whats the actual reason behind the over all point increase?
First of all there seems to be little incentive to do any kind of small 500 point battles. I know 500 isnt really the norm any way but it could be nice to do a small last battle that doesnt take too long. but with these point changes you can barely even make an army that makes sense.
But over all, what is the reason? did GW think battles took too long? I never thought it was a problem personally.
Without new points people wouldn't be very willing to buy new books. I don't think that a codex with same rules and same point costs, but new art or lore would sell very well. Same with other rule books.
Karol wrote: Without new points people wouldn't be very willing to buy new books. I don't think that a codex with same rules and same point costs, but new art or lore would sell very well. Same with other rule books.
Thats not what i mean.
Im not asking why they werent updated point wise, im asking why over 90% of all units got an actual point increase.
From 7th to 8th, some units cost less, some cost more. From 8th to 9th, basically every unit got an increase in point. sure, some more than others, but over all, all armies can now field less units.
I think the backdrop of the pts changes are the changes to map size.
"Of course, these are only the minimum size requirements for your battlefields, so whether you’re using a 6′x4′ table with a Realm of Battle board, linking two, four or six 22″x30″ Killzone boards together according to the battle size you’re playing, or just using a dining room table, you’re good to go. In fact, most dining room tables should be able to accommodate a Strike Force game!"
Smaller map, possibly made out of four Kill Team maps, what I am reading is that GW wants to convert more Kill Team players into 40k players. Not to mention that many tournament games went over time and not too long ago someone won a major GW tournament through slow play. So the game should be easier to get into because you can place your four KT maps on the kitchen table and play with smaller armies and hosting tournaments will be easier.
Whatever the reason, it was a dumb reason, GW could have just changed the recommended pts to 450/900/1750.
Karol wrote: Without new points people wouldn't be very willing to buy new books. I don't think that a codex with same rules and same point costs, but new art or lore would sell very well. Same with other rule books.
According to some of your other posts you would have to buy the updated pts (whether they were updated or not) or you'd be thrown out of your store right? I think your hypothesis that people will buy the new field manual or codexes extra much because GW changed a lot of pts is weird, most people would get it regardless or would never get it anyway because they use Battlescribe or GW's new app. Consider the people that have posted through 8th that they didn't bother buying CA.
Considering the amount of rage going on with 9th pts I feel like GW could have gotten away much easier with a half-assed pts update that just touched a couple of units from each faction instead of this total trollerhaul. I think releasing a new edition with such poorly balanced pts is going to do major damage to the player base, just like we saw with 6th and 7th, people don't like being taken for a ride with their 2000+ dollar 40k collections.
From a marketing perspective, changing points costs shifts the emphasis to different units to boost sales. An established player might be incentivised to buy something they didn't already have. This isn't a reason for making all units more expensive as such, but is a reason for why they might alter the points at all.
From a balance perspective, increasing costs across the board means you can have greater granularity. It also allows them to fit games onto their new, smaller table sizes more easily.
From a psychological perspective, it always "feels good" when your units get cheaper. They did this a lot in 8th, and avoided making too many things much more expensive (Forgeworld aside), but I don't think things could get much cheaper without everything sort of blending together. A new edition is the perfect time to hit the reset button so the "feel bads" are overshadowed by all the mechanical changes to the game, and then they can begin the cycle again.
It's important to remember that GW has no incentive to create a perfectly balanced game. They want you to feel like things are always improving, or are never complete. Points feel a bit "off" right now, and things feel a little chaotic, and I think that's by design.
I get the argument that it's indended to drive sales, but for some smaller Codexes I can't see it really doing that. In the case of Drukhari, the only thing that did well out of the exercise was Taloi, but you can only field 9 anyway.
Some people have argued that the new values are meant to represent the utility of the units/weapons with the new rules.
The rounding of things to the nearest 5 is simplifying the maths, perhaps as a precursor to moving to Power Level.
The official reason mentioned on a couple of streams was to create more granularity. I suspect reducing the game size was also a consideration. Sadly, the points were handled pretty badly so they haven't really increased granularity much, especially when you consider lots of equipment now costs a multiple of 5 points, even when that means you have multiple pieces of equipment all at the same cost when some are clearly better than the others.
The points update is probably the biggest screw-up I've seen from GW in a while. Given that 9th is an evolution of 8th I would have hoped they would have been able to come up with properly balanced points even while resetting everything to a new, slightly higher baseline. At the very least they shouldn't be charging for them and I think the changes are bad enough that GW should be seriously considering releasing a free points update document in the next month or two.
Actually, GW should probably stop charging for these kind of updates in general, but that's just wishful thinking.
Well, the rule changes dictated some point changes.
Imagine a tank with a heavy weapon.
Moving and shooting in the 9th gives no penalty for ''to hit'', while in the 8th it did.
Points have been lowering steadily over time for several editions, to the point that they were running out of granularity in the lower point ranges. This turned back some of that points creep effect. Lots of things are now pretty much back to what they cost in 5th ed.
I thought they made this pretty clear.
the points increases are arbitrary not intended for balance across the game but rather internally for each army. the intent is to FORCE players to play the way the design team wants with smaller armies at the standard points levels just like the recommended "minimum" sized tables. one of the justification for this was "faster gameplay"
The problems with this argument, and there are many,
.the game drag in 8th really came from the re-roll auras. as you were literally doing your attacks and then doing them over again for every unit near a bubble maker. some stratagems also added to this.
THIS HAS NOT CHANGED MUCH, so it is still a problem.
.just like the initial streamlining in 8th they have countered all this "speed" by adding in more convoluted rules that slow the game down in other ways like the new terrain, scoring and phases rules.
The idea that more points/smaller armies speed up the game is actually a fallacy
Horus heresy has far cheaper points per unit compared to what they are in 40K and thus ends up with far larger armies ( i can take up to a 20 man jump assault squads as standard troops for example) in a standard game like 2K points but the game play is actually faster than 8th was even with the larger model count. .
Mostly because it is based on the 3rd-7th ed game mechanics where there were far less wounds on every unit (most only have 1 ) there is instant kills, ignoring the number of wounds a model has, and there are far less shots as it is basically 7th edition that has been "fixed" in a good way by the FW design team.
This isn't the first time they did something like this
Take for example the tyranids. back about half way through 5th they released the new codex, up to that point the only really big bug other than the tyrant was the carnifex, and it had loads of options, but GW decided to add new models to the line including bringing over the FW trygon into the plastic line as the trygon/mawloc kit in order to boost sales they purposely re-pointed everything making the carnifex more expensive and removing most of it's options while making the trygon cheaper with new/better rules. knowing full well they had already sold a ton of carnifexes and they needed an incentive for the veteran players to drop more money on their existing armies.
Karol wrote: Without new points people wouldn't be very willing to buy new books. I don't think that a codex with same rules and same point costs, but new art or lore would sell very well. Same with other rule books.
Thats not what i mean.
Im not asking why they werent updated point wise, im asking why over 90% of all units got an actual point increase.
From 7th to 8th, some units cost less, some cost more. From 8th to 9th, basically every unit got an increase in point. sure, some more than others, but over all, all armies can now field less units.
well GW has to change stuff. If they put out new terrain and mission rules in one book, and told people that they think everyone should play at less then 2000pts CA or the army books wouldn't sell as well.
the more changes the higher chance for a meta shift too, Who knows what is going to be the normal army size in 9th. Here it is going to be 2250, so people can play with their old 2000pts armies, but at leat sfrom what people are saying here, in other places are going to be played at less then old 2000pts. A lot of the build were very tight on what they had to run to be efficient, so unless someone already has an army like that, people are going to play different stuff. And different stuff means more sales.
Karol wrote: Without new points people wouldn't be very willing to buy new books. I don't think that a codex with same rules and same point costs, but new art or lore would sell very well. Same with other rule books.
According to some of your other posts you would have to buy the updated pts (whether they were updated or not) or you'd be thrown out of your store right? I think your hypothesis that people will buy the new field manual or codexes extra much because GW changed a lot of pts is weird, most people would get it regardless or would never get it anyway because they use Battlescribe or GW's new app. Consider the people that have posted through 8th that they didn't bother buying CA.
Considering the amount of rage going on with 9th pts I feel like GW could have gotten away much easier with a half-assed pts update that just touched a couple of units from each faction instead of this total trollerhaul. I think releasing a new edition with such poorly balanced pts is going to do major damage to the player base, just like we saw with 6th and 7th, people don't like being taken for a ride with their 2000+ dollar 40k collections.
No one would throw you out, you just wouldn't be allowed to rent a table. I don't think anyone sane is going to buy the GW app, I stopped carrying about over all game balance, when I realised that GW does not want to balance the game, so as long as my army is okey, I don't care what happens to other stuff. And right now, in relative terms, my army is okey, some of the models I use actualy got cheaper.
And while I understand that people playing at home may not want to buy a book, those people wouldn't buy them anyway. I am talking about the part of the GW customers that do buy their books. If a CA or codex came out that was a strickt reprint rules wise, and only had new pictures in it, the number of buyers would be smaller then if the same book had new rules.
To increase granularity and to reduce the number of minis on the table, making it easier for newcomers to join the game.
Nothing stops you and your group of just playing with more points - you even get to use more detachments and CPs!
And for granality increase 1-2 pts on lower end is really bad way of doing it. Had they wanted that they would have like doubled all points including base game size. If they want to reduce models then add further X% increase. Then start working on balance changes.
Instead GW went for: <10 pts, 1 pts increase, 11-20=2 pts, wargear to dividable by 5 with exception of few exceptions, minimum point cost 5 regardless of rules of said model and then do couple manual tweaks(necron warriors only 1 pts, immortals 3 pts). Simple excel job.
tneva82 wrote: And for granality increase 1-2 pts on lower end is really bad way of doing it. Had they wanted that they would have like doubled all points including base game size. If they want to reduce models then add further X% increase. Then start working on balance changes.
Instead GW went for: <10 pts, 1 pts increase, 11-20=2 pts, wargear to dividable by 5 with exception of few exceptions, minimum point cost 5 regardless of rules of said model and then do couple manual tweaks(necron warriors only 1 pts, immortals 3 pts). Simple excel job.
Then zero input from playtesters.
You could've also gone hammer method, double pts but only grant an additional 50%.
500pts games would become 750 etc.
Not only would the model count be lowered, the granularity would be easier achievable and it would allow to further use the pts allready better balanced from 8th rather then this drunk intern job they done now.
tneva82 wrote: And for granality increase 1-2 pts on lower end is really bad way of doing it. Had they wanted that they would have like doubled all points including base game size. If they want to reduce models then add further X% increase. Then start working on balance changes.
Instead GW went for: <10 pts, 1 pts increase, 11-20=2 pts, wargear to dividable by 5 with exception of few exceptions, minimum point cost 5 regardless of rules of said model and then do couple manual tweaks(necron warriors only 1 pts, immortals 3 pts). Simple excel job.
Then zero input from playtesters.
That’s not even close to what they did. Many units in the 6-9 range when up 2 points and you forgot the 5 PPM minimum.
To the OP, GW adjusted points up for several reasons:
* To account for the value of a model existing (5 PPM minimum)
* To return unit values to closer to 8th edition starting point
* To reduce the number of models on the board, thus speeding gameplay
* To increase points granularity for future adjustments
* To adjust for new rules interactions, like Heavy on non-Infantry and Big Guns Never Tire
* A few balance adjustments
Did they do a perfect job? No. But we now have a new starting point for adjustments after actual gameplay feedback. I’m sure at some point they will decide whether Infantry Squads should be 6PPM or the floor should be dropped to 4 for all those units that are clearly worst than them.
Karol wrote: Without new points people wouldn't be very willing to buy new books. I don't think that a codex with same rules and same point costs, but new art or lore would sell very well. Same with other rule books.
Thats not what i mean.
Im not asking why they werent updated point wise, im asking why over 90% of all units got an actual point increase.
From 7th to 8th, some units cost less, some cost more. From 8th to 9th, basically every unit got an increase in point. sure, some more than others, but over all, all armies can now field less units.
here's a concept I'm going to introduce you to:
To Games Workshop, the company that makes Warhammer, the game being BETTER is not the positive outcome of the change. The game being a more marketable product is.
In order to convert a Kill Team player into a Warhammer 40,000 player, you need to do two things.
1) Encourage them to expand their collection.
2) Make the full game easily accessible
3) allow them to use what they already have in a full game.
in late 8th, there were several factors that made getting from a collection made for kill team to a collection made for normal 40k way too wide of a gap. The points adjustments, the board sizes, and the pushing of several new game modes that involve starting from 500 points (and incidentally using power level rather than points that makes the loadouts you used for your models for Kill Team much more palatable) allows GW to push players more smoothly from KT to full 40k.
I thought they made this pretty clear.
the points increases are arbitrary not intended for balance across the game but rather internally for each army. the intent is to FORCE players to play the way the design team wants with smaller armies at the standard points levels just like the recommended "minimum" sized tables. one of the justification for this was "faster gameplay"
The original reason stated by GW was to have fewer models on the table in order to make game play go faster. It was a odd choice as dropping an army by1-200 points was NEVER going to have that impact. The problem was the core rules are what was taking longer, but they did not want to touch those, so ... band aid.
The problem is, the very clearly did not even attempt to balance the increases in any logical way. They also literally never said they would. I know most would say "well of course it's implied that you would ALSO look to balance", but it's GW and they tend to be pretty literal. This was literally about reducing miniatures on the table but it didn't even really have THAT intended effect.
I truly think they felt like "Well, we've worked hard on balancing points as 8th has gone on, so these are as balanced as they're gonna get for now. So if we take these points and try to apply an algorithm that increases things by a consistent level ... balance will be maintained." Obviously it doesn't quite work like that, but that's clearly what happened. And any other thing they've said since has been an attempt at damage control. You know it's bad when a lot of their play testers come out publicly and say they don't agree with the points.
the_scotsman 790516 10883171 wrote:
in late 8th, there were several factors that made getting from a collection made for kill team to a collection made for normal 40k way too wide of a gap. The points adjustments, the board sizes, and the pushing of several new game modes that involve starting from 500 points (and incidentally using power level rather than points that makes the loadouts you used for your models for Kill Team much more palatable) allows GW to push players more smoothly from KT to full 40k.
I think there could be something like that. I don't know how they gather data, but maybe they noticed that there are people joing to play kill team, buy 2-3 box, but when they see w40k requirements of models and books, they do not make the transition. So GW decided that they would cut the number of books, probably just initialy in 9th, and make the armies seem artificialy smaller. They even changed the table sizes fit the size of two KT boards.
Maybe GW hope that with those changes more people are going to make the transit in to actual w40k. Now if people actualy going to play new 1500pts games on new table sizes is of course something to be seen, but new players in 9th may not know that this is how GW runs. That sometimes they do stuff, thinking people will act in a certain way, and then act suprised when they don't.
Every wargame has a two sided battle when it comes to models.
Look at Infinity, Warmachine, Malifaux etc... Pretty much all of those games started life as small skirmish games. Throw down a handful of models and you've got an "army/force". GW was much the same - go back in time and look at some earlier armies and a handful of models counts as an army.
However as a game matures two things happen side by side.
1) The company releases more and more models for each army/force within the range. Diversifying options, creating new choices and new niches and features. Sometimes its subtle shifts, other times whole new classes of models are added - eg when GW went for dedicated air units or super heavies.
2) The gamers who are long term supporting customers continually grow their armies. Gaining more and and more models
So you often see games gradually grow the "base" game size because both the customer and the company benefit from it.
However at some point you get a problem because the bigger the standard armies get, the harder it is to get new people into the game. Especially in regions with smaller hobby groups where new people might come in ones and twos - rather than big active areas that might get a small handful in bunches.
Now at this point companies can push investment into alternative game options - splitting the community a bit, but creating diverse options.
Eg Warmachine introduced an unbound option for big games; meanwhile GW has recently pushed modes like Killteam and Warcry.
However sometimes you also have to push lowering the diversity and restructuring the core game to lower the costs of getting a "full army" for standard play.
Yes having a bigger target means customers are encouraged to spend more, but you have to reign it in against the perceived buy-in cost for new customers. Make it too high and, along with other factors, you can end up with one of the major reasons that Old World fantasy struggled for years to recruit and retain new customers/gamers
Beardedragon wrote: whats the actual reason behind the over all point increase?
GW: "thank you for buying the chapter approved and codex books" *arbitrarily feths up all the points values*
GW: "look, a whole new edition chapter approved and codex books!"
The smaller game stuff in nonsense, if that is what players/tournaments wanted to do they'd have played with less points. Similarly granularity - which is not achieved by rounding all your points to multiples of 5, and i'd put money on the table size change being primarily/entirely motivated by a new range of scenery.
tneva82 wrote: And for granality increase 1-2 pts on lower end is really bad way of doing it. Had they wanted that they would have like doubled all points including base game size. If they want to reduce models then add further X% increase. Then start working on balance changes.
Instead GW went for: <10 pts, 1 pts increase, 11-20=2 pts, wargear to dividable by 5 with exception of few exceptions, minimum point cost 5 regardless of rules of said model and then do couple manual tweaks(necron warriors only 1 pts, immortals 3 pts). Simple excel job.
Then zero input from playtesters.
That’s not even close to what they did. Many units in the 6-9 range when up 2 points and you forgot the 5 PPM minimum.
To the OP, GW adjusted points up for several reasons:
* To account for the value of a model existing (5 PPM minimum)
* To return unit values to closer to 8th edition starting point
* To reduce the number of models on the board, thus speeding gameplay
* To increase points granularity for future adjustments
* To adjust for new rules interactions, like Heavy on non-Infantry and Big Guns Never Tire
* A few balance adjustments
Did they do a perfect job? No. But we now have a new starting point for adjustments after actual gameplay feedback. I’m sure at some point they will decide whether Infantry Squads should be 6PPM or the floor should be dropped to 4 for all those units that are clearly worst than them.
While I agree that's what they attempted to do, the actual implementation is for lots of reasons already pointed out since the points were released. Those goals could have been met without wrecking the balance of the game. A lot of the changes were just lazy, the equal points given to all the various models of contemptors being a hallmark, others were obvious bias: intercessors up 17% vs csm up 27%, storm cannon arrays same as in 8th vs butcher cannon arrays up 87%. It's a mess.
LunarSol wrote:Shrinks the size of the game since people didn't go for 1850. Also gives them room to cut points in the CA.
If they do the latter doesn't that render the former null and void?
The biggest problem isn't points didn't go up *enough* to compensate for the smaller board size. The board size is 75% went it was, but armies are only about 13% smaller. When you add in greater recommended terrain density, and that deployment zones have been reduced by even more than the overall board size, the 9th edition boards end up massively cluttered, at least until the extraordinary lethality of the game removes half of each army by the beginning of T3.
8th ed Chapter Approveds were a constant "race to the bottom" with most units getting decreases and just a few OP units getting increases.
But doing a game wide points reset with most lower end models going up, it creates more breathing room for units to be decreased in later Chapter Approveds.
It's all about proportion IMO. A 1ppm decrease on a 5pt model is a bigger deal than a 1ppm decrease on a 15pt model.
Having larger base points on even 1W INFANTRY models allows there to be granularity between them.
A good example IMO is the difference between Tactical Marines, Dire Avengers and Necron Warriors. I believe they were all 12ppm just before 9th but are now 15, 13 & 12 respectively.
You could argue that those could be swapped around but the point is that by having a larger "scale" of points, you are able to make them differ as those 3 units are indeed very different from each other.
While the point of a new edition is to sell new stuff, the idea that they've bumped up simply to sell decreases in later books doesn't hold up - they had already been selling a yearly points adjustment with Chapter Approved, new codices have always had new points because they have new rules. You don't have to adjust the whole game to keep selling these things. For CA2020 they could have just made adjustments to points on the old basis.
I think there are several reasons:
They want to make the game somewhat smaller/faster (see 5-turn limit as well)
A desire to (dis)incentivize certain unit usage (Transports didn't go up much while "horde" units that show up in armies that aren't really flavored that way, eg. CSM, did)
A reset on various units/options (rolling more costs into the basic unit, resetting some upgrade costs)
And it gives them more room to adjust points later, after 9th has had a chance to shake itself out some.
Overall I think GW is a bit concerned about accessibility with this edition as we're seeing more support of smaller game sizes, the 5-round cap and a small reduction in the "typical" 2k army size.
They had been reducing the cost of models CA after CA, and it was becoming really weird, not to mention difficult to access for new players.
They used the 9th launch to reset the point costs to higher values.
Now the game flows naturally from Kill Team to 40K.
Going from a kill team to 500 points means a vehicle and an HQ usually. At the same time you just need to put 2 kill team boards instead of one.
It has also been used as a balance passage, but it was only half done. You can see that some ranges were fine tuned with targeted nerfs and buffs, while other ranges have only a few of those and for the most part were just adjusted mathematically to the new point ranges.
GW has likely looked at hobbies like Hornby and such which are all from the same era. They've seen that if they dont' push for recruitment of new gamers, in a market WAY more flooded with competing products for peoples attention any money, then they can run the risk of ending up with a healthy market of continually aging fans that steadily dwindles. Furthermore its very hard to join into a new game and such if there's a big generation gap going on. If everyone at the club is way past their teens then its far less likely to attract more teens.
The bigger that gap becomes the greater the generation gap can make the situation worse and worse.
That's why they've been so keen to push things like their links to Duke of Edenborough scheme in the UK; school packs; Kill team; smaller side/specialist games. It's likely a big reason they are farming their IP out to video games (a big competing market now) and also creating the new TV shows.
GW knows that its not good enough for them in the long run to remain viable, they have to also remain "current." They've got to be seen and be active in recruiting people.
I also agree regarding the view that if you have a higher base point value then it allows for more potential to fine tune those points for balance. The less weight 1 point difference has to a model the greater your ability to fine tune it to suit specific balance. Similarly the rougher the values, the harder because you lose the ability to balance for subtle differences.
Overread wrote: Every wargame has a two sided battle when it comes to models.
Look at Infinity, Warmachine, Malifaux etc... Pretty much all of those games started life as small skirmish games. Throw down a handful of models and you've got an "army/force". GW was much the same - go back in time and look at some earlier armies and a handful of models counts as an army.
However as a game matures two things happen side by side.
1) The company releases more and more models for each army/force within the range. Diversifying options, creating new choices and new niches and features. Sometimes its subtle shifts, other times whole new classes of models are added - eg when GW went for dedicated air units or super heavies.
2) The gamers who are long term supporting customers continually grow their armies. Gaining more and and more models
So you often see games gradually grow the "base" game size because both the customer and the company benefit from it.
However at some point you get a problem because the bigger the standard armies get, the harder it is to get new people into the game. Especially in regions with smaller hobby groups where new people might come in ones and twos - rather than big active areas that might get a small handful in bunches.
Now at this point companies can push investment into alternative game options - splitting the community a bit, but creating diverse options.
Eg Warmachine introduced an unbound option for big games; meanwhile GW has recently pushed modes like Killteam and Warcry.
However sometimes you also have to push lowering the diversity and restructuring the core game to lower the costs of getting a "full army" for standard play.
Yes having a bigger target means customers are encouraged to spend more, but you have to reign it in against the perceived buy-in cost for new customers. Make it too high and, along with other factors, you can end up with one of the major reasons that Old World fantasy struggled for years to recruit and retain new customers/gamers
The problem with comparing those games is for say like infinity. the original designed system literally is not designed to be bigger than a skirmish game. otherwise the mechanics simply fall apart. warmachine has much the same problem. go above 50 points and the game gets really clunky. The broad range of available units allows players to have a large collection for variety by swapping out unit A for unit C.
GW addressed this when they went from skirmish mechanics in RT/2nd ed to 3rd ed where they changed the rules to push the game from skirmish into force/army based play.
I wonder if they're doing the points rescale to try and bring "game size" into line with Sigmar so they can make both games use the same table sizes for the same points values?
Why won't GW go full battle system and not skirmish system. Would be easier to balance. Instead of trying to juggle different weapons, wargears etc Have something like a IG anti tank squad, IG anti infantry squad, and have them do specific damage to specific units. We wouldn't have to worry about scenic bases, models being modeled in certain way.
Unit homoganisation would also mean that trying to balance similar faction against each other would be easier.
Beardedragon wrote: whats the actual reason behind the over all point increase?
First of all there seems to be little incentive to do any kind of small 500 point battles. I know 500 isnt really the norm any way but it could be nice to do a small last battle that doesnt take too long. but with these point changes you can barely even make an army that makes sense.
But over all, what is the reason? did GW think battles took too long? I never thought it was a problem personally.
It creates a more balanced landscape from a points perspective.
GW also want shorter games, which less models will do.
GW also wants people to easily get into the game. Without having to spend a small fortune on plastic.
Beardedragon wrote: whats the actual reason behind the over all point increase?
First of all there seems to be little incentive to do any kind of small 500 point battles. I know 500 isnt really the norm any way but it could be nice to do a small last battle that doesnt take too long. but with these point changes you can barely even make an army that makes sense.
But over all, what is the reason? did GW think battles took too long? I never thought it was a problem personally.
It creates a more balanced landscape from a points perspective.
GW also want shorter games, which less models will do.
GW also wants people to easily get into the game. Without having to spend a small fortune on plastic.
I'm sorry, how do you get "a more balanced landscape" with grots having the same price as guardsmen and cultists being 1 ppm more? All contemptors having the same price, despite differing stats and abilities, three of which are in the same faction, so no arguments for "internal balance" for explanation. Flamers same price as plasma. The list goes on. The last thing these new points are about is "a more balanced landscape".
I'm sorry, how do you get "a more balanced landscape" with grots having the same price as guardsmen and cultists being 1 ppm more? All contemptors having the same price, despite differing stats and abilities, three of which are in the same faction, so no arguments for "internal balance" for explanation. Flamers same price as plasma. The list goes on. The last thing these new points are about is "a more balanced landscape".
GW clearly wants IG players to run guardsman, and does not want csm or ork player to run a lot of grots or cultists. Same with flamers or plasma, the weapons don't matter, because GW doesn't want people to play with models that can take both of them.
I'm sorry, how do you get "a more balanced landscape" with grots having the same price as guardsmen and cultists being 1 ppm more? All contemptors having the same price, despite differing stats and abilities, three of which are in the same faction, so no arguments for "internal balance" for explanation. Flamers same price as plasma. The list goes on. The last thing these new points are about is "a more balanced landscape".
GW clearly wants IG players to run guardsman, and does not want csm or ork player to run a lot of grots or cultists. Same with flamers or plasma, the weapons don't matter, because GW doesn't want people to play with models that can take both of them.
That's a possible explanation, but as I said, it has nothing to do with "a balanced landscape", only gw enforcing how it wants armies to be constructed.
Kind of a depends on what new stuff GW plans for each army for 9th. Now I would like for this to be true. Maybe the future could bring some crazy ork artilery , which could over use grots for some NPE combos. So GW decided to kill the grot play style in advance. Or GW wants csm players to use, the new, csm models and not cultists, so they disentice people from taking cultists.
But of course it could be just something random, and they do it just that people have as little of their 8th ed armies in their 9th ed armies.
Finally, as part of developing the new edition, points values were reviewed and have been adjusted UP across every faction. This may sound odd at first, but it yields several benefits. Firstly, games will play faster with, generally speaking, smaller armies on either side. This also makes starting a fresh army for the new edition a more accessible, quicker experience. It also means there’s room for more granularity when establishing how powerful one unit or ability is compared to another, and a global points reset ensures everyone starts in the same place on Day 1, with no established meta or ‘best army’.
Would have been nice if they hadn't destroyed what balance they had achieved by the end of 8th by making some dumber than two rocks changes to points. Before we even start on the indomitous cheese.
Beardedragon wrote: whats the actual reason behind the over all point increase?
First of all there seems to be little incentive to do any kind of small 500 point battles. I know 500 isnt really the norm any way but it could be nice to do a small last battle that doesnt take too long. but with these point changes you can barely even make an army that makes sense.
But over all, what is the reason? did GW think battles took too long? I never thought it was a problem personally.
It creates a more balanced landscape from a points perspective.
GW also want shorter games, which less models will do.
GW also wants people to easily get into the game. Without having to spend a small fortune on plastic.
I'm sorry, how do you get "a more balanced landscape" with grots having the same price as guardsmen and cultists being 1 ppm more? All contemptors having the same price, despite differing stats and abilities, three of which are in the same faction, so no arguments for "internal balance" for explanation. Flamers same price as plasma. The list goes on. The last thing these new points are about is "a more balanced landscape".
Because there is no meta right now. Most people don't even realize how much the game has changed.
Shooting was severely nerfed. Losing 3ish turns of shooting. Melee got hit from making tri-pointing not a sure thing. Overall shooting got hurt more then melee, but things are probably more balanced.
Horde got hit more then Elite armies, but again the game is probably more balanced.
The terrain changes are also changing everything up. Missions, board size, objectives. There is no way for them to know which models are going to do what.
Beardedragon wrote: whats the actual reason behind the over all point increase?
First of all there seems to be little incentive to do any kind of small 500 point battles. I know 500 isnt really the norm any way but it could be nice to do a small last battle that doesnt take too long. but with these point changes you can barely even make an army that makes sense.
But over all, what is the reason? did GW think battles took too long? I never thought it was a problem personally.
It creates a more balanced landscape from a points perspective.
GW also want shorter games, which less models will do.
GW also wants people to easily get into the game. Without having to spend a small fortune on plastic.
I'm sorry, how do you get "a more balanced landscape" with grots having the same price as guardsmen and cultists being 1 ppm more? All contemptors having the same price, despite differing stats and abilities, three of which are in the same faction, so no arguments for "internal balance" for explanation. Flamers same price as plasma. The list goes on. The last thing these new points are about is "a more balanced landscape".
Because there is no meta right now. Most people don't even realize how much the game has changed.
Shooting was severely nerfed. Losing 3ish turns of shooting. Melee got hit from making tri-pointing not a sure thing. Overall shooting got hurt more then melee, but things are probably more balanced.
Horde got hit more then Elite armies, but again the game is probably more balanced.
The terrain changes are also changing everything up. Missions, board size, objectives. There is no way for them to know which models are going to do what.
So by "a more balanced landscape" you mean a new starting point which can then be adjusted once they have more information on exactly what's good and what isn't under the new rules? So a reset, similar to the Indexes at the beginning of 8th. That's what I think it is, though poorly implemented. Is that what you mean? Or do you think these points are well balanced?
Beardedragon wrote: whats the actual reason behind the over all point increase?
First of all there seems to be little incentive to do any kind of small 500 point battles. I know 500 isnt really the norm any way but it could be nice to do a small last battle that doesnt take too long. but with these point changes you can barely even make an army that makes sense.
But over all, what is the reason? did GW think battles took too long? I never thought it was a problem personally.
It creates a more balanced landscape from a points perspective.
GW also want shorter games, which less models will do.
GW also wants people to easily get into the game. Without having to spend a small fortune on plastic.
I'm sorry, how do you get "a more balanced landscape" with grots having the same price as guardsmen and cultists being 1 ppm more? All contemptors having the same price, despite differing stats and abilities, three of which are in the same faction, so no arguments for "internal balance" for explanation. Flamers same price as plasma. The list goes on. The last thing these new points are about is "a more balanced landscape".
Because there is no meta right now. Most people don't even realize how much the game has changed.
Shooting was severely nerfed. Losing 3ish turns of shooting. Melee got hit from making tri-pointing not a sure thing. Overall shooting got hurt more then melee, but things are probably more balanced.
Horde got hit more then Elite armies, but again the game is probably more balanced.
The terrain changes are also changing everything up. Missions, board size, objectives. There is no way for them to know which models are going to do what.
So by "a more balanced landscape" you mean a new starting point which can then be adjusted once they have more information on exactly what's good and what isn't under the new rules? So a reset, similar to the Indexes at the beginning of 8th. That's what I think it is, though poorly implemented. Is that what you mean? Or do you think these points are well balanced?
I think they are more balanced then people realize. Do not I think they are perfect? No. I'm sure some adjustments will have to be made. But the way people are acting when they, for the most part, have no idea how these changes will actually affect the game is ridiculous.
Karol wrote: Why won't GW go full battle system and not skirmish system. Would be easier to balance. Instead of trying to juggle different weapons, wargears etc Have something like a IG anti tank squad, IG anti infantry squad, and have them do specific damage to specific units. We wouldn't have to worry about scenic bases, models being modeled in certain way.
Unit homoganisation would also mean that trying to balance similar faction against each other would be easier.
Beardedragon wrote: whats the actual reason behind the over all point increase?
First of all there seems to be little incentive to do any kind of small 500 point battles. I know 500 isnt really the norm any way but it could be nice to do a small last battle that doesnt take too long. but with these point changes you can barely even make an army that makes sense.
But over all, what is the reason? did GW think battles took too long? I never thought it was a problem personally.
It creates a more balanced landscape from a points perspective.
GW also want shorter games, which less models will do.
GW also wants people to easily get into the game. Without having to spend a small fortune on plastic.
I'm sorry, how do you get "a more balanced landscape" with grots having the same price as guardsmen and cultists being 1 ppm more? All contemptors having the same price, despite differing stats and abilities, three of which are in the same faction, so no arguments for "internal balance" for explanation. Flamers same price as plasma. The list goes on. The last thing these new points are about is "a more balanced landscape".
Because there is no meta right now. Most people don't even realize how much the game has changed.
Shooting was severely nerfed. Losing 3ish turns of shooting. Melee got hit from making tri-pointing not a sure thing. Overall shooting got hurt more then melee, but things are probably more balanced.
Horde got hit more then Elite armies, but again the game is probably more balanced.
The terrain changes are also changing everything up. Missions, board size, objectives. There is no way for them to know which models are going to do what.
So by "a more balanced landscape" you mean a new starting point which can then be adjusted once they have more information on exactly what's good and what isn't under the new rules? So a reset, similar to the Indexes at the beginning of 8th. That's what I think it is, though poorly implemented. Is that what you mean? Or do you think these points are well balanced?
I think they are more balanced then people realize. Do not I think they are perfect? No. I'm sure some adjustments will have to be made. But the way people are acting when they, for the most part, have no idea how these changes will actually affect the game is ridiculous.
I've played some admittedly smaller than 2k games and I'll say it now alot of the troops choice points are way different from anything resembling balanced.
Also round all the weapons to 5 points or 10 was another idiotic decision.
Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote: I think they are more balanced then people realize. Do not I think they are perfect? No. I'm sure some adjustments will have to be made. But the way people are acting when they, for the most part, have no idea how these changes will actually affect the game is ridiculous.
How well did the Iron Hands "wait and see" approach work? Not at all, they were busted after being nerfed the first time and there were internet monkies both on Dakka and on Youtube screaming that we should let things shake out and not even give them the first nerf, if it weren't for constant internet whinge then Iron Hands would have been unbeatable until the end of 8th and then none of the GW apologists would apologize for getting it wrong just like nobody admitted they were wrong about how necessary an immediate and massive nerf was to IH when the supplement came out. Stop trying to make the game stay terrible, because it is terrible, it might not be for Thousand Sons, it might not be for Necrons, but for a lot of factions internal balance is super bad right now and I think we're soon to find out that external balance is really freaking bad as well.
All you need to do to show that internal balance is bad is S+2 AP-4 D2 = S+1 AP-3 D1 on the same model. All you need to do to show that external balance is bad is compare the AM Infantry Squad nerf with the CE Guardian nerf knowing which unit was better among those two before the changes. GW do not have some secret sauce and the changes are not secretly balanced, they're bad and I think you are being overly optimistic about how well designed they were.
Slipspace wrote: The official reason mentioned on a couple of streams was to create more granularity. I suspect reducing the game size was also a consideration. Sadly, the points were handled pretty badly so they haven't really increased granularity much, especially when you consider lots of equipment now costs a multiple of 5 points, even when that means you have multiple pieces of equipment all at the same cost when some are clearly better than the others.
The points update is probably the biggest screw-up I've seen from GW in a while. Given that 9th is an evolution of 8th I would have hoped they would have been able to come up with properly balanced points even while resetting everything to a new, slightly higher baseline. At the very least they shouldn't be charging for them and I think the changes are bad enough that GW should be seriously considering releasing a free points update document in the next month or two.
Actually, GW should probably stop charging for these kind of updates in general, but that's just wishful thinking.
It's shocking to see how many people have bought that line from GW, hook and sinker included. There are at least half a dozen people in this thread who seem to believe that GW mostly increased granularity in 9th, and didn't club it like a baby harp seal.
As Goonhammer noticed in their excellent article on 9th's point changes, it looks like GW gave all units a flat point increase, regardless of the percentage that it would affect them. To put on my tinfoil hat, this might have been the goal, to simplify 40k lists by making everything a multiple of 5. It's the same thing with AOS, where everything is a multiple of 10. It's something I really hate, personally, that they don't make AOS a 200 point game but still keep the extra zero as a marketing ploy, or for some reason that's even more petty.
Karol wrote: Why won't GW go full battle system and not skirmish system. Would be easier to balance. Instead of trying to juggle different weapons, wargears etc Have something like a IG anti tank squad, IG anti infantry squad, and have them do specific damage to specific units. We wouldn't have to worry about scenic bases, models being modeled in certain way.
Except that we already have a game for that - it's called Apocalypse.
The real problem is that Apocalypse has been shoehorned into normal 40k. Thus, everything now has to be balanced around the existence of super-heavies, Imperial Knights, fliers, Primarchs etc. - all things which should have been confined to Apocalypse.
Cynically think the game probably is more balanced right now than people realise - but that's because the virus continues to make mass playing difficult to impossible, and so its unclear what if any meta meaningfully exists.
So you are sort of in that phase of "I really enjoyed the Indexes/Ravening Hordes, because we hadn't yet discovered X+Y+Z=win rate of 60%-80% depending on what your opponent brings."
But yeah. The reasons GW stated are good ones. I'm just not convinced these changes accomplished any of them. It was funny watching Stu Black on the stream walk things back "yeah guys, we are only talking one squad of space marines". (GSC look sadly at the camera.)
So... extra granularity marginal at best, time saved marginal at best. Slightly cheaper to get into - but really, I think that objectives been better served by trying to give rules for playing at 500/1000 rather than how skewed it was before.
Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote: I think they are more balanced then people realize. Do not I think they are perfect? No. I'm sure some adjustments will have to be made. But the way people are acting when they, for the most part, have no idea how these changes will actually affect the game is ridiculous.
How well did the Iron Hands "wait and see" approach work? Not at all, they were busted after being nerfed the first time and there were internet monkies both on Dakka and on Youtube screaming that we should let things shake out and not even give them the first nerf, if it weren't for constant internet whinge then Iron Hands would have been unbeatable until the end of 8th and then none of the GW apologists would apologize for getting it wrong just like nobody admitted they were wrong about how necessary an immediate and massive nerf was to IH when the supplement came out. Stop trying to make the game stay terrible, because it is terrible, it might not be for Thousand Sons, it might not be for Necrons, but for a lot of factions internal balance is super bad right now and I think we're soon to find out that external balance is really freaking bad as well.
All you need to do to show that internal balance is bad is S+2 AP-4 D2 = S+1 AP-3 D1 on the same model. All you need to do to show that external balance is bad is compare the AM Infantry Squad nerf with the CE Guardian nerf knowing which unit was better among those two before the changes. GW do not have some secret sauce and the changes are not secretly balanced, they're bad and I think you are being overly optimistic about how well designed they were.
The "Wait and see" approach works many more times than the "We are doomed" one.
For example, despite all the whines about SM being OP (mines included), those that are getting a few number of games are little by little getting into the mindset that they are not even top tier.
When so many things change at a time, defining what is balanced and what is not is a huge leap into the dark.
Sure, you can find some weird costs here and there, like grots and guardians, but 99% of the points assigned are in that area where they could be potentially reaonsable depending on how the game shapes up.
Spoletta 790516 10883951 wrote:
The "Wait and see" approach works many more times than the "We are doomed" one.
For example, despite all the whines about SM being OP (mines included), those that are getting a few number of games are little by little getting into the mindset that they are not even top tier.
When so many things change at a time, defining what is balanced and what is not is a huge leap into the dark.
Sure, you can find some weird costs here and there, like grots and guardians, but 99% of the points assigned are in that area where they could be potentially reaonsable depending on how the game shapes up.
If I quit the game after 6 months playing, I would have saved a lot of money on paying for not very fun games and two CA books that didn't fix much for my army. So the wait and see thing made me spend more money, and get little for it, as when GW finaly made good rules for my army the store closed. And who knows if there ever going to be a new one open here. The wait and see method is good for armies that are either on a good record with rules writen by GW like eldar, or with codex mariens who get updated twice every edition.
Galef wrote: 8th ed Chapter Approveds were a constant "race to the bottom" with most units getting decreases and just a few OP units getting increases.
But doing a game wide points reset with most lower end models going up, it creates more breathing room for units to be decreased in later Chapter Approveds.
It's all about proportion IMO. A 1ppm decrease on a 5pt model is a bigger deal than a 1ppm decrease on a 15pt model.
Having larger base points on even 1W INFANTRY models allows there to be granularity between them.
A good example IMO is the difference between Tactical Marines, Dire Avengers and Necron Warriors. I believe they were all 12ppm just before 9th but are now 15, 13 & 12 respectively.
You could argue that those could be swapped around but the point is that by having a larger "scale" of points, you are able to make them differ as those 3 units are indeed very different from each other.
There's a fair few people saying that of they wanted to promote smaller games use lower points or the community should have made that move already.
Simply put nobody would play smaller points because there's a large crowd of players who are fixated on "bigger is better" and like to see a big round number. There were threads here saying people would just play 2300 etc after the points changes because they like having more stuff. Same for the 2000+1 crowd.
Reducing army size takes options away and allows for more meaningful/challenging list creation, especially on smaller boards. But if they'd used a smaller number for "normal" people wouldn't have liked it seemingly, instead saying the game size is the same points but they've recosted, it creates some weird fallacy in players minds that the game size is the same but units are going to be more balanced.
Dudeface wrote: There's a fair few people saying that of they wanted to promote smaller games use lower points or the community should have made that move already.
Simply put nobody would play smaller points because there's a large crowd of players who are fixated on "bigger is better" and like to see a big round number. There were threads here saying people would just play 2300 etc after the points changes because they like having more stuff. Same for the 2000+1 crowd.
Reducing army size takes options away and allows for more meaningful/challenging list creation, especially on smaller boards. But if they'd used a smaller number for "normal" people wouldn't have liked it seemingly, instead saying the game size is the same points but they've recosted, it creates some weird fallacy in players minds that the game size is the same but units are going to be more balanced.
While that is certainly true, GW did not simply double the points cost of all the units and equipment, they took the time to hamfistedly feth around with the relative points too. That latter part is what is inexplicable, and is what many are upset about.
Reducing army size takes options away and allows for more meaningful/challenging list creation, especially on smaller boards. But if they'd used a smaller number for "normal" people wouldn't have liked it seemingly, instead saying the game size is the same points but they've recosted, it creates some weird fallacy in players minds that the game size is the same but units are going to be more balanced.
So once again the Drukhari are ahead on the meta curve having most options kneecaped over last few editions along with points increases of no sense, okay the geedubs dont like Venom spam thats ok ill just go foot wychs or kabalites, or not, maybe i'll look at the other options...hey
Reducing army size takes options away and allows for more meaningful/challenging list creation, especially on smaller boards. But if they'd used a smaller number for "normal" people wouldn't have liked it seemingly, instead saying the game size is the same points but they've recosted, it creates some weird fallacy in players minds that the game size is the same but units are going to be more balanced.
So once again the Drukhari are ahead on the meta curve having most options kneecaped over last few editions along with points increases of no sense, okay the geedubs dont like Venom spam thats ok ill just go foot wychs or kabalites, or not, maybe i'll look at the other options...hey
Yup. The issue is that the Drukhari as an army have a fairly narrow theme; that of fast moving, glass hammer,'space pirates'.
This was achieved through fielding lots of relatively fragile transports, carrying Wyches and/or Kabalites. Without the transports, Kabalites and Wyches, Drukhari stuggle to differentiate themselves, or in fact justify their existance, as a faction.
The exception to this is obviously Coven, but they are basically an alternative option to the primary theme. Coven (and Taloi in particular) have done ok out of this debacle, and the competitive Drukhari advice is now to field as much Coven and Taloi as you can in your army, and forget the glass hammer. This isn't an enjoyable prospect for me, and I don't think it's going to be fun to play against.
Dudeface wrote: There's a fair few people saying that of they wanted to promote smaller games use lower points or the community should have made that move already.
Simply put nobody would play smaller points because there's a large crowd of players who are fixated on "bigger is better" and like to see a big round number. There were threads here saying people would just play 2300 etc after the points changes because they like having more stuff. Same for the 2000+1 crowd.
Reducing army size takes options away and allows for more meaningful/challenging list creation, especially on smaller boards. But if they'd used a smaller number for "normal" people wouldn't have liked it seemingly, instead saying the game size is the same points but they've recosted, it creates some weird fallacy in players minds that the game size is the same but units are going to be more balanced.
While that is certainly true, GW did not simply double the points cost of all the units and equipment, they took the time to hamfistedly feth around with the relative points too. That latter part is what is inexplicable, and is what many are upset about.
Also if the goal was indeed more granularity why are dexes now litered with exemples like conscript Infantry squads 5ppm
Or why does cross comparison not count, considering especially the case of cultists, which can now virtually not be affected anymore with traits and shall cost more.
Hamfisted is not even the word i'd use for it anymore.
Because GW doesn't want people to use conscripts. The why for it you can pick from a list starting with they want it that way and ending with in 6 months there is a campaign addon for the IG, which would make the game broken if they stayed at 4 points.
Non of the new units or units that GW talked about in the pre 9th articles got really bad treatment, aside for DE. But DE seem to be a faction that is not going to work in 9th without a new codex
Now if GW wasn't GW, they would put out the DE book first, but I think we are all fully expecting marines and necron before DE, and maybe orcs too. If DE players are really lucky they will get some rules over lay in a WD.
Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote: I think they are more balanced then people realize. Do not I think they are perfect? No. I'm sure some adjustments will have to be made. But the way people are acting when they, for the most part, have no idea how these changes will actually affect the game is ridiculous.
How well did the Iron Hands "wait and see" approach work? Not at all, they were busted after being nerfed the first time and there were internet monkies both on Dakka and on Youtube screaming that we should let things shake out and not even give them the first nerf, if it weren't for constant internet whinge then Iron Hands would have been unbeatable until the end of 8th and then none of the GW apologists would apologize for getting it wrong just like nobody admitted they were wrong about how necessary an immediate and massive nerf was to IH when the supplement came out. Stop trying to make the game stay terrible, because it is terrible, it might not be for Thousand Sons, it might not be for Necrons, but for a lot of factions internal balance is super bad right now and I think we're soon to find out that external balance is really freaking bad as well.
All you need to do to show that internal balance is bad is S+2 AP-4 D2 = S+1 AP-3 D1 on the same model. All you need to do to show that external balance is bad is compare the AM Infantry Squad nerf with the CE Guardian nerf knowing which unit was better among those two before the changes. GW do not have some secret sauce and the changes are not secretly balanced, they're bad and I think you are being overly optimistic about how well designed they were.
The "Wait and see" approach works many more times than the "We are doomed" one.
For example, despite all the whines about SM being OP (mines included), those that are getting a few number of games are little by little getting into the mindset that they are not even top tier.
When so many things change at a time, defining what is balanced and what is not is a huge leap into the dark.
Sure, you can find some weird costs here and there, like grots and guardians, but 99% of the points assigned are in that area where they could be potentially reaonsable depending on how the game shapes up.
I haven't been able to get any 9th edition games in because of the current situation and my work schedule, but none of the battle reports I've seen support this. The only time loyalists don't look top tier is when the loyalist players either take suboptimal units or seem to hold back. Everything points to loyalists continuing to be the army to beat in 9th, the lists may change, but with the ridiculous amount of options they have they won't have any trouble replacing the few things that actually got a meaningful nerf.
I wonder if they're doing the points rescale to try and bring "game size" into line with Sigmar so they can make both games use the same table sizes for the same points values?
This conversation is getting more and more amusing.
GW: "We're increasing points to make a smaller game size so that the game plays faster"
Dakka: "Why are they increasing the points!?"
GW: "To ... to make a smaller game so things go quicker ..."
Dakka:"What could it possibly be!? Surely it's a conspiracy!"
GW:"No - no, we just need to try and make the game faster"
Dakka: "If only they would TELL US WHY!!!!!!"
It was ALWAYS a bit of a silly premise that only going down by 100-200 points was going to make things appreciably faster, but that's literally, word for word what they said. It's clear now that the points are out that this not only failed to have the intended effect, but that they have also screwed up some balance items along the way, so we're hearing all kinds of justifications from them, but yeah. That's damage control at this point.
Bottom line - They wanted to reduce army size. They failed to reduce it by a meaningful number while also botching several other things along the way, and now they are trying to spin the decision.
Gadzilla666 wrote: Good and durable obsec units? You mean like intercessors with transhuman physiology slapped on them?
Also it looks like Necrons have a dynasty that gives everything in their army obsec. Sounds like that'll be the go to dynasty.
And although Custodes have tough obsec, the low model count will hurt them. Never enough bodies.
Assault intercessors are still just 10 MEQ wounds and they have move 6". They can use impulsors, but those are quite a good amount of points not shooting at me then.
Custodes have obsec on the shield captains. Hard to kill, dangerous, easy to hide and highly mobile. They were already incredibily good in 8th CA, in 9h they will be meta defining.
Gadzilla666 wrote: Good and durable obsec units? You mean like intercessors with transhuman physiology slapped on them?
Also it looks like Necrons have a dynasty that gives everything in their army obsec. Sounds like that'll be the go to dynasty.
And although Custodes have tough obsec, the low model count will hurt them. Never enough bodies.
Assault intercessors are still just 10 MEQ wounds and they have move 6". They can use impulsors, but those are quite a good amount of points not shooting at me then.
Custodes have obsec on the shield captains. Hard to kill, dangerous, easy to hide and highly mobile. They were already incredibily good in 8th CA, in 9h they will be meta defining.
Depends on your army as charictor protection is way less abusive than it was in 8th by a long way.
I wonder if they're doing the points rescale to try and bring "game size" into line with Sigmar so they can make both games use the same table sizes for the same points values?
This conversation is getting more and more amusing.
GW: "We're increasing points to make a smaller game size so that the game plays faster"
Dakka: "Why are they increasing the points!?"
GW: "To ... to make a smaller game so things go quicker ..."
Dakka:"What could it possibly be!? Surely it's a conspiracy!"
GW:"No - no, we just need to try and make the game faster"
Dakka: "If only they would TELL US WHY!!!!!!"
It was ALWAYS a bit of a silly premise that only going down by 100-200 points was going to make things appreciably faster, but that's literally, word for word what they said. It's clear now that the points are out that this not only failed to have the intended effect, but that they have also screwed up some balance items along the way, so we're hearing all kinds of justifications from them, but yeah. That's damage control at this point.
Bottom line - They wanted to reduce army size. They failed to reduce it by a meaningful number while also botching several other things along the way, and now they are trying to spin the decision.
So... It's a conspiracy? But I seriously doubt they intended to reduce game time since the expected game length in the BRB is the same as it was in 8th, and that was no doubt written long before any marketing blurb.
Spoletta wrote: I'm actually worried only about those obviously under costed Eradicators.
Apart from that, there are more fearsome factions out there.
The leaked chapter tactics imply that the space puppies lost OS on everything right? If that isn't so, then I'm worried about them too.
ITT: SM players are given psychiatric counseling for their persecution complex.
So... It's a conspiracy? But I seriously doubt they intended to reduce game time since the expected game length in the BRB is the same as it was in 8th, and that was no doubt written long before any marketing blurb.
They said it in multiple places and not just in a marketing blurb. The issue is, it isn't number of models adding to game length. It's strats and rerolls (and to a slightly lesser extent weight of dice in general). Those are core mechanics so they aren't touching those. What's that leave?
The only legitimate step they took to make the game faster was the overwatch change. They added in enough things elsewhere that 9th plays about the same as 8th once you get used to the rules. The morale phase can sometimes make it slightly longer but that's rare so far in my experience. So reducing the model count was one of the things I think they were looking at to at least not make the game LONGER, because 9th has enough in it that it is definitely not faster than 8th. And since game length was one of the biggest things they were claiming to try and tackle, again, what's left? They did exactly what they said they were going to do, and increased points to try and make armies smaller.
They just screwed it up. I really don't get all the "it has to be THIS! - NO! It's actually THAT!" kind of comments. They very plainly and clearly said what they intended to do, did it, and had it come out poorly. I mean, everyone's always screaming about how "dumb" and "stupid", and "bad" GW is, and here's a case where they very clearly appear to have made a legitimate mistake (will happily retract that if the points make sense once we get the new codexes), and Dakka thinks the only logical explanation is some kind of ulterior motive ...
Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote: I think they are more balanced then people realize. Do not I think they are perfect? No. I'm sure some adjustments will have to be made. But the way people are acting when they, for the most part, have no idea how these changes will actually affect the game is ridiculous.
How well did the Iron Hands "wait and see" approach work? Not at all, they were busted after being nerfed the first time and there were internet monkies both on Dakka and on Youtube screaming that we should let things shake out and not even give them the first nerf, if it weren't for constant internet whinge then Iron Hands would have been unbeatable until the end of 8th and then none of the GW apologists would apologize for getting it wrong just like nobody admitted they were wrong about how necessary an immediate and massive nerf was to IH when the supplement came out. Stop trying to make the game stay terrible, because it is terrible, it might not be for Thousand Sons, it might not be for Necrons, but for a lot of factions internal balance is super bad right now and I think we're soon to find out that external balance is really freaking bad as well.
All you need to do to show that internal balance is bad is S+2 AP-4 D2 = S+1 AP-3 D1 on the same model. All you need to do to show that external balance is bad is compare the AM Infantry Squad nerf with the CE Guardian nerf knowing which unit was better among those two before the changes. GW do not have some secret sauce and the changes are not secretly balanced, they're bad and I think you are being overly optimistic about how well designed they were.
The problem is we have no Tournie info to go off of, most people are playing the incorrectly (new rules being forgotten, or people habitually doing things that are now not allowed.)
For example I have watched about 10-15 9th games. I have yet to see people using terrain fully. Either the new rules are forgotten or they apply them haphazardly. Vision blocking terrain, is conspicuously absent on most boards. People still pick up single dice from a group and reroll them. There are mistakes all over the place.
For future reference if something seems ridiculous and is clearly unbalanced I probably agree. Should grots and cultists be 6 points? Probably not. But one thing I do know is there are only 2 armies in the game that can DS large blobs turn 1, that's Orks and and TS. Everyone else has to wait till turn 2, or is limited to 10 models, and they are usually expensive models at that.
I can think of a couple situations where having an 80 point unit (20 cultists/grots) shut down 2 tanks worth 300+ points, for 2-3 rounds MIGHT be a cause to increase the points.
So... It's a conspiracy? But I seriously doubt they intended to reduce game time since the expected game length in the BRB is the same as it was in 8th, and that was no doubt written long before any marketing blurb.
They said it in multiple places and not just in a marketing blurb. The issue is, it isn't number of models adding to game length. It's strats and rerolls (and to a slightly lesser extent weight of dice in general). Those are core mechanics so they aren't touching those. What's that leave?
The only legitimate step they took to make the game faster was the overwatch change. They added in enough things elsewhere that 9th plays about the same as 8th once you get used to the rules. The morale phase can sometimes make it slightly longer but that's rare so far in my experience. So reducing the model count was one of the things I think they were looking at to at least not make the game LONGER, because 9th has enough in it that it is definitely not faster than 8th. And since game length was one of the biggest things they were claiming to try and tackle, again, what's left? They did exactly what they said they were going to do, and increased points to try and make armies smaller.
They just screwed it up. I really don't get all the "it has to be THIS! - NO! It's actually THAT!" kind of comments. They very plainly and clearly said what they intended to do, did it, and had it come out poorly. I mean, everyone's always screaming about how "dumb" and "stupid", and "bad" GW is, and here's a case where they very clearly appear to have made a legitimate mistake (will happily retract that if the points make sense once we get the new codexes), and Dakka thinks the only logical explanation is some kind of ulterior motive ...
Twitch streams and warhammer community articles are nothing but marketing.
You are assuming incompetence where others assume malevolence, Hanlon's razor. I'm not so sympathetic, not when there are reasons for the so-called malevolence.
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Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote: I can think of a couple situations where having an 80 point unit (20 cultists/grots) shut down 2 tanks worth 300+ points, for 2-3 rounds MIGHT be a cause to increase the points.
Except that's not the case anymore, tanks can shoot in combat and have blast weapons to clear out hoards at range with ease. No need to triple down on the nerfs. Even 8th wasn't as lopsided as 9th looks like it will be, since you were supposed to use your own troops to screen for your tanks, but that might not be he case anymore. I haven't played enough 9th to really tell.
Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote: I can think of a couple situations where having an 80 point unit (20 cultists/grots) shut down 2 tanks worth 300+ points, for 2-3 rounds MIGHT be a cause to increase the points.
Except that's not the case anymore, tanks can shoot in combat and have blast weapons to clear out hoards at range with ease. No need to triple down on the nerfs. Even 8th wasn't as lopsided as 9th looks like it will be, since you were supposed to use your own troops to screen for your tanks, but that might not be he case anymore. I haven't played enough 9th to really tell.
Some tanks can shoot into combat, some can't, blast weapons can't shoot into combat. Low shot weapons like Lascannons, and Vanquisher cannons will take for ever to kill a unit of 10 models, let alone 20. Again I'm talking about turn 1 DS, with cheap models. Taking 80 to 120 point investment to shut down 300-500 points for 3-5 turns depending on luck, is a damn good deal.
Twitch streams and warhammer community articles are nothing but marketing.
Right. So, they said it literally everywhere. Not just those two places. You seem though (and apologies if you're not) to be the kind of player who likely essentially label any source from GW as "Marketing - don't listen to it". We can agree to disagree on that but if you think that lowly of them, why are you here? The fact is, there is a huge amount of evidence that GW wanted to reduce the size of armies with this and that it backfired. There's literally no evidence of anything else whether you believe the sources or think everything is some kind of shadowy marketing play.
On top of that, any of the stories that this was about something different have come from play testers after the fact. Play testers who often weren't actually involved in the points adjustments, had no prior knowledge of what they would be, no knowledge of why it was done outside of the stated reason, and simply feel a need to try and justify the results somehow. So again, what's more likely here?
You are assuming incompetence where others assume malevolence, Hanlon's razor. I'm not so sympathetic, not when there are reasons for the so-called malevolence.
Right. Malevolence. They really got us this time. They set the trap and we walked right into their plan! Their evil plan to make us ... buy fewer models? Yep! Sounds pretty evil to me. Definitely NOT a matter of having made a mistake. They clearly hatched a evil plan to make everyone buy FEWER models and thereby potentially hurt their own sales. That's the definition of evil ...
Serious question for you - You clearly seem to think this was an evil plan of some sort. Walk me through it.
Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote: The problem is we have no Tournie info to go off of, most people are playing the incorrectly (new rules being forgotten, or people habitually doing things that are now not allowed.)
I would argue you shouldn't need tournament data to see the obvious, like how broken IH were when they were first released or how much of a failure the new 9th pts are at doing internal and external balance right. I want GW to make a hotfix so we can start testing the system for real, because if we don't get a real first shot at new pts before CA21 then 9th will never become balanced before it is replaced by 10th. 9th is much less radically different than 8th was to 7th, GW pretending to have been hit in the head and equalising pts for options that are clearly not the same value was an insult and should be corrected ASAP.
For example I have watched about 10-15 9th games. I have yet to see people using terrain fully. Either the new rules are forgotten or they apply them haphazardly. Vision blocking terrain, is conspicuously absent on most boards. People still pick up single dice from a group and reroll them. There are mistakes all over the place.
For future reference if something seems ridiculous and is clearly unbalanced I probably agree. Should grots and cultists be 6 points? Probably not. But one thing I do know is there are only 2 armies in the game that can DS large blobs turn 1, that's Orks and and TS. Everyone else has to wait till turn 2, or is limited to 10 models, and they are usually expensive models at that.
The re-roll Stratagem only affects one wound roll or hit roll AFAIK the only time the Stratagem affects multiple dice is when you make a charge or psychic roll. Necrons can teleport and infiltrate, SM can infiltrate, Craftworlds and CSM can move twice, but worse than all the above, Guardsmen have a guaranteed move twice effect, unlike CSM which need a psychic power to go off, but the unit that has access to automatic move twice got a smaller nerf than the one with a 50/50 chance of moving twice while having to spend a much more expensive HQ doing it. So while some sorry Ork player spends his Psyker to drop 30 Gretchin on an objective 7/10 times, Astra Militarum can march 60 on top of any objectives within 19" of their objective zone with 60 bodies turn 1. Gretchin did not deserve this nerf, no way in hell, 67% is an absurd nerf, especially considering the blast rule which ensures hordes can only ever be anti-meta in the first place.
I can think of a couple situations where having an 80 point unit (20 cultists/grots) shut down 2 tanks worth 300+ points, for 2-3 rounds MIGHT be a cause to increase the points.
That's not a bad hypothesis, maybe that's worth increasing them by as much as the everpresent Intercessor (15%) or if you're really super-duper scared, let's nerf it by more than double and put it at 4 pts (+33%). But it's not 4 pts, it's 5 pts and it is not reasonable, it does not make sense, it is not fair and the vast majority of Grots in people's collections will gather dust. Maybe we'll see a list with as many as 30 Grots do well, but those will be a rare sight and the people that want to run more than that can just go sulk because GW wanted to shake things up without using the absurdly generous time given to them by playtesters and instead had them focus on projects far out in the future.
You need about 500 organized logged playtests or maybe a couple of tens of thousands poorly organized and logged tests to get pts 99% right and that's after setting a decent foundation based on math or previous experience. That might sound like a massive amount of playtesting, but 50 playtesters doing 2 games a week, that's 5 weeks worth of playtesting, is that too much to ask for GW's flagship product? This wouldn't cost GW a penny, they just needed to start things a little earlier and organize the testing of the edition to ensure a minimum of units slipped through the cracks. But what I'm complaining about isn't that GW failed to do this, because they've never done this before, I'm complaining about never even having laid a foundation on which to balance the game. They created what must have been a deliberately unbalanced pts foundation and the sooner they give us a real shot an alpha set of pts we can start playtesting the game for real and GW will then be able to deliver us a beta set of pts, GW should not be selling a pre-alpha product.
Grots are not worth 5 pts if Guardsmen are worth 5 pts. You have to realise that flamers and plasma guns should not cost the same pts after plasma guns costing more in 8th and yet being taken more in 8th. The majority of pts in 9th are wrong if you only think it's the obvious minority that is wrong you'll be in for a surprise. Trying to stick to 2000 pts and staying away from decimal numbers was silly. The only good move they made was moving towards clean numbers like 5 and 0 for units that cost 100+ pts, the problem is they have put units that should be 32 or 33 at either 30 or 35 and weapons that should be 1-4 pts at either 0 or 5. I have complained about units costing 566, but only because I know for a fact that GW doesn't know whether the cost is right and because putting it at 550, 575, 570 or at the very least 565 would all end up with a unit that is more or less exactly as good regardless. A unit that is underpowered at 35 might be overpowered at 30, all the talk of more room for balancing is gak if you ignore 8/10 numbers in our number system. Aesthetics are cool, but not at a cost to balance, making the math easier is silly, either you use a calculator or you like doing math. If you use a calculator it's no big trouble using decimals or pts in increments of 1 instead of 5 and if you like doing math then using decimals and pts in increments of 1 instead of 5 is just added fun.
Beardedragon wrote: whats the actual reason behind the over all point increase?
First of all there seems to be little incentive to do any kind of small 500 point battles. I know 500 isnt really the norm any way but it could be nice to do a small last battle that doesnt take too long. but with these point changes you can barely even make an army that makes sense.
But over all, what is the reason? did GW think battles took too long? I never thought it was a problem personally.
To give them more room on the scale. It doesn't matter, overall, if your 40 space marines are 2000 points or 4,000 (the total point scale is somewhat arbitrary and hopefully, theoretically based on some initial unit for comparison) vs 80ish orks at the same 2,000 or 4,000 points. But if they're 4,000 points then they have a lot more room for variation on points cost of upgrades, options and the like. In a 2,000 point army scale the 1.5 point rifle has to be 1 or 2 points. In a 4,000 point army scale, its now a 3 point rifle so you don't have to worry about rounding this one down because it's not as good as that technically also 1.5 point rifle that's just a skosh better and has to be rounded up.
I would argue you shouldn't need tournament data to see the obvious, like how broken IH were when they were first released or how much of a failure the new 9th pts are at doing internal and external balance right. I want GW to make a hotfix so we can start testing the system for real, because if we don't get a real first shot at new pts before CA21 then 9th will never become balanced before it is replaced by 10th. 9th is much less radically different than 8th was to 7th, GW pretending to have been hit in the head and equalising pts for options that are clearly not the same value was an insult and should be corrected ASAP.
Points are more than fine to test the edition. The fact that there are a few outrageous ones in the list, doesn't make the whole point list invalid. Sure there are about a dozen point values that you really have no idea what they were thinking, but it is a dozen out of many hundreds. Luckily, those points are weird because they are too high, not too low, and an old adagium of gaming will tell you that an UP unit will not break the game, an OP one will. There is nothing game breaking as you claim in CA2020.
There are some clearly overcosted units/weapons in the list? Yes. Are they a major problem? Not at all. It will hurt those that played thematic lists around those models, and will put a little handicap on the factions that have these models, but in the grand scheme of things, the game is more than fine and ready to be played.
Did we feel that they were a bit lazy on some factions? Yeah, but nothing more than that.
I play 4 factions, Bugs, noons, thousand sons and dark angels. I've been making a few lists with them, and nothing feels over the top or automatically bad. They actually feel prettty balanced at the moment. The only sore thumb are the eradicators.
Thousand-Son-Sorcerer wrote: Some tanks can shoot into combat, some can't, blast weapons can't shoot into combat. Low shot weapons like Lascannons, and Vanquisher cannons will take for ever to kill a unit of 10 models, let alone 20. Again I'm talking about turn 1 DS, with cheap models. Taking 80 to 120 point investment to shut down 300-500 points for 3-5 turns depending on luck, is a damn good deal.
10 guardsmen CAN kill a knight castellan in 1 turn of shooting, so why is this 50 point unit able to shut down a 700 point one?
Just because a unit CAN doesn't mean it WILL. Psychic powers need to go off, screens need to be avoided, charges need to be made. You are spending 100pts for something that might only have a 20% chance of shutting down a 400pt model for 1 turn with the new fall back stratagem; it's more like a quadruple nerf. It's not a good deal, even in 8th it was an above average deal; a good deal doesn't depend on luck.
Twitch streams and warhammer community articles are nothing but marketing.
Right. So, they said it literally everywhere. Not just those two places. You seem though (and apologies if you're not) to be the kind of player who likely essentially label any source from GW as "Marketing - don't listen to it". We can agree to disagree on that but if you think that lowly of them, why are you here? The fact is, there is a huge amount of evidence that GW wanted to reduce the size of armies with this and that it backfired. There's literally no evidence of anything else whether you believe the sources or think everything is some kind of shadowy marketing play.
On top of that, any of the stories that this was about something different have come from play testers after the fact. Playtesters who often weren't actually involved in the points adjustments, had no prior knowledge of what they would be, no knowledge of why it was done outside of the stated reason, and simply feel a need to try and justify the results somehow. So again, what's more likely here?
You are assuming incompetence where others assume malevolence, Hanlon's razor. I'm not so sympathetic, not when there are reasons for the so-called malevolence.
Right. Malevolence. They really got us this time. They set the trap and we walked right into their plan! Their evil plan to make us ... buy fewer models? Yep! Sounds pretty evil to me. Definitely NOT a matter of having made a mistake. They clearly hatched a evil plan to make everyone buy FEWER models and thereby potentially hurt their own sales. That's the definition of evil ...
Serious question for you - You clearly seem to think this was an evil plan of some sort. Walk me through it.
I think everything everyone does is some form of marketing, but marketing isn't ever malicious, just don't let other people make decisions for you.
Why might playtesters "feel a need to try and justify the results somehow"? Especially when there shouldn't be anything to justify? Even more worryingly, why weren't they "actually involved in the points adjustments, had no prior knowledge of what they would be, no knowledge of why it was done outside of the stated reason"? Isn't that the point of playtesters, to be assistants to the main rules writers and so be more in the know than your average community article reader?
It seems to me and many others that GW put these playtesters up as scapegoats, gave them quarter-tested rules, ignored their feedback, and now expect them to defend these terrible rules. Those who don't defend them will not be invited back, but those who do will get even more official support from GW.
GW has been trying to take more control over the competitive market recently, and the next step in doing that is to kill it, so to speak. 9th edition will have significantly worse balance than 8th to filter out and drive away community leaders who are not totally loyal to GW and will never threaten their market share. I'm not saying 9th will be unplayable, but I am saying better balance will not be a goal of 9th in the least and it will suffer for that. TO's who stand by GW, keeping their missions and not using house rules, will be rewarded as FLG has and more. Those who don't and attempt to fix 9th's obvious flaws will be ignored and fail to grow the way officially supported tournaments grow.
Meanwhile, they can use this opportunity to make 40k more "accessible", like by making all the points a multiple of 5. I don't know which motive came first, I imagine you think it is the latter, but it doesn't matter, they are doing both.
Karol wrote: Why won't GW go full battle system and not skirmish system. Would be easier to balance. Instead of trying to juggle different weapons, wargears etc Have something like a IG anti tank squad, IG anti infantry squad, and have them do specific damage to specific units. We wouldn't have to worry about scenic bases, models being modeled in certain way.
Except that we already have a game for that - it's called Apocalypse.
The real problem is that Apocalypse has been shoehorned into normal 40k. Thus, everything now has to be balanced around the existence of super-heavies, Imperial Knights, fliers, Primarchs etc. - all things which should have been confined to Apocalypse.
Fliers are ok in numbers no greater than 3. Super heavies should be capped at 1. Imperial knights either shouldnt be in there or be capped at 1. Primarchs should be at least hard capped at 1 regardless of battle size.
I honestly think these hard caps should exist for every 2000 pts of an army you have. Possibly none of these units at all until you reach the 2000 pts battles. Then the next 2000 pts you get to double it (4k pts) and so on. This would mean at 4000 pts minimum you can have up to 6 flyers, 2 super heavies (knights or otherwise) and still just 1 primarch. If it was 3750 pts it'd be 3 flyers, 1 super heavy (knights or otherwise) and 1 primarch still.
It might not be perfect but it'd still be better than 4 imperials knights with minimum guardsmen detachment for command points bs. I apologize if I've lost track of the rules but corona has made things tough and it's hard to keep track of all the various rules. I need like at least 4 books per game now.
Seriously what is it with people trying to turn 40k back into 2nd edition games with a 4k points limit.
Superheavys are a thing GW put them into the game 3 editions ago get over it.
9th is the 3rd edition with Primarchs with more to come, GW is unlikely to not want to sell as many of the next primarch model as they can so get used to seeing more of them.
Turnip Jedi wrote: Jumping to 4000 should have been step 1 in operation 'granularity*'
That way you can dodge the grot/guardsman/guardian farce and rounding to 5/10 etc doesnt look as bad
* in the words of a wise man, they keep using that word I dont think it means what they think it means
Yeah i agree that would have been far less egregious that the CA2020 farce.
But I ment people seem to have some outdated idea that only 2nd edition units should be allowed with modern army sizes.
If they want to use only infantry thats what Killteam is for.
Karol wrote: Why won't GW go full battle system and not skirmish system. Would be easier to balance. Instead of trying to juggle different weapons, wargears etc Have something like a IG anti tank squad, IG anti infantry squad, and have them do specific damage to specific units. We wouldn't have to worry about scenic bases, models being modeled in certain way.
Except that we already have a game for that - it's called Apocalypse.
The real problem is that Apocalypse has been shoehorned into normal 40k. Thus, everything now has to be balanced around the existence of super-heavies, Imperial Knights, fliers, Primarchs etc. - all things which should have been confined to Apocalypse.
Fliers are ok in numbers no greater than 3. Super heavies should be capped at 1. Imperial knights either shouldnt be in there or be capped at 1. Primarchs should be at least hard capped at 1 regardless of battle size.
I honestly think these hard caps should exist for every 2000 pts of an army you have. Possibly none of these units at all until you reach the 2000 pts battles. Then the next 2000 pts you get to double it (4k pts) and so on. This would mean at 4000 pts minimum you can have up to 6 flyers, 2 super heavies (knights or otherwise) and still just 1 primarch. If it was 3750 pts it'd be 3 flyers, 1 super heavy (knights or otherwise) and 1 primarch still.
It might not be perfect but it'd still be better than 4 imperials knights with minimum guardsmen detachment for command points bs. I apologize if I've lost track of the rules but corona has made things tough and it's hard to keep track of all the various rules. I need like at least 4 books per game now.
I don't get why people seem to think that the sheer existence of large models means they are by definition OP. At what point would people not complain about knights? Is it just because they don't like skew lists? Then why don't orks get the same kind of hate? I mean, the dirty secret of knights is that they are pretty bad, point for point.
Ice_can wrote: Yeah i agree that would have been far less egregious that the CA2020 farce.
But I ment people seem to have some outdated idea that only 2nd edition units should be allowed with modern army sizes.
If they want to use only infantry thats what Killteam is for.
Yeah, some people freak out about my Fellblade because they think it's some kind of "super baneblade", then they realize that it takes up half my points, and they calm down. It can be pretty nasty with a -2 to be hit on it and a chaos lord standing next to though. Too bad I can't do that anymore....
Dudeface wrote: There's a fair few people saying that of they wanted to promote smaller games use lower points or the community should have made that move already.
Simply put nobody would play smaller points because there's a large crowd of players who are fixated on "bigger is better" and like to see a big round number. There were threads here saying people would just play 2300 etc after the points changes because they like having more stuff. Same for the 2000+1 crowd.
Reducing army size takes options away and allows for more meaningful/challenging list creation, especially on smaller boards. But if they'd used a smaller number for "normal" people wouldn't have liked it seemingly, instead saying the game size is the same points but they've recosted, it creates some weird fallacy in players minds that the game size is the same but units are going to be more balanced.
Nobody is going to buy that fallacy. People want the big game because they have enough stuff for a big game. They want to "play" with all their "toys". For most people it's not that hard to collect 50ish Space Marines - or 100ish orks, or 75ish eldar, or 20-100 Nids that all worked out to about 2000 to 2500 points. I've been in the game for nearly 30 years, and my first army was the Ultramarines in 2nd Ed. There were four of us and we each picked one of the main four liveries of Space Marines. I went last and got UM. At this point I think I have about a third of the chapter, maybe more. About half the First Company, The second, enough for the third, maybe even the fourth, half the 10th company. Part of me wants to play with it all. Most of me just wants to play with one or two of every/most things Which last time I tried to write a list (that way) came out to about 3500 points, which I hated trimming to 2000-2500. If they're going to play a game, people want to play with all the pieces to get their money's worth. We can assign motives to GW all we want about how GW wants what we want them to want for the game to be played the way we think it should be, but the fact is, human nature determines how the game is played. and people want to empty the toy box when they play with toys. We've seen 20+ years of this behavior. You can pick whatever points total on whatever arbitrary scale you want, the simple truth is people generally collect an army of a certain size that has in the past floated in the 2K-3K range +/- a few side board units You can call that 500 points or you can call it 10,000 points, it doesn't matter the point is people want to play with all 50 space marines, all 80 orks, etc.
Dudeface wrote: There's a fair few people saying that of they wanted to promote smaller games use lower points or the community should have made that move already.
Simply put nobody would play smaller points because there's a large crowd of players who are fixated on "bigger is better" and like to see a big round number. There were threads here saying people would just play 2300 etc after the points changes because they like having more stuff. Same for the 2000+1 crowd.
Reducing army size takes options away and allows for more meaningful/challenging list creation, especially on smaller boards. But if they'd used a smaller number for "normal" people wouldn't have liked it seemingly, instead saying the game size is the same points but they've recosted, it creates some weird fallacy in players minds that the game size is the same but units are going to be more balanced.
Nobody is going to buy that fallacy. People want the big game because they have enough stuff for a big game. They want to "play" with all their "toys". For most people it's not that hard to collect 50ish Space Marines - or 100ish orks, or 75ish eldar, or 20-100 Nids that all worked out to about 2000 to 2500 points. I've been in the game for nearly 30 years, and my first army was the Ultramarines in 2nd Ed. There were four of us and we each picked one of the main four liveries of Space Marines. I went last and got UM. At this point I think I have about a third of the chapter, maybe more. About half the First Company, The second, enough for the third, maybe even the fourth, half the 10th company. Part of me wants to play with it all. Most of me just wants to play with one or two of every/most things Which last time I tried to write a list (that way) came out to about 3500 points, which I hated trimming to 2000-2500. If they're going to play a game, people want to play with all the pieces to get their money's worth. We can assign motives to GW all we want about how GW wants what we want them to want for the game to be played the way we think it should be, but the fact is, human nature determines how the game is played. and people want to empty the toy box when they play with toys. We've seen 20+ years of this behavior. You can pick whatever points total on whatever arbitrary scale you want, the simple truth is people generally collect an army of a certain size that has in the past floated in the 2K-3K range +/- a few side board units You can call that 500 points or you can call it 10,000 points, it doesn't matter the point is people want to play with all 50 space marines, all 80 orks, etc.
I think his point is that people are so used to seeing 2000 pt lists that if GW wanted to call 1500 pts the standard or something it wouldn't fly. The only way they can do that is by repointing everything to be X% more expensive. Your ideas aren't incompatible, collections tend towards to 50 SM / 100 ork size and people like the idea of a 2K point army, the two fit together. Admittedly it was pretty clear how far things fell in points costs in 8th, so GW is probably hedging their bets for the early part of 9th. Although I'm not so sure about the toy box analogy, if it were true then apocalypse would be more popular.
Well it does give GW the we didn't expect people to play 2250 protection for the future, if at old 2000pts 9th is busted.
I think they did it in 8th. They never said what kind of a terrain you should use in your games, but if it wasn't very high LoS one, you may as well have been playing on an empty board.
Reducing army size. 2000 points felt like Apocalypse at the end of 8th. Hopefully GW will find some other way of buffing underperforming units besides just endlessly reducing points costs.
Pandabeer wrote: Reducing army size. 2000 points felt like Apocalypse at the end of 8th. Hopefully GW will find some other way of buffing underperforming units besides just endlessly reducing points costs.
and even then losing a unit or two and maybe a hq and/or a support choice isnt really meaningfully smaller, if that was the intention dropping a standard game to 1500 and leaving points as is seems a way easier than whats happened
So you can be more specific about point value, for instance a scale of 1-10 isn’t as accurate in a scale of 1-100, especially since GW don’t do 1.5 pt; it’s easier to scale up the pt value. This way they can separate items that were the same pt value in previous edition.
Dudeface wrote: There's a fair few people saying that of they wanted to promote smaller games use lower points or the community should have made that move already.
Simply put nobody would play smaller points because there's a large crowd of players who are fixated on "bigger is better" and like to see a big round number. There were threads here saying people would just play 2300 etc after the points changes because they like having more stuff. Same for the 2000+1 crowd.
Reducing army size takes options away and allows for more meaningful/challenging list creation, especially on smaller boards. But if they'd used a smaller number for "normal" people wouldn't have liked it seemingly, instead saying the game size is the same points but they've recosted, it creates some weird fallacy in players minds that the game size is the same but units are going to be more balanced.
Nobody is going to buy that fallacy. People want the big game because they have enough stuff for a big game. They want to "play" with all their "toys". For most people it's not that hard to collect 50ish Space Marines - or 100ish orks, or 75ish eldar, or 20-100 Nids that all worked out to about 2000 to 2500 points. I've been in the game for nearly 30 years, and my first army was the Ultramarines in 2nd Ed. There were four of us and we each picked one of the main four liveries of Space Marines. I went last and got UM. At this point I think I have about a third of the chapter, maybe more. About half the First Company, The second, enough for the third, maybe even the fourth, half the 10th company. Part of me wants to play with it all. Most of me just wants to play with one or two of every/most things Which last time I tried to write a list (that way) came out to about 3500 points, which I hated trimming to 2000-2500. If they're going to play a game, people want to play with all the pieces to get their money's worth. We can assign motives to GW all we want about how GW wants what we want them to want for the game to be played the way we think it should be, but the fact is, human nature determines how the game is played. and people want to empty the toy box when they play with toys. We've seen 20+ years of this behavior. You can pick whatever points total on whatever arbitrary scale you want, the simple truth is people generally collect an army of a certain size that has in the past floated in the 2K-3K range +/- a few side board units You can call that 500 points or you can call it 10,000 points, it doesn't matter the point is people want to play with all 50 space marines, all 80 orks, etc.
I think his point is that people are so used to seeing 2000 pt lists that if GW wanted to call 1500 pts the standard or something it wouldn't fly. The only way they can do that is by repointing everything to be X% more expensive. Your ideas aren't incompatible, collections tend towards to 50 SM / 100 ork size and people like the idea of a 2K point army, the two fit together. Admittedly it was pretty clear how far things fell in points costs in 8th, so GW is probably hedging their bets for the early part of 9th. Although I'm not so sure about the toy box analogy, if it were true then apocalypse would be more popular.
This is it basically, the toybox thing comes from 2 places, either people who have a large collection of cool stuff or those who attend events and don't like hard choices when list building.
Why might playtesters "feel a need to try and justify the results somehow"? Especially when there shouldn't be anything to justify? Even more worryingly, why weren't they "actually involved in the points adjustments, had no prior knowledge of what they would be, no knowledge of why it was done outside of the stated reason"? Isn't that the point of playtesters, to be assistants to the main rules writers and so be more in the know than your average community article reader?
It seems to me and many others that GW put these playtesters up as scapegoats, gave them quarter-tested rules, ignored their feedback, and now expect them to defend these terrible rules. Those who don't defend them will not be invited back, but those who do will get even more official support from GW.
Can't speak for them obviously, but I think a lot of play testers felt the need to say something because such a big deal was made of the play testing. And now, a lot of these folks (who are very well known within the community) are feeling the pressure of a lot of eyes on them. Honestly, I'm sort of with you on this - When they said 9th was the most play tested version ever, I kind of laughed at it. 8th was, at the time, also the most play tested version ever and it didn't stop GW from making classic GW mistakes ...
GW has been trying to take more control over the competitive market recently, and the next step in doing that is to kill it, so to speak. 9th edition will have significantly worse balance than 8th to filter out and drive away community leaders who are not totally loyal to GW and will never threaten their market share. I'm not saying 9th will be unplayable, but I am saying better balance will not be a goal of 9th in the least and it will suffer for that. TO's who stand by GW, keeping their missions and not using house rules, will be rewarded as FLG has and more. Those who don't and attempt to fix 9th's obvious flaws will be ignored and fail to grow the way officially supported tournaments grow.
Meanwhile, they can use this opportunity to make 40k more "accessible", like by making all the points a multiple of 5. I don't know which motive came first, I imagine you think it is the latter, but it doesn't matter, they are doing both.
So, this is considerably less evil and conspiratorial than you were being earlier. The last sentence isn't even evil at all. lol It's GOOD to make the game more accessible. That's always the issue when an edition ends. The end of 7th and 8th both had the same issue - how on earth do you get a new player started? Now, whether or not that's what they were doing with the points remains to be seen. I don't think that was on their mind. I think they had a certain goal in mind and went about it incorrectly.
In terms of the tournament scene - It's arguably the tournament scene that SAVED 40k during 7th. This is probably an unpopular opinion, but were it not for the ITC, I don't know that there would have been ANY tournaments happening in the U.S. by the time 7th ended. That edition almost single handedly murdered the game in many areas. That team (whether one likes them or not, and whether one agrees with what they did or not) did a lot of work to make 7th playable. In addition, it was once again the competitive community that helped save AoS when they released it without points (what the hell Jervis!?). So, given that GW has not thrown its own major tournaments in a very long time (outside if the occasional events at Warhammer World), and give that this particular section of the community has actively done so much to fix some of GW's problems, it only makes sense that GW would reach out.
This goes double for GW under Rountree who has the point of view of someone who actually played the games GW makes. So again, GW has been more active in all sections of the community. All of them. It's not an evil conspiracy, and they aren't "trying to take over the tournament scene". They don't want that - they currently barely have the man-power for their own stores and those are direct money makers. Tournaments are NOT. They are often "break even" at BEST. Why would they want to take that over? There's no conspiracy here. They are just trying (poorly in some cases) to be more engaged with the community.
So far, other than your theory of trying to make the game more4 accessible by going in multiples of 5 (which, I have a feeling will go away at the very next CA update, and which isn't really the "malevolent conspiracy" you were hinting at), I still haven't seen you explain what "evil" GW is up to with this increase. Can we put the conspiracy theory to bed now?
Basically revamp points across the board requires reassessment of your army and makes new optimal choices.
New auto includes = more sales.
There were a million other and better ways to do that with the points. I don't even think that's it. They just screwed up on their initial goal because the premise was flawed to begin with (we were NEVER going to see an appreciably faster game but reducing armies by only one or two units), and then there's the classic GW approach of "just release it and we'll look at fixing it later."
Pandabeer wrote: Reducing army size. 2000 points felt like Apocalypse at the end of 8th. Hopefully GW will find some other way of buffing underperforming units besides just endlessly reducing points costs.
It's a hard thing to ask when they can't easily change datasheets. Even if it were all online, a new point's list will be far more accessible than giving some weapon AP-3 on wound rolls of 6 or some weird rule.
Why might playtesters "feel a need to try and justify the results somehow"? Especially when there shouldn't be anything to justify? Even more worryingly, why weren't they "actually involved in the points adjustments, had no prior knowledge of what they would be, no knowledge of why it was done outside of the stated reason"? Isn't that the point of playtesters, to be assistants to the main rules writers and so be more in the know than your average community article reader?
It seems to me and many others that GW put these playtesters up as scapegoats, gave them quarter-tested rules, ignored their feedback, and now expect them to defend these terrible rules. Those who don't defend them will not be invited back, but those who do will get even more official support from GW.
Can't speak for them obviously, but I think a lot of play testers felt the need to say something because such a big deal was made of the play testing. And now, a lot of these folks (who are very well known within the community) are feeling the pressure of a lot of eyes on them. Honestly, I'm sort of with you on this - When they said 9th was the most play tested version ever, I kind of laughed at it. 8th was, at the time, also the most play tested version ever and it didn't stop GW from making classic GW mistakes ...
GW has been trying to take more control over the competitive market recently, and the next step in doing that is to kill it, so to speak. 9th edition will have significantly worse balance than 8th to filter out and drive away community leaders who are not totally loyal to GW and will never threaten their market share. I'm not saying 9th will be unplayable, but I am saying better balance will not be a goal of 9th in the least and it will suffer for that. TO's who stand by GW, keeping their missions and not using house rules, will be rewarded as FLG has and more. Those who don't and attempt to fix 9th's obvious flaws will be ignored and fail to grow the way officially supported tournaments grow.
Meanwhile, they can use this opportunity to make 40k more "accessible", like by making all the points a multiple of 5. I don't know which motive came first, I imagine you think it is the latter, but it doesn't matter, they are doing both.
So, this is considerably less evil and conspiratorial than you were being earlier. The last sentence isn't even evil at all. lol It's GOOD to make the game more accessible. That's always the issue when an edition ends. The end of 7th and 8th both had the same issue - how on earth do you get a new player started? Now, whether or not that's what they were doing with the points remains to be seen. I don't think that was on their mind. I think they had a certain goal in mind and went about it incorrectly.
In terms of the tournament scene - It's arguably the tournament scene that SAVED 40k during 7th. This is probably an unpopular opinion, but were it not for the ITC, I don't know that there would have been ANY tournaments happening in the U.S. by the time 7th ended. That edition almost single handedly murdered the game in many areas. That team (whether one likes them or not, and whether one agrees with what they did or not) did a lot of work to make 7th playable. In addition, it was once again the competitive community that helped save AoS when they released it without points (what the hell Jervis!?). So, given that GW has not thrown its own major tournaments in a very long time (outside if the occasional events at Warhammer World), and give that this particular section of the community has actively done so much to fix some of GW's problems, it only makes sense that GW would reach out.
This goes double for GW under Rountree who has the point of view of someone who actually played the games GW makes. So again, GW has been more active in all sections of the community. All of them. It's not an evil conspiracy, and they aren't "trying to take over the tournament scene". They don't want that - they currently barely have the man-power for their own stores and those are direct money makers. Tournaments are NOT. They are often "break even" at BEST. Why would they want to take that over? There's no conspiracy here. They are just trying (poorly in some cases) to be more engaged with the community.
So far, other than your theory of trying to make the game more4 accessible by going in multiples of 5 (which, I have a feeling will go away at the very next CA update, and which isn't really the "malevolent conspiracy" you were hinting at), I still haven't seen you explain what "evil" GW is up to with this increase. Can we put the conspiracy theory to bed now?
Glad we agree on something, and I only used the word "malicious" to quote Hanlon's Law. Back on topic, making everything a multiple of 5 will do nothing for accessibility, it's just a number, but I can see how some lizard brain might think it matters. The fact the some are hurt the change while no one is helped is where conspiracy talk and evilness might come into play, but even if it was an honest mistake (I don't care either way), trying to make a trade-off like that is pretty low. I would call a mistake of that magnitude evil regardless of intentions. [N.B. if they actually wanted to make 40k more accessible, they would have to undo most of psychic awakening].
As for the tournament scene, Your thoughts on ITC during 7th are exactly correct and I have never heard anyone else say otherwise. And that's the thing, people weren't playing Warhammer 40k, they were playing ITC 40k. It was not part of GW's IP and a potential competitor in the making; a small one, but one who could do their own game better than they could. What better way to fix these two problems (having a bad game and a competitor who can do it better) than to simply buy out the competition, hire them as playtesters and whatnot. Again, I don't care which motivation they had, improving the game or eliminating competition, the end result is the same. There are fewer versions of 40k being actively played making the game all the more of a monopoly, with all the stagnation and inefficiency that entails. ITC is just being roped into matched pay (the other way around, really) and narrative and open play are still taking the leftovers of matched (Crusade might change that, but I am not confident in the current version; I haven't actually played it though), even FW-made rules are gone. It's a big consolidation and one I don't support, 40k was hardly overly decentralized before. I don't believe a multi-billion dollar company would do anything just to make friends, but even if community engagement was their primary goal, it sure is awfully convenient that this is the main side effect. And that side effect will have more long-lasting consequences than GW doing more announcements at LVO or whatever.
for lots of reasons already pointed out since the points were released. Those goals could have been met without wrecking the balance of the game. A lot of the changes were just lazy, the equal points given to all the various models of contemptors being a hallmark, others were obvious bias: intercessors up 17% vs 
I'm sorry, how do you get "a more balanced landscape" with grots having the same price as guardsmen and cultists being 1 
