tank weapons against a mech wall would leave you a bit screwed.

Theoretically I'd like to see balance to cull skews, and encourage a multi-component TAC list drawn from across the faction but I don't know how you'd do it and almost every game I can think of doesn't work this way. Also I know some people think highlander is ugly, gib spam.

Tyel wrote:
In theory a perfectly balanced game where player skill is the main determinant would be best.

In practice though I'm not sure how you'd ever measure player skill - and the issue is that a system which purely concerns itself with faction win rates would have to reduce the game down to a point where player skill was largely eliminated.

In practice I believe - foolhardy or otherwise - that GW would design a better game, where there were no trap units, there were no trap chapter tactics, there were no trap relics or warlord traits. I doubt however you would get 50-55% win rates in the best factions if this was the case - and a meta is still likely to exist, based on either what certain factions can't counter, or what certain factions are bad at countering. See most computer games.

But if things are close enough, its certainly better than now, and at least would leave you feeling like your army was okay in itself - even if bringing no anti-tank weapons against a mech wall would leave you a bit screwed.

Theoretically I'd like to see balance to cull skews, and encourage a multi-component TAC list drawn from across the faction but I don't know how you'd do it and almost every game I can think of doesn't work this way. Also I know some people think highlander is ugly, gib spam.

Yeah-perfect balance is not possible in a game like 40k. Or most any game, really.

But GW could be doing WAY better than they are now. They have the resources.

Martel732 wrote:
You think that's comparable? I'm not deliberately misunderstanding words to bolster my viewpoint.

If you think people who use a different narrow definition of a broad/vague word than you do are being deliberately obtuse to annoy you why are you talking to them? They're just there to push your buttons.

Tyel wrote:In theory a perfectly balanced game where player skill is the main determinant would be best.

In practice though I'm not sure how you'd ever measure player skill - and the issue is that a system which purely concerns itself with faction win rates would have to reduce the game down to a point where player skill was largely eliminated.

Not if the data is gathered across the whole playerbase. If the average winrate for a faction is 48%, that means bad players are winning, say, 30% of the time, and good players are winning, say, 60% of the time, while REALLY GOOD players can win 80% and really bad players win 10%. The average will still be 48%, and the game will be balanced because this is possible with all armies.

This is predicated on the assumption that all players of each faction range from very good to very bad, and that you don't end up with factions only played by bad players or only played by good players. But I think that's not an unreasonable assumption.

Tyel wrote:In practice I believe - foolhardy or otherwise - that GW would design a better game, where there were no trap units, there were no trap chapter tactics, there were no trap relics or warlord traits. I doubt however you would get 50-55% win rates in the best factions if this was the case - and a meta is still likely to exist, based on either what certain factions can't counter, or what certain factions are bad at countering. See most computer games.

Most computer games go for perfect imbalance rather than perfect balance in order to keep things interesting and sell stuff. In a well-designed tabletop game, new edition releases could keep things interesting by opening up new and different tactics (for example, the change to Fleet/Run in 5th edition from its iteration in 4th wasn't unbalanced but shook up the way the game was played) - and a balanced game might sell better because unlike a computer game, you can't just swap factions/champions/builds on a whim; it takes loads of money and effort and emotional investment.

Tyel wrote:But if things are close enough, its certainly better than now, and at least would leave you feeling like your army was okay in itself - even if bringing no anti-tank weapons against a mech wall would leave you a bit screwed.

Theoretically I'd like to see balance to cull skews, and encourage a multi-component TAC list drawn from across the faction but I don't know how you'd do it and almost every game I can think of doesn't work this way. Also I know some people think highlander is ugly, gib spam.

See, I am one of the people that likes spam in some armies (Imperial Guard should serve spam to the soldiers it spams to man the tanks it spams to fight the spammed wars it fights), and not others (no two daemons are alike, after all).

Tyel wrote:
In practice I believe - foolhardy or otherwise - that GW would design a better game, where there were no trap units, there were no trap chapter tactics, there were no trap relics or warlord traits.

The concept of trap features to a codex is probably the most prevalent concept to reemerge in these discussions really.

In regards to winrate, it is mostly impossible to get the match-up win-lose% down to a reasonable medium due to a number of factors. The most difficult to reconcile of these, in my opinion is the options or 'theme' of your army being dictated by fluff.

Theming is what 40K does well but isnt created with the win conditions of the game in mind. I think a meaningful overarching category to my earlier statement

- All units within each respective codex being playable. In this case I will say “Breaking Even” (Pt Investment is roughly equivalent value-gained). Either other extreme being a point of failure.

Is something like
- Codexs define their win conditions and provide the features to accomplish those conditions.

This is probably a bit divisive and thus, unrefined but something to this affect. Also allies generally makes this 'codex' talk a little silly but humor me. Hard enough to define balance rules when there are 20 individual factions let alone 20^2 lol.

 Halfton wrote:

- All units within each respective codex being playable. In this case I will say “Breaking Even” (Pt Investment is roughly equivalent value-gained). Either other extreme being a point of failure.

Is something like
- Codexs define their win conditions and provide the features to accomplish those conditions.

This is probably a bit divisive and thus, unrefined but something to this affect. Also allies generally makes this 'codex' talk a little silly but humor me. Hard enough to define balance rules when there are 20 individual factions let alone 20^2 lol.

Not if everyone gets pure-faction buffs on the level of Doctrines, or if they copy over the allied points limit idea out of Sigmar.

I don't think that this was about pron; I think that it was about obscenity.

I think that balance is established with stablized expectations.
With stable expectations, adjustments can be made.

This is one way that additional realism might help with achieving balance, because it helps to stabilize expectations.

Once we know what to expect, then adjustments can be made to meet desired expectations.

And again, these expectations are imported from everyday experience, so realism is perhaps an aid.

I'm one of the guys who may have made a statement that was taken as "Balance is boring," so I'd like to provide context and explain why I made the comment I made.

I don't think that balance is boring- it can actually be exciting.

It's the way SOME people suggest that we achieve balance is boring. That's because many people suggest things that make the game universe boring. Like suggesting fewer factions. Boring. Like eliminating Strategems. Boring. Like eliminating units. Boring.

Balance? Not boring.

Getting to it by reducing the very detailed universe we have to the fewest possible factions, units and rules in the name of balance.

No thanks. Boring as heck for me personally. It's depth and inclusion of obscure factions, odd ball units and rules to support literally anything you want to do in a game are the things that make 40k better than other games, and in fact, make it not a game, but a family of games that share a persistent galaxy.

If you can balance within that, great. I think we all want that.

But if you start to compromise the detail of the galaxy within which this family of games exists, and you limit players options to achieve that balance, for folks like me, and a lot of the other folks commenting here, the trade off isn't worth it.

For people who want different things out of the game than I do (valid points of view, all of them, BTW), they might be inclined to say exactly the opposite; what they want is a fair game. To them, detail and immersion is nice, but they don't want that to compromise the "fairness" of the game play.

I understand and accept the validity of it. I have a different point of view; it is equally valid, and it would be nice of some of the over venomous balance mongers would just acknowledge the validity of the viewpoint. They don't have to agree- that's their choice and preference.

I also feel like people who play competitive should TRY an escalation campaign. It kills me how many have never tried, yet they post so much about how they are hating playing it the way they choose to play it. I mean, if you've tried it, and you don't like it, fine.

But it's frustrating having to tell these folks over and over again that the things you hate are there for people who play the game in different ways, and that if you played the game that way, you'd understand why the rules you hate work for other people.

My favourite are the ones who keep trying to argue that 40k is bad in comparison to X-Wing. To be fair, I haven't seen one of those posts in a long time. Maybe they took my advice, and since they liked X-Wing, they just decided to play it instead of trying to make the game I like into X-Wing.

PenitentJake wrote:
...For people who want different things out of the game than I do (valid points of view, all of them, BTW), they might be inclined to say exactly the opposite; what they want is a fair game. To them, detail and immersion is nice, but they don't want that to compromise the "fairness" of the game play...

I find your viewpoint overly binary, and I've stressed the key point here.

I love options, detail, and immersion. I don't want to get rid of options, detail, and immersion. I don't want to delete units or delete factions. What I do want is for GW to stop making useless options (why play Deathwatch when standard Marines have more stuff and are better at the things the Deathwatch are supposed to be good at?), trap options (why is there a Daemons Codex when GW insists on designing the four Daemon sub-factions to interact more with CSM than with each other?), or "adding detail" with nonsensical restrictions (let's face it, the only reason why standard Terminators can't mix weapons is because it'd make Deathwing less "special").

"Balance", to me, is not about cutting options out. It's about making the options that exist better instead of cannibalizing existing stuff to sell new models that are more powerful.

 Sim-Life wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
One where one faction isn't running around with 60-70% winrate and others 30-40% would be good start

There will always be people who complain about perceived imbalances because they personally find it unbalanced, but there's more factors in winning and losing that most people are willing to admit, its easier to just blame the rules.

I always find the best answer to these threads is delivered within the first two or three answers. This was it this time.

The short answer is no, the long answer is hell no.

AngryAngel80 wrote:
The short answer is no, the long answer is hell no.

Is the very long answer "heeeellllll noooooooooo"?

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
One where one faction isn't running around with 60-70% winrate and others 30-40% would be good start

There will always be people who complain about perceived imbalances because they personally find it unbalanced, but there's more factors in winning and losing that most people are willing to admit, its easier to just blame the rules.

I always find the best answer to these threads is delivered within the first two or three answers. This was it this time.

Top notch white knighting at its finest!

I haven't even read this thread (as was the point of my post), yet somehow I know without reading it you guys are on some unbearably obnoxious crusade again, where just floating the mere concept that you may not be flawless as a player, really means everyone must be white knighting for GW or some nonsense.

As one of the harshest detractors of GW I know, we can safely put your strawman to bed. Turns out you're probably just not as great at the game as you think you are.

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
One where one faction isn't running around with 60-70% winrate and others 30-40% would be good start

There will always be people who complain about perceived imbalances because they personally find it unbalanced, but there's more factors in winning and losing that most people are willing to admit, its easier to just blame the rules.

I always find the best answer to these threads is delivered within the first two or three answers. This was it this time.

Top notch white knighting at its finest!

I haven't even read this thread (as was the point of my post), yet somehow I know without reading it you guys are on some unbearably obnoxious crusade again, where just floating the mere concept that you may not be flawless as a player, really means everyone must be white knighting for GW or some nonsense.

As one of the harshest detractors of GW I know, we can safely put your strawman to bed. Turns out you're probably just not as great at the game as you think you are.

Is it possible that they are bad players and the game is unbalanced? Or would you say 40k in its current state is a balanced game in which player skill is the prime determination of a game between, say, the Daemons codex and Ultramarines?

Not really.
Spoke to a GW rep at their local store one time pointing out how a basic custodian could trounce a chaos lord at 30pts cheaper and he told me that armies aren't supposed to be point balanced against one another, just in regards to their own codex.
Similar with the Executioner. Did an in depth comparison of Primaris Executioner vs 2 hammerheads under all circumstances (Rerolls and markerlights included) and despite coming in about the same points cost and the hammerheads having it 2 on 1, the executioner wins every time.

Tristanleo wrote:
Not really.
Spoke to a GW rep at their local store one time pointing out how a basic custodian could trounce a chaos lord at 30pts cheaper and he told me that armies aren't supposed to be point balanced against one another, just in regards to their own codex.
Similar with the Executioner. Did an in depth comparison of Primaris Executioner vs 2 hammerheads under all circumstances (Rerolls and markerlights included) and despite coming in about the same points cost and the hammerheads having it 2 on 1, the executioner wins every time.

Immediately after he said that about units only intended to be balanced within their own codexes, you should have shown him a Leman Russ vs. a Vanquisher.

Tristanleo wrote:
Not really.
Spoke to a GW rep at their local store one time pointing out how a basic custodian could trounce a chaos lord at 30pts cheaper and he told me that armies aren't supposed to be point balanced against one another, just in regards to their own codex.
Similar with the Executioner. Did an in depth comparison of Primaris Executioner vs 2 hammerheads under all circumstances (Rerolls and markerlights included) and despite coming in about the same points cost and the hammerheads having it 2 on 1, the executioner wins every time.

And that is why GW fails.

Martel732 wrote:
And that is why GW fails.

It's not unreasonable for units to cost more or less in context.

Though it is increasingly difficult to have a defined 'army balance' as books get larger, allies and unit selection gets more permissive, and everything is cross-buffed by auras, stratagems, and other sweeping bonuses - and it is on GW for putting themselves in that situation.

They need to at least look at things like guardsmen vs cultists. CSM vs tacticals. Etc.

A.T. wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
And that is why GW fails.

It's not unreasonable for units to cost more or less in context.

Though it is increasingly difficult to have a defined 'army balance' as books get larger, allies and unit selection gets more permissive, and everything is cross-buffed by auras, stratagems, and other sweeping bonuses - and it is on GW for putting themselves in that situation.

This wouldn't be as bad if GW at least committed to a Standard when they implement a rule, rather than giving units a super-specific better variation on the same rule or applying the rule to one model in an army but not to a functionally similar model in another army.

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
One where one faction isn't running around with 60-70% winrate and others 30-40% would be good start

There will always be people who complain about perceived imbalances because they personally find it unbalanced, but there's more factors in winning and losing that most people are willing to admit, its easier to just blame the rules.

I always find the best answer to these threads is delivered within the first two or three answers. This was it this time.

Top notch white knighting at its finest!

I haven't even read this thread (as was the point of my post), yet somehow I know without reading it you guys are on some unbearably obnoxious crusade again, where just floating the mere concept that you may not be flawless as a player, really means everyone must be white knighting for GW or some nonsense.

As one of the harshest detractors of GW I know, we can safely put your strawman to bed. Turns out you're probably just not as great at the game as you think you are.

I'm fine at the game, it simply isn't a good game though like you're trying to purport to everyone and defend GW to the death and forge the narrative and all that garbage.

What seems missing is a systematic approach to relative faction design. What seems necessary is a chart with X factions and at least X specilizations, then designers spend a set number of points into those specializations. So, in the design process, the eldar have 4 points spent on speed, and the orks spend 3, the marines 2, imperial guard 1 (just a or example). With armor, guard spends 4, marines 3, orks 3, eldar 1... making sure that every faction has specializations that suit their intended play style. Then, these numbers are used to make coefficients modifying points ascriptions to different units. So, a guard tank may be a bit cheaper than a marine tank, though it may perform differently than those of other factions because of other aspects characteristic of the army, in this case speed. So, during the design process, a guard tank unit that moves fast (basically a speed upgrade over a basic tank platform in the guard army in this example) should be more points costly than an eldar tank getting a speed upgrade, for instance. Eldar, on the other hand, would have more costly armor upgrades, heavily armored units may be more expensive or have limitations (for example, the wave serpents have seen such heavy use on so many fronts for so long, that they have become rare! and so while still super effecive, they are more costly or the army is limited to only 3, or some of both...).

 jeff white wrote:
What seems missing is a systematic approach to relative faction design. What seems necessary is a chart with X factions and at least X specilizations, then designers spend a set number of points into those specializations. So, in the design process, the eldar have 4 points spent on speed, and the orks spend 3, the marines 2, imperial guard 1 (just a or example). With armor, guard spends 4, marines 3, orks 3, eldar 1... making sure that every faction has specializations that suit their intended play style. Then, these numbers are used to make coefficients modifying points ascriptions to different units. So, a guard tank may be a bit cheaper than a marine tank, though it may perform differently than those of other factions because of other aspects characteristic of the army, in this case speed. So, during the design process, a guard tank unit that moves fast (basically a speed upgrade over a basic tank platform in the guard army in this example) should be more points costly than an eldar tank getting a speed upgrade, for instance. Eldar, on the other hand, would have more costly armor upgrades, heavily armored units may be more expensive or have limitations (for example, the wave serpents have seen such heavy use on so many fronts for so long, that they have become rare! and so while still super effecive, they are more costly or the army is limited to only 3, or some of both...).

This is a super terrible idea, all this is going to do is make 80% of the 40k range useless, just ban the units that don't fit the MO of an army instead of giving them terrible pts costs. Make every unit conform to the army's playstyle instead and make all units equally pts efficient such that every unit is balanced, no units are useless and every army feels like it's representing the faction it is representing and not just a generic tank list, but bad because CSM are not supposed to have tanks that are as efficient as AM tanks. Instead of saying Craftworlds is a Tanky 1, Fast 4, Killy 3 army you just make every unit somehow fit in with how Craftworlds play, helping them play their mobile tricksy glasscannon playstyle instead of introducing a cool-looking super slow unit for them and then just ensuring it won't ever be played by making it terrible. This is the reason why the big Tau mechs were a mistake, even if they were terrible as your "balancing" doctrine would have made them because they don't fit the Tau fighting doctrine, that would still leave a lot of people with minis they cannot enjoy on the battlefield. How does it make sense for a military to field units that don't fit the tactical doctrines of that military? I don't care how cool the Riptide concept is, it didn't fit, it shouldn't have been made, but after it was making it trash to fix the mistake of developing it is anti-consumer BS.

A better questions is when was this game most balanced...
My opinion and I’ve been playing since the end of 2nd edition...
After the first balance update in 8th when everyone was using the index...guards got the first nerf to commissars but conscripts were still 3ppm.
Guards were still good and conscripts were still good guard was still space marines soup batteries though
Orks were good
Space marines were good
Eldar were good
Knights were good
Tau were good
Tyranids w genecult were good
Chaos demons (mostly nurgle) were good
Ynnari were good


The only crappy army was grey knights but they just got a minor update with one of the first codex they still sucked However but were okay since they were one of the first codex. they only got Outdated and worse since.

But every army had a ton of index options and a ton of conversion options and a ton of variety and everyone was on the same playing field... until nerfs made everyone worse then space marines again and codex creep... of course everyone was complaining space marines suck even though imperial space marines soup was still winning most tournaments... power creep and space marine whining ruined that near perfect balance.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

AngryAngel80 wrote:
The short answer is no, the long answer is hell no.

Is the very long answer "heeeellllll noooooooooo"?

Let's stop exaggerating, jesus. It's "heellll noooo" at best, stop being insane.

gungo wrote:
A better questions is when was this game most balanced...
My opinion and I’ve been playing since the end of 2nd edition...
After the first balance update in 8th when everyone was using the index...guards got the first nerf to commissars but conscripts were still 3ppm.
Guards were still good and conscripts were still good guard was still space marines soup batteries though
Orks were good
Space marines were good
Eldar were good
Knights were good
Tau were good
Tyranids w genecult were good
Chaos demons (mostly nurgle) were good
Ynnari were good

But every army had a ton of index options and a ton of conversion options and a ton of variety and everyone was on the same playing field... until nerfs made everyone worse then space marines again and codex creep... of course everyone was complaining space marines suck even though imperial space marines soup was still winning most tournaments... power creep and space marine whining ruined that near perfect balance.

I'm afraid I can't agree with this idea there was good balance.
Someone can disagree with my history but...

The index was a thing - and people (and so "the internet" found weird combos such as lots of Razorwing Flocks and weird plays with horrors and GW went "NO!"
But we had Guilliman with lots of flyers - nerfed.
Guilliman with lots of razorbacks - nerfed.
Smite Spam armies - nerfed.
A succession of "game breaking codexes" - starting with Guard (leading to nerfs). Eldar Alaitoc Flyers entered the stage (and Ynnari was still going crazy - prompting various nerfs). It was a period of commander and hive tyrant spam which was slowly eliminated, leading to the rule of 3 shortly before the DE codex (top tier on release in April 2018)
Then, June 2018, the Knights Codex. Relatively quickly we enter the pax-Castellan.
Enter 2019, GSC enter the scene and the Castellan is nerfed to death. Period of vague "balance" or at least an evolving meta as Abberants fight flyer spam and all the boyz and "that competitive Chaos build" which has evolved every 3-6 months. Marines are progressively terrible but really they have been that way for over a year, with Grey Knights a sub-tier kind of laughable even when they got their codex joke.
Then Aug 19, New Marines and UM+White Scars enter the scene. Start winning tournaments, performing well. Clearly strong.
Then a month later, IH and RG enter. Take "strong" and turn it to "daft". One month later GW tries to rectify things with a slew of nerfs to IH. It does very little to a codex which rivals WHFB's edition breaking Skaven and Chaos Daemons codexes.
Pax-Marines begins and very soon every tournament where the top 4 are not all Marines is cheered.
Due to GW's unfortunate time problem of writing and printing rules 6-10 months before, CA nerfs a lot of armies which were doing well circa April/May 2019, and have long since fallen to Marine dominance.
In late February 2020, Marine FAQ brought in. Maybe Marines brought under control. Unfortunately within weeks Covid will effectively end tournaments across the globe.
A new meta, with diminished Marines, buffed Grey Knights and Orks, Commander Spam Tau, new Sisters of Battle, now Engine War and the sound of 9th edition remains to be forged.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
One where one faction isn't running around with 60-70% winrate and others 30-40% would be good start

There will always be people who complain about perceived imbalances because they personally find it unbalanced, but there's more factors in winning and losing that most people are willing to admit, its easier to just blame the rules.

I always find the best answer to these threads is delivered within the first two or three answers. This was it this time.

Top notch white knighting at its finest!

I haven't even read this thread (as was the point of my post), yet somehow I know without reading it you guys are on some unbearably obnoxious crusade again, where just floating the mere concept that you may not be flawless as a player, really means everyone must be white knighting for GW or some nonsense.

As one of the harshest detractors of GW I know, we can safely put your strawman to bed. Turns out you're probably just not as great at the game as you think you are.

Is it possible that they are bad players and the game is unbalanced? Or would you say 40k in its current state is a balanced game in which player skill is the prime determination of a game between, say, the Daemons codex and Ultramarines?

Yes. If I as a veteran and daemon player frequently play someone less experienced than me and win frequently due to their inexperience then the less experienced player may think that daemons are unbalanced in this instance because that's their only exposure to the game.

This is what I meant by "factors" beyond just what's printed in the codex (and again I don't JUST mean player experience before anyone decides to hyperfocus on that as a basis for argument). There are more things at work in 40k beyond unit rules and points and people very rarely acknowledge that when discussing balance.

I'm not sure 40k has ever been 'balanced', at least from a tournament point of view, and i think when discussing balance competitive play is the format a lot of people consider. I used to play in 40k tournaments on a fairly regular basis but more recently (the last 10-15 years) i play 40k more casually, and when i want to play a hyper competitive balanced tournament style game, i play infinity. While Infinity is a skirmish game the main difference between it and 40k is it has been designed as a competitive tournament style game, whereas 40k from its inception has been, imo, a beer and pretzels game.

Infinity has free rules (all of them) no auto take or auto ignore units (a few do come close though), there are no net lists, it is absolutely impossible to spam the best units with the best weapons, and even if you could, those units can't complete (generally) whatever the mission objectives are. any unit in the game can kill any other unit in the game. the units are generally well pointed, and at the regular points value of a game you can never take all the stuff you want to. Alpha strikes are almost impossible, and a high risk win/lose strategy. I have never gone into a game and thought at the outset that i am automatically going to win or lose. Infinity also has the benefit of having a really tight ruleset, to the extent of if 2 players disagree on how a rule works, one of them is wrong, and looking up the rule will show that. I've also never had to discuss with my opponent beforehand about what kind of player they are (competitive versus casual) with one or both of us having to tone up or tone down our force. new players are pretty much the exception, but in any game they generally are, infinity has a complex rule set and punishing learning curve which is a major point which ive seen keeps people from playing it. The majority of games i have played have been decided by player skill and knowledge, a few have come down to luck spikes. fewer still have been down to army selection.

40k, in my experience, pretty much fails at everything that infinity succeeds at. As soon as you start to get competitive at 40k, it fails, and fails hard. its just not designed for it, and the bloated mess of rules, inconsistent unit power, and a myriad of other issues which have been discussed in this discussion and many others demonstrate that.

Where 40k is far superior to Infinity is the background fluff, the size of the player base, the freedom to pick pretty much whatever you want for your army, and the freedom to play whatever scenario you want, with whatever forces you want dispensing with points entirely. Infinity is much more restrictive in that regard as the primary focus is competitive play. 40k gives you freedom at the expense of balance, infinity gives you balance at the expense of freedom.

I enjoy both games, for different reasons of course, and this is just my subjective opinion. enjoy your weekend

Except look at factions like DE. What freedom do they have, what with hemorrhaging characters and options...

Except what is 40k doing "casually" that it's winning at? If it didn't have the 30 years of background, what about the rules is actually successful?

Tyel wrote:

gungo wrote:
A better questions is when was this game most balanced...
My opinion and I’ve been playing since the end of 2nd edition...
After the first balance update in 8th when everyone was using the index...guards got the first nerf to commissars but conscripts were still 3ppm.
Guards were still good and conscripts were still good guard was still space marines soup batteries though
Orks were good
Space marines were good
Eldar were good
Knights were good
Tau were good
Tyranids w genecult were good
Chaos demons (mostly nurgle) were good
Ynnari were good

But every army had a ton of index options and a ton of conversion options and a ton of variety and everyone was on the same playing field... until nerfs made everyone worse then space marines again and codex creep... of course everyone was complaining space marines suck even though imperial space marines soup was still winning most tournaments... power creep and space marine whining ruined that near perfect balance.

I'm afraid I can't agree with this idea there was good balance.
Someone can disagree with my history but...

The index was a thing - and people (and so "the internet" found weird combos such as lots of Razorwing Flocks and weird plays with horrors and GW went "NO!"
But we had Guilliman with lots of flyers - nerfed.
Guilliman with lots of razorbacks - nerfed.
Smite Spam armies - nerfed.
A succession of "game breaking codexes" - starting with Guard (leading to nerfs). Eldar Alaitoc Flyers entered the stage (and Ynnari was still going crazy - prompting various nerfs). It was a period of commander and hive tyrant spam which was slowly eliminated, leading to the rule of 3 shortly before the DE codex (top tier on release in April 2018)
Then, June 2018, the Knights Codex. Relatively quickly we enter the pax-Castellan.
Enter 2019, GSC enter the scene and the Castellan is nerfed to death. Period of vague "balance" or at least an evolving meta as Abberants fight flyer spam and all the boyz and "that competitive Chaos build" which has evolved every 3-6 months. Marines are progressively terrible but really they have been that way for over a year, with Grey Knights a sub-tier kind of laughable even when they got their codex joke.
Then Aug 19, New Marines and UM+White Scars enter the scene. Start winning tournaments, performing well. Clearly strong.
Then a month later, IH and RG enter. Take "strong" and turn it to "daft". One month later GW tries to rectify things with a slew of nerfs to IH. It does very little to a codex which rivals WHFB's edition breaking Skaven and Chaos Daemons codexes.
Pax-Marines begins and very soon every tournament where the top 4 are not all Marines is cheered.
Due to GW's unfortunate time problem of writing and printing rules 6-10 months before, CA nerfs a lot of armies which were doing well circa April/May 2019, and have long since fallen to Marine dominance.
In late February 2020, Marine FAQ brought in. Maybe Marines brought under control. Unfortunately within weeks Covid will effectively end tournaments across the globe.
A new meta, with diminished Marines, buffed Grey Knights and Orks, Commander Spam Tau, new Sisters of Battle, now Engine War and the sound of 9th edition remains to be forged.

You just gave 3 year history I’m talking when 8th released after the initial FAQs.
As an example 8th dropped in June 2017
LVO is the first major in January 2018
It had in the top 10
Elder
Ynnari
Blood angles
Space wolves
Guard
Demons

That’s a lot of representation even if there were 3 separate Eldar or ynnari variants
I was fine w smite spam guillimam and razorbacks and conscript spam.. I think that initial round of nerfs just lead to decline in balance.coommander and hive tyrant spam was fine. Razorwing was a problem. Once they nerfed razorwing and commissars I think things were pretty balanced regardless of certain units were spammed to hold up an army.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Except what is 40k doing "casually" that it's winning at? If it didn't have the 30 years of background, what about the rules is actually successful?

Scalability. 40k sort of works at 500pts and sort of works at 3,000pts (outside of a few armies that don't scale properly, mostly Custodes/Knights in small games), most other games start to fail much faster once you get outside the recommended points values. You don't have the flexibility to avoid turning the game into rock-paper-scissors at small points levels, complex interactions take too long to resolve at large points levels, some kind of resource-management game starts to become too important or not important enough...

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Except what is 40k doing "casually" that it's winning at? If it didn't have the 30 years of background, what about the rules is actually successful?

Scalability. 40k sort of works at 500pts and sort of works at 3,000pts (outside of a few armies that don't scale properly, mostly Custodes/Knights in small games), most other games start to fail much faster once you get outside the recommended points values. You don't have the flexibility to avoid turning the game into rock-paper-scissors at small points levels, complex interactions take too long to resolve at large points levels, some kind of resource-management game starts to become too important or not important enough...

Scalability is absolutely debatable. Just because the game CAN be ran doesn't mean it does it well.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

Top notch white knighting at its finest!

I haven't even read this thread (as was the point of my post), yet somehow I know without reading it you guys are on some unbearably obnoxious crusade again, where just floating the mere concept that you may not be flawless as a player, really means everyone must be white knighting for GW or some nonsense.

As one of the harshest detractors of GW I know, we can safely put your strawman to bed. Turns out you're probably just not as great at the game as you think you are.

I'm fine at the game, it simply isn't a good game though like you're trying to purport to everyone and defend GW to the death and forge the narrative and all that garbage.

Errrrrrrrrrr....... what? Like, seriously... what the? That was my first post on this thread... I'm a massive detractor of GW and I've said multiple times the franchise would benefit from a change in ownership.... I don't think I've ever in my life said forge the narrative, or used narrative as a justification for anything ruleswise, I've literally argued for further separation between the two in the past.

Are you just throwing out buzzwords today? As is well known on these forums slayer, you are not exactly the level of player who should be talking about balance lol.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:


Is it possible that they are bad players and the game is unbalanced? Or would you say 40k in its current state is a balanced game in which player skill is the prime determination of a game between, say, the Daemons codex and Ultramarines?

Absolutely it's possible, and that isn't exclusive at all with what Sim-Life was saying. I don't think 40k is a balanced game in every instance, but nor do I think every match-up needs to be 50/50 for good balance because that would likely be even worse design and simply isn't how balance works. Regardless, the main point is that the majority of "undefeatably poor balance!" complaints are actually more like "slight to insignicant advantage to one side or another". This isn't just a 40k thing (though our community is particularly bad for it), but just a thing with gaming in general. Bad players will always blame balance because they aren't capable of understanding their flaws as a player.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Except what is 40k doing "casually" that it's winning at? If it didn't have the 30 years of background, what about the rules is actually successful?

Scalability. 40k sort of works at 500pts and sort of works at 3,000pts (outside of a few armies that don't scale properly, mostly Custodes/Knights in small games), most other games start to fail much faster once you get outside the recommended points values. You don't have the flexibility to avoid turning the game into rock-paper-scissors at small points levels, complex interactions take too long to resolve at large points levels, some kind of resource-management game starts to become too important or not important enough...

Scalability is absolutely debatable. Just because the game CAN be ran doesn't mean it does it well.

He's not saying it scales super well just better then anything else. that's a reasonably fair statement. can you name a game that does it better?

BrianDavion wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Except what is 40k doing "casually" that it's winning at? If it didn't have the 30 years of background, what about the rules is actually successful?

Scalability. 40k sort of works at 500pts and sort of works at 3,000pts (outside of a few armies that don't scale properly, mostly Custodes/Knights in small games), most other games start to fail much faster once you get outside the recommended points values. You don't have the flexibility to avoid turning the game into rock-paper-scissors at small points levels, complex interactions take too long to resolve at large points levels, some kind of resource-management game starts to become too important or not important enough...

Scalability is absolutely debatable. Just because the game CAN be ran doesn't mean it does it well.

He's not saying it scales super well just better then anything else. that's a reasonably fair statement. can you name a game that does it better?

Honestly I think a lot of other games that play in a similar design space scale just fine and better than 40k does. Most games just don’t scale up as often for most gamers.
GW just gets a huge pass and years of support leading to people thinking it’s doing it well.
It’s the same reason people seem to struggle with so many 40k rules but still say they are great an no issues as a common thought, GW got fan support that can cushion there mistakes.

gungo wrote:
You just gave 3 year history I’m talking when 8th released after the initial FAQs.
As an example 8th dropped in June 2017
LVO is the first major in January 2018
It had in the top 10
Elder
Ynnari
Blood angles
Space wolves
Guard
Demons

That’s a lot of representation even if there were 3 separate Eldar or ynnari variants
I was fine w smite spam guillimam and razorbacks and conscript spam.. I think that initial round of nerfs just lead to decline in balance.coommander and hive tyrant spam was fine. Razorwing was a problem. Once they nerfed razorwing and commissars I think things were pretty balanced regardless of certain units were spammed to hold up an army.

Again I'm not sure I can agree. Maybe looking at top 10 is better - but while the 2018 LVO had quite a bit of drama I think 5 of the top 8 were Aeldari lists, 3 of which were very similar in leveraging the same Alaitoc+Ynnari spears/reapers. I guess I should look at the wider tournament - but that's frankly very close to the level of Marine domination enjoyed in 2020 (and Castellan/Aeldari in 2019.) It would take time for the Eldar Codex to really impact the meta - but it was clearly doing so.

But you see my view on balance is a bit more complicated. Because while saying its not great - it also is great.
I think 8th has been far more balanced than 7th, and 6th and 5th and so on.
While you can pick at the fringes - and it may prompt outrage - I can't think of a reasonably well support faction that has been a total trap choice from start to finish in 8th. Grey Knights aside maybe.
Necrons didn't have a good edition - but 2018's CA brought the triple triple doom scythe, triple doomsday ark list, and while it may not be a list that will walk you to 6-0 in a tournament, its certainly viable to play with your friends.
By contrast several factions in 7th just didn't have builds that allowed them to compete against Marines/Eldar/Tau - or were reduced to spamming the one good unit they had.

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

Top notch white knighting at its finest!

I haven't even read this thread (as was the point of my post), yet somehow I know without reading it you guys are on some unbearably obnoxious crusade again, where just floating the mere concept that you may not be flawless as a player, really means everyone must be white knighting for GW or some nonsense.

As one of the harshest detractors of GW I know, we can safely put your strawman to bed. Turns out you're probably just not as great at the game as you think you are.

I'm fine at the game, it simply isn't a good game though like you're trying to purport to everyone and defend GW to the death and forge the narrative and all that garbage.

Errrrrrrrrrr....... what? Like, seriously... what the? That was my first post on this thread... I'm a massive detractor of GW and I've said multiple times the franchise would benefit from a change in ownership.... I don't think I've ever in my life said forge the narrative, or used narrative as a justification for anything ruleswise, I've literally argued for further separation between the two in the past.

Are you just throwing out buzzwords today? As is well known on these forums slayer, you are not exactly the level of player who should be talking about balance lol.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:


Is it possible that they are bad players and the game is unbalanced? Or would you say 40k in its current state is a balanced game in which player skill is the prime determination of a game between, say, the Daemons codex and Ultramarines?

Absolutely it's possible, and that isn't exclusive at all with what Sim-Life was saying. I don't think 40k is a balanced game in every instance, but nor do I think every match-up needs to be 50/50 for good balance because that would likely be even worse design and simply isn't how balance works. Regardless, the main point is that the majority of "undefeatably poor balance!" complaints are actually more like "slight to insignicant advantage to one side or another". This isn't just a 40k thing (though our community is particularly bad for it), but just a thing with gaming in general. Bad players will always blame balance because they aren't capable of understanding their flaws as a player.

What are you even babbling about? Bad balance is absolutely the main issue, not "player skill". The game isn't deep with mechanics. Imagine making this argument for someone using Grey Knights before they got their Psychic Awakening garbage, because that's what you're doing. If you're actually a detractor like you say you are, you'd not make the argument you're trying to even ONCE.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

What are you even babbling about?

Nah. Nope. YOU do not get to open your post like this and expect it to be taken at all seriously, or in my case, even read. Seriously look at your posts so far. Not just this thread. You've sacrificed the right to accuse others of babbling, or being biased, or whatever nonsense you have dreamt up in slayer land today.

 vict0988 wrote:

 jeff white wrote:
What seems missing is a systematic approach to relative faction design. What seems necessary is a chart with X factions and at least X specilizations, then designers spend a set number of points into those specializations. So, in the design process, the eldar have 4 points spent on speed, and the orks spend 3, the marines 2, imperial guard 1 (just a or example). With armor, guard spends 4, marines 3, orks 3, eldar 1... making sure that every faction has specializations that suit their intended play style. Then, these numbers are used to make coefficients modifying points ascriptions to different units. So, a guard tank may be a bit cheaper than a marine tank, though it may perform differently than those of other factions because of other aspects characteristic of the army, in this case speed. So, during the design process, a guard tank unit that moves fast (basically a speed upgrade over a basic tank platform in the guard army in this example) should be more points costly than an eldar tank getting a speed upgrade, for instance. Eldar, on the other hand, would have more costly armor upgrades, heavily armored units may be more expensive or have limitations (for example, the wave serpents have seen such heavy use on so many fronts for so long, that they have become rare! and so while still super effecive, they are more costly or the army is limited to only 3, or some of both...).

This is a super terrible idea, all this is going to do is make 80% of the 40k range useless, just ban the units that don't fit the MO of an army instead of giving them terrible pts costs. Make every unit conform to the army's playstyle instead and make all units equally pts efficient such that every unit is balanced, no units are useless and every army feels like it's representing the faction it is representing and not just a generic tank list, but bad because CSM are not supposed to have tanks that are as efficient as AM tanks. Instead of saying Craftworlds is a Tanky 1, Fast 4, Killy 3 army you just make every unit somehow fit in with how Craftworlds play, helping them play their mobile tricksy glasscannon playstyle instead of introducing a cool-looking super slow unit for them and then just ensuring it won't ever be played by making it terrible. This is the reason why the big Tau mechs were a mistake, even if they were terrible as your "balancing" doctrine would have made them because they don't fit the Tau fighting doctrine, that would still leave a lot of people with minis they cannot enjoy on the battlefield. How does it make sense for a military to field units that don't fit the tactical doctrines of that military? I don't care how cool the Riptide concept is, it didn't fit, it shouldn't have been made, but after it was making it trash to fix the mistake of developing it is anti-consumer BS.

Cannot ignore this fast enough. Thanks for the kneejerk reaction.

I hate tripoint, and that was coloring my play. Problem is, I still hate it, and so hate playing 8th ed with BA.

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

What are you even babbling about?

Nah. Nope. YOU do not get to open your post like this and expect it to be taken at all seriously, or in my case, even read. Seriously look at your posts so far. Not just this thread. You've sacrificed the right to accuse others of babbling, or being biased, or whatever nonsense you have dreamt up in slayer land today.

So let me get this straight: you think I'm somehow bad at the game and that's why I complain, even though the same complaints are made by other players, some of which could be better than me, which means they would have to be bad players too, which means no good player complains about the game.

Does that REALLY make sense to you?

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

What are you even babbling about?

Nah. Nope. YOU do not get to open your post like this and expect it to be taken at all seriously, or in my case, even read. Seriously look at your posts so far. Not just this thread. You've sacrificed the right to accuse others of babbling, or being biased, or whatever nonsense you have dreamt up in slayer land today.

So let me get this straight: you think I'm somehow bad at the game and that's why I complain, even though the same complaints are made by other players, some of which could be better than me, which means they would have to be bad players too, which means no good player complains about the game.

Does that REALLY make sense to you?

I think you have an awful understanding of this game at a competitive level, and whether or not better players agree with you, does not mean you understand the gameplay complaints you are making.

On top of that, you've gone out of your way to target me in this thread, when all I did was quote someone else and say I agree that a lot of these complaints are often due to a lack of player skill. The underlying point is that even in a perfectly balanced game, there would still be lower level players who complain because they lost. It was never about you until you interjected yourself in as a focal point of that, but yeah, your post history would serve as an excellent example of what we were saying, so I guess that's why you took it as addressed to you.

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

What are you even babbling about?

Nah. Nope. YOU do not get to open your post like this and expect it to be taken at all seriously, or in my case, even read. Seriously look at your posts so far. Not just this thread. You've sacrificed the right to accuse others of babbling, or being biased, or whatever nonsense you have dreamt up in slayer land today.

So let me get this straight: you think I'm somehow bad at the game and that's why I complain, even though the same complaints are made by other players, some of which could be better than me, which means they would have to be bad players too, which means no good player complains about the game.

Does that REALLY make sense to you?

I think you have an awful understanding of this game at a competitive level, and whether or not better players agree with you, does not mean you understand the gameplay complaints you are making.

On top of that, you've gone out of your way to target me in this thread, when all I did was quote someone else and say I agree that a lot of these complaints are often due to a lack of player skill. The underlying point is that even in a perfectly balanced game, there would still be lower level players who complain because they lost. It was never about you until you interjected yourself in as a focal point of that, but yeah, your post history would serve as an excellent example of what we were saying, so I guess that's why you took it as addressed to you.

Seeing as nobody is complaining about balance in Chess that's DEFINITELY wrong, so thanks for playing. In reality, the only people that can defend GW at this point ARE the white Knights. 40k isn't a deep a game as you'd like that "player skill" is all that. GW escalates a few broken stuff with further releases (after all, we still had people using the dumb "wHaT aBoUt PlAyEr SkilL" when Scatterbikes and Gladius were a thing in case your memory is short), and then we get the whole "the game is what you make it" and "forge the narrative". Extreme pregame negotiations are proof a wargame game is badly written.

But no, you wanna rag on saying it's because the players are bad LMAO

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

What are you even babbling about?

Nah. Nope. YOU do not get to open your post like this and expect it to be taken at all seriously, or in my case, even read. Seriously look at your posts so far. Not just this thread. You've sacrificed the right to accuse others of babbling, or being biased, or whatever nonsense you have dreamt up in slayer land today.

So let me get this straight: you think I'm somehow bad at the game and that's why I complain, even though the same complaints are made by other players, some of which could be better than me, which means they would have to be bad players too, which means no good player complains about the game.

Does that REALLY make sense to you?

I think you have an awful understanding of this game at a competitive level, and whether or not better players agree with you, does not mean you understand the gameplay complaints you are making.

On top of that, you've gone out of your way to target me in this thread, when all I did was quote someone else and say I agree that a lot of these complaints are often due to a lack of player skill. The underlying point is that even in a perfectly balanced game, there would still be lower level players who complain because they lost. It was never about you until you interjected yourself in as a focal point of that, but yeah, your post history would serve as an excellent example of what we were saying, so I guess that's why you took it as addressed to you.

Seeing as nobody is complaining about balance in Chess that's DEFINITELY wrong, so thanks for playing.

Chess is not a perfectly balanced game. It isn't even the most balanced game, there is like a 5% win rate for advantage for first turn. And it's a very common thing for awful players to "blame black" when they lose. Nice try though.

 Nitro Zeus wrote:
In reality, the only people that can defend GW at this point ARE the white Knights. 40k isn't a deep a game as you'd like that "player skill" is all that. GW escalates a few broken stuff with further releases (after all, we still had people using the dumb "wHaT aBoUt PlAyEr SkilL" when Scatterbikes and Gladius were a thing in case your memory is short), and then we get the whole "the game is what you make it" and "forge the narrative". Extreme pregame negotiations are proof a wargame game is badly written.

But no, you wanna rag on saying it's because the players are bad LMAO

I didn't defend GW. I criticised poor players, I also criticised GW. I think the only thing worse than your understanding of the game is your comprehension.

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

I didn't defend GW. I criticised poor players, I also criticised GW. I think the only thing worse than your understanding of the game is your comprehension.

Now, that doesn't contribute to a nice discussion, does it?

Is your point that some sore losers may blame balance on ANY game?

Is slayer's point that, while that might be true, wh40k's balance is bad enough that this is second order in the current discussion?

Grey40k wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

I didn't defend GW. I criticised poor players, I also criticised GW. I think the only thing worse than your understanding of the game is your comprehension.

Now, that doesn't contribute to a nice discussion, does it?

Is your point that some sore losers may blame balance on ANY game?

Is slayer's point that, while that might be true, wh40k's balance is bad enough that this is second order in the current discussion?

My point was indeed the first thing you said.

Slayers point was, quite unmistakeably, that being of this opinion means I'm "white Knighting" for GW. Not the second thing that you said at all.

Balance in your local scene is always going to be an adventure in keeping track of people, not faction power.

The people who bring unoptimized lists and have a good time go on one list.

The people who bring BobbyG, 8 snipers, and a fourth detachment of assassins to fight your silly character heavy mono DG army go on the "aw shucks, work scheduled me, can't play, please read the subtext" list next to the guy running unpainted gatekeeper list du-jour.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also: Playing at lower point values (1000-ish) that is supported in 9th edition by more than a "you can play this way I guess" line in the BRB will help a ton.

Tournaments will probably still run 2K-ish, so people who want min-maxed cheese will have to work it out for themselves instead of reading about it on Bell of Lost Clicks.

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

Grey40k wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

I didn't defend GW. I criticised poor players, I also criticised GW. I think the only thing worse than your understanding of the game is your comprehension.

Now, that doesn't contribute to a nice discussion, does it?

Is your point that some sore losers may blame balance on ANY game?

Is slayer's point that, while that might be true, wh40k's balance is bad enough that this is second order in the current discussion?

My point was indeed the first thing you said.

Slayers point was, quite unmistakeably, that being of this opinion means I'm "white Knighting" for GW. Not the second thing that you said at all.

Blaming players on losing instead of actually understanding the core issues with the game (which is a lot) is white knighting for GW, yes.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

What are you even babbling about?

Nah. Nope. YOU do not get to open your post like this and expect it to be taken at all seriously, or in my case, even read. Seriously look at your posts so far. Not just this thread. You've sacrificed the right to accuse others of babbling, or being biased, or whatever nonsense you have dreamt up in slayer land today.

So let me get this straight: you think I'm somehow bad at the game and that's why I complain, even though the same complaints are made by other players, some of which could be better than me, which means they would have to be bad players too, which means no good player complains about the game.

Does that REALLY make sense to you?

I think you have an awful understanding of this game at a competitive level, and whether or not better players agree with you, does not mean you understand the gameplay complaints you are making.

On top of that, you've gone out of your way to target me in this thread, when all I did was quote someone else and say I agree that a lot of these complaints are often due to a lack of player skill. The underlying point is that even in a perfectly balanced game, there would still be lower level players who complain because they lost. It was never about you until you interjected yourself in as a focal point of that, but yeah, your post history would serve as an excellent example of what we were saying, so I guess that's why you took it as addressed to you.

Seeing as nobody is complaining about balance in Chess that's DEFINITELY wrong, so thanks for playing.

Chess is not a perfectly balanced game. It isn't even the most balanced game, there is like a 5% win rate for advantage for first turn. And it's a very common thing for awful players to "blame black" when they lose. Nice try though.

 Nitro Zeus wrote:
In reality, the only people that can defend GW at this point ARE the white Knights. 40k isn't a deep a game as you'd like that "player skill" is all that. GW escalates a few broken stuff with further releases (after all, we still had people using the dumb "wHaT aBoUt PlAyEr SkilL" when Scatterbikes and Gladius were a thing in case your memory is short), and then we get the whole "the game is what you make it" and "forge the narrative". Extreme pregame negotiations are proof a wargame game is badly written.

But no, you wanna rag on saying it's because the players are bad LMAO

I didn't defend GW. I criticised poor players, I also criticised GW. I think the only thing worse than your understanding of the game is your comprehension.

1. The only people saying Chess isn't really balanced are the same exact people saying that perfect balance makes the game boring like chess. I'm like 95% sure you're one of those people.
2. You're clearly not criticizing GW if your first argument is against the players themselves. You and Sim-Life are doing just that: blame the players. GW does the same thing though not directly (Forge the narrative everyone!!!1!)

40k can never be perfectly balanced because it doesn't provide a range of costs for each unit and weapon depending on what they play.

Each army would need to have its value measured against the opposing force to determine its actual 'balanced' value.

ie how effective is this particular list against its opponent would in theory change the points costs dynamically. A thunderhammer is overcosted against an all Grot army, but very effective against a marine army. But it would be less effective against an all scout marine army.


Given this, you will never have true balance, only an approximation.

IMO for tournaments they should be creating a set of army lists or detachment lists that you can choose from that have been playtested and approved.

If you can constrain the variety you increase balance. so if your tournament pack has a finite set of combos for people to use, it will create a more balanced game environment.

It means that tournaments are treated separately to the normal game, but I don't think that's a bad thing

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

My point was indeed the first thing you said.

Slayers point was, quite unmistakeably, that being of this opinion means I'm "white Knighting" for GW. Not the second thing that you said at all.

But players having problems in game is the fact that most of the time skill does not cover for difference in army power. If two guys of basic level play against each other the results are going to be similar if two top tier tournament players play against each other with armies with different power level.

What can a person learn in w40k, if they pick the wrong army anyway? this army is bad, I should buy another one, how does that fix anything, aside for people that can buy an army every few months.

It is GW designs the game, not the players, and new players don't even get the insight in to the game veteran players have, plus on top of that they are spoon feed the whole play what you want and everything is playable bluber. So in the end it comes down to luck and money you have.

40k can never be perfectly balanced because it doesn't provide a range of costs for each unit and weapon depending on what they play.

You know, but people that defend GW still make it sound as if w40k in 8th was almost perfect and almost perfectly balanced. When it is no where near the case.
The term learn to play gets thrown a lot, but in the case of people with armies that GW gave weak rules, in boils down to buy an army with good rules next time.
But it is always next time. No one is telling you on the GW site, you are now trying to buy something we knew not how to write rules for, buy at your own peril or if you like to paint very much.

 Hellebore wrote:
40k can never be perfectly balanced because it doesn't provide a range of costs for each unit and weapon depending on what they play.

Each army would need to have its value measured against the opposing force to determine its actual 'balanced' value.

ie how effective is this particular list against its opponent would in theory change the points costs dynamically. A thunderhammer is overcosted against an all Grot army, but very effective against a marine army. But it would be less effective against an all scout marine army.


Given this, you will never have true balance, only an approximation.

IMO for tournaments they should be creating a set of army lists or detachment lists that you can choose from that have been playtested and approved.

If you can constrain the variety you increase balance. so if your tournament pack has a finite set of combos for people to use, it will create a more balanced game environment.

It means that tournaments are treated separately to the normal game, but I don't think that's a bad thing

The balance here is supposed to come from a rock/paper/scissor analogy.
Part of playing the game should really be list building and trying to out-think your opponent.
part of the issue you see is that there are some models and units that are Auto-takes because they don't play to the rock paper scissor analogy.
Given your example. You say that you wouldn't bring a thunderhammer against grots because its potential is wasted, That's because it is and an opponent that charges your thunderhammers has made that descision specifically to counter you.

It would be exactly the same if I were to tell my opponent I am bringing orks to the field, so they field a lot of high shot, low AP firepower.
If my list happens to consist entirely of vehicles or meganobz in anticipation of lots of low Ap firepower, then that is me trying to counter expectation and force my opponent into a disadvantage.
Having units that can disrupt the rock paper scissor analogy and are ridiculously cheap or that are so good that they beat the analogy anyway makes for a poor game because it removes any risk involved with making an army.