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Playing my best game ever and still losing handily to fething Tyranids is going to hang the gloves up for a while.
Garbage.

No, because I don't think Tony Stark could sell a "balanced game" as well as the idiots at GW sell a broken and unbalanced game.

How balance is balanced?

40k has always been broken, and alway capable of having fun games played despite that.

Nids are the latest codex, with all the power creep that entails, and only a cursory balance pass so far.

What kind of lists do you field? Your opponent? Maybe we can help get some fun back to your table.

Nope. It's not in their business model and will not be while GW is a publicly listed company that is obliged to prioritize profits/shareholder returns.

alextroy wrote:How balance is balanced?

Not being able to predict (with confidence at lesat) who will win a game based on the factions being played.
Preferably also not after seeing lists (unless one is particularly badly designed).

 Nevelon wrote:
40k has always been broken, and alway capable of having fun games played despite that.

Nids are the latest codex, with all the power creep that entails, and only a cursory balance pass so far.

What kind of lists do you field? Your opponent? Maybe we can help get some fun back to your table.

I still do casual games.
Competitive is a Dfire.

 Just_Breathe wrote:

 Nevelon wrote:
40k has always been broken, and alway capable of having fun games played despite that.

Nids are the latest codex, with all the power creep that entails, and only a cursory balance pass so far.

What kind of lists do you field? Your opponent? Maybe we can help get some fun back to your table.

I still do casual games.
Competitive is a Dfire.

So you're not really hanging it up for awhile.

ccs wrote:

 Just_Breathe wrote:

 Nevelon wrote:
40k has always been broken, and alway capable of having fun games played despite that.

Nids are the latest codex, with all the power creep that entails, and only a cursory balance pass so far.

What kind of lists do you field? Your opponent? Maybe we can help get some fun back to your table.

I still do casual games.
Competitive is a Dfire.

So you're not really hanging it up for awhile.

The gloves, not the jacket.

Why would they? You think they want to lose profits?

 Just_Breathe wrote:

 Nevelon wrote:
40k has always been broken, and alway capable of having fun games played despite that.

Nids are the latest codex, with all the power creep that entails, and only a cursory balance pass so far.

What kind of lists do you field? Your opponent? Maybe we can help get some fun back to your table.

I still do casual games.
Competitive is a Dfire.

So you did the right thing. Competitive 40K (I'd say competitive wargaming in general) seems to attract a special kind of gamers that will find ways to break any game. I've yet to see a game where you don't find army reviews that explain to you which unit works and which doesn't. Sometimes there's more effort in balancing (compare 40K to Lotr, which is even from the same company so GW can do better balance) and then there's 40K where unfortunately GW decided they want to restart the game every 3 years so balance isn't that important, you just wait for your armies spotlight or do the balancing yourself like in most Wargames via missions and terrain.

 Just_Breathe wrote:
Playing my best game ever and still losing handily to fething Tyranids is going to hang the gloves up for a while.
Garbage.

Compared to chess? Never. 40k is impossible to perfectly balance.

I think it's pretty balanced right now. Most of the problems in this edition came from lists that in real life would never show up. Have you actually played against 9 squigbuggies and 5 planes, 40 wracks with tons of liquifier guns, 9 voidweavers, etc...?

Tyranids are tough but manageable compared to SM, tau or eldar from 7th, actually they're wet noodles compared to that kind of power creep. And nerfs will come soon.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Just_Breathe wrote:

 Nevelon wrote:
40k has always been broken, and alway capable of having fun games played despite that.

Nids are the latest codex, with all the power creep that entails, and only a cursory balance pass so far.

What kind of lists do you field? Your opponent? Maybe we can help get some fun back to your table.

I still do casual games.
Competitive is a Dfire.

Competitive gaming requires spending hundreds if not thousands every year to chase the flavour of the month. If you're not willing to do that, competitive it's not for you, and there's nothing wrong in that. I know for sure it's not for me. And it's still a fraction of the whole games of 40k that are played.

 alextroy wrote:
How balance is balanced?

All factions have a roughly 45-55% win rate.

No, I'd say the point is not to balance but to keep it interesting, to have things change and present new challenges for list building.

The actual playing of the game seems less important than the more common hobby of thinking about the game, planning and coming up with ideas, taking in new information.

Balance isn't important for that.

Also, when people say "balance" without the qualifier "perfect" can we all accept that they don't mean "perfect balance" and rather "reasonable balance"? Arguing against a straw man in these threads for the sake of it is boring.

 Da Boss wrote:
Balance isn't important for that.

A game is uninteresting if it isn't won on the table IMO. Winning it in the army construction/codex choice stage is boring.

 Blackie wrote:

Compared to chess? Never. 40k is impossible to perfectly balance.

I think it's pretty balanced right now. Most of the problems in this edition came from lists that in real life would never show up. Have you actually played against 9 squigbuggies and 5 planes, 40 wracks with tons of liquifier guns, 9 voidweavers, etc...?

It's certainly true you're unlikely to face some of the more extreme meta terrors in a random pick-up game, but the game is very, very far from balanced even if you ignore that sort of match-up. Even if you're not facing the latest tournament winning Tyranids, or skewed Eldar list, there's still an extremely high chance you're going to get steamrollered if you have the "wrong" army. If we're assuming the player with the broken Codex isn't taking their best stuff, we can't then assume the player with the terrible Codex is only taking the very best units, so the balance problem remains.

I haven't played against the mortal wound spam Nids, or any of the successful tournament lists for that matter, but the Codex is so vastly better than anything I can put out - across the board - the games still feel pointlessly one-sided. Tau are similar and Dark Eldar were the same on release. Too many games feel like they're over before you even start rolling dice to call 40k anywhere near balanced.

Does Blood Bowl count? I certainly think it's *better* balanced.

Yes, the game explicitly states that some factions are more powerful than others - but the greater impact of chaos and player skill compared to raw factional power gap relative to 40K seems to prevent games from being necessarily foregone conclusions.

Hecaton wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
Balance isn't important for that.

A game is uninteresting if it isn't won on the table IMO. Winning it in the army construction/codex choice stage is boring.

Oh sure, I totally agree.

Slipspace wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

Compared to chess? Never. 40k is impossible to perfectly balance.

I think it's pretty balanced right now. Most of the problems in this edition came from lists that in real life would never show up. Have you actually played against 9 squigbuggies and 5 planes, 40 wracks with tons of liquifier guns, 9 voidweavers, etc...?

It's certainly true you're unlikely to face some of the more extreme meta terrors in a random pick-up game, but the game is very, very far from balanced even if you ignore that sort of match-up. Even if you're not facing the latest tournament winning Tyranids, or skewed Eldar list, there's still an extremely high chance you're going to get steamrollered if you have the "wrong" army. If we're assuming the player with the broken Codex isn't taking their best stuff, we can't then assume the player with the terrible Codex is only taking the very best units, so the balance problem remains.

I haven't played against the mortal wound spam Nids, or any of the successful tournament lists for that matter, but the Codex is so vastly better than anything I can put out - across the board - the games still feel pointlessly one-sided. Tau are similar and Dark Eldar were the same on release. Too many games feel like they're over before you even start rolling dice to call 40k anywhere near balanced.

Point is, if you play vs people that share the same mentality things aren't that nasty.

Having the "wrong" army is a feature, not a problem. Players always wanted to field unusual armies just to surprise the opponent. It's something that has always been there since ages and as a positive thing. So there's that to consider. People love to bring skew (they called them thematic) lists which makes the game impossible, or extremely hard at the very least, to win for one of the factions, before even starting to roll the dice. Lists with a hundred tanks to deny enough anti tank from the opponent, lists with tons of psykers to dominate magic phase, lists with over a hundred of infantries to control the board and deny the opponent the chance to knock all the grunts from the objectives, etc...

The real problem of 40k isn't even power creep, which isn't higher than the old editions, it's the players' mentality. Today too many players are focussed on competitive gaming even if they only do pick up games without going to events. But in my opinion 40k never really worked in the context of random pick up game against the opponents unless we're talking about events and people who are willing to update their collections very frequently.

Unfortunately random pick up games is one of the most common ways to play 40k, hence the impression of a dumpster fire game. I believe there's no middle ground in 40k, only the extremes work: competitive play and casual between people with the same mentality. Always been like that, although in the past competitive gaming was much messier with the most broken lists that dominated for years.

 alextroy wrote:
How balance is balanced?

It's a moving target. :p you should also ask to define what 'balance' looks like in the real world - get three gamers together and you'll get a dozen competing notions of what balance 'is'.

'I want better balance' will mean whatever is provided will always fall short and 'good enough' balance is always suspiciously vague but when pressed, there is often so little daylight between it the 'perfect balance' folks acknowledge as impossible that they might as well be the same thing. Also of note that the game will never be 'good enough' as is.

To answer the op: no, gw will not ever make a game thats balanced out of the box, or isnt proof against the excesses and exploitations of competitive-at-all-cost gamers. Nor will any other company that makes ttgs and relies on new editions and wave-based sales models. The model is 'sell change, not improvement, keep the game in flux and manufacture discontent to drive people to want the new stuff'. There are ways of balancing at our front end, for sure, but it takes a lot of work and a collaborative attitude with your peers. Worth it? To me? Sure. To others? Maybe not. Then again I'm enjoying my hobby time and not screaming murder at gw, so for me at least there is some merit here.

tneva82 wrote:
Why would they? You think they want to lose profits?

Exactly this, especially given the rules lot don't seem to own a calculator between them and act mildly surprised when the near infinite monkeys of the internet with said adding machines poke dirty big holes in their half baked ideas

Deadnight wrote:

 alextroy wrote:
How balance is balanced?

It's a moving target. :p you should also ask to define what 'balance' looks like in the real world - get three gamers together and you'll get a dozen competing notions of what balance 'is'.

'I want better balance' will mean whatever is provided will always fall short and 'good enough' balance is always suspiciously vague but when pressed, there is often so little daylight between it the 'perfect balance' folks acknowledge as impossible that they might as well be the same thing. Also of note that the game will never be 'good enough' as is.

To answer the op: no, gw will not ever make a game thats balanced out of the box, or isnt proof against the excesses and exploitations of competitive-at-all-cost gamers. Nor will any other company that makes ttgs and relies on new editions and wave-based sales models. The model is 'sell change, not improvement, keep the game in flux and manufacture discontent to drive people to want the new stuff'. There are ways of balancing at our front end, for sure, but it takes a lot of work and a collaborative attitude with your peers. Worth it? To me? Sure. To others? Maybe not. Then again I'm enjoying my hobby time and not screaming murder at gw, so for me at least there is some merit here.

Hmmm. From my own POV, I think I somewhat disagree with this. I don't think I've been unhappy with balance to that extent in every version of Warhammer that I've played.

40K2e/WFB5e was mental unbalanced but as a kid I didn't care, the unbalance was hilarious.
40K3e I thought was pretty well balanced for most of my time with it. It stood out to me after 2e. In fact this was when I started to appreciate the concept of balance.
WFB 6e was really balanced and I felt it was good through it's entire run. Sure, you could get bad match ups, but I always felt you could have a decent chance to deal with them.
40K4e was pretty similar to 3e, overall fairly balanced with some outlier lists.
WFB 7e was good at the start but became unbalanced at the end. It was still a fun game if you played the right list, but it definitely went off the rails and was the first time I thought about dropping a game due to balance.
40K5e was great at the start, and went a bit weird at the end was well. It was the last edition I played, because as it moved into 6e and 7e the balance got worse from my perspective.
WFB 8e was alright, but the lethality of the magic phase put me off after some bad experiences.

So I dunno I feel like it's about 50% of the time they were doing pretty well with balance, and only in the earlier more "RPG" like period and in the later period that I personally found the balance to be a problem.

 Da Boss wrote:


So I dunno I feel like it's about 50% of the time they were doing pretty well with balance, and only in the earlier more "RPG" like period and in the later period that I personally found the balance to be a problem.

Hmm, boss -I things you're a wee but guilty of the 'Rose tinted glasses' phenomenon, or maybe you didn't play in the shark pit I cut my teef in (and youre lucky in that case!). I won't disagree on 6th/7th - they were horrendous eras.

But every edition broke hard with the powerbuilds of the day and every edition was quickly 'solved' with go-to builds, crutches, exploits etc. Third was 'rhino rush' or 'shoot the rhino rush', 4th was skimmer spam (f yoy had them) or 6-man las-plas and asscannon spam. 5th similarly devolved into specific go-to builds very quickly. And in all cases a handful of codices/builds dominated and all the rest never got a look in. That's not what 'balance' should look like.

Remember as well these were different games from different eras. The relative power discrepancies needs to be considered, not the absolutes. It might surprise you - Go back, play a 4th ed game with a broken codex of its era (eg iron warriors) against something on the lower end (eg tau) and I guarantee you that you will not have a fun game. Ot better yet - check archived forum posts from the noughties or teens eg portent (remember that one?) Or warseer to get a sense of what people at the time were actually.saying at the time.

I can't really comment on balance for wfb as I never played it, but as i recall, wasn't it dark elves and vampire counts broke sixth in half? Or was it seventh? And I'm pretty sure some codices again dominates at the expense of others.

Nope, never will be.

It was designed to be thematic, then people started using it for tournament play.

By our very nature we are competitive, it is a war game where there has to be winners and losers. however, when that takes center stage above the setting, theme and enjoyment of actually playing the game we end up where the OP is at.

40K CAN be a very fun game, with the right mind set. with the wrong mind set however it is a GAK show.

That is the reason why so many players who are not interested in tournament style play have gone back to older editions of GW games like 2nd-5th 40K or 6th-8th WHFB or to games GW no longer supports like BFG. It allows us to still use our collections of minis we have spent so much time and money on in the 40K setting, or play some other game system not in GWs product line.

Remember as well these were different games from different eras. The relative power discrepancies needs to be considered, not the absolutes. It might surprise you - Go back, play a 4th ed game with a broken codex of its era (eg iron warriors) against something on the lower end (eg tau) and I guarantee you that you will not have a fun game.

Sorry not true at all.

our group STILL uses those codexes against each other within the 5th ed core rules. the 3.5 iron warriors facing off against 4th ed tau, 5th ed space marines or 7th ed mechanicus. it has all happened and it has been loads of fun. to your specific example the tau won that fight. it wasn't easy but it was a good game.

 aphyon wrote:


Sorry not true at all.

our group STILL uses those codexes against each other within the 5th ed core rules. the 3.5 iron warriors facing off against 4th ed tau, 5th ed space marines or 7th ed mechanicus. it has all happened and it has been loads of fun. to your specific example the tau won that fight. it wasn't easy but it was a good game.

'At all' covers an awful lot of ground I fear.

I will politely disagree with this bit aphyon from my personal experiences but agree with everything else you said. For what its worth I'm glad your experiences differed from mine - towards the end of fourth that csm codex has basically ruined the edition for a lot of us.

May I ask what lists were used in your games above? I remember an appalling match up from that era, especially the dual Nike lords, 3x3 obliterators, 3x5 tank hunting havoks with autocannons (24 bs4 pseudo-s8 attacks every turn did a lot to blunt our skimmers, in addition to everything else) and an indirect firing basilisk and 2 infiltrating csm squads for added oomph.

 Blackie wrote:


Point is, if you play vs people that share the same mentality things aren't that nasty.

Obviously that's true. My problem is with how much heavy lifting the second "that" is doing in your sentence. Things are not as bad if neither player brings a meta-style list, but that doesn't mean things are fine. The sheer power level difference between two Codices can too often be almost too much to overcome.

 Blackie wrote:

Having the "wrong" army is a feature, not a problem. Players always wanted to field unusual armies just to surprise the opponent. It's something that has always been there since ages and as a positive thing. So there's that to consider. People love to bring skew (they called them thematic) lists which makes the game impossible, or extremely hard at the very least, to win for one of the factions, before even starting to roll the dice. Lists with a hundred tanks to deny enough anti tank from the opponent, lists with tons of psykers to dominate magic phase, lists with over a hundred of infantries to control the board and deny the opponent the chance to knock all the grunts from the objectives, etc...

I'm not talking about skew lists, so I have no idea why this is relevant. When I'm talking about "wrong" armies, I mean trying to play an underpowered Codex against an overpowered one, even with both armies being non-skew lists. At no point should a designer be aiming to make having a "wrong" army a feature.

 Blackie wrote:

The real problem of 40k isn't even power creep, which isn't higher than the old editions, it's the players' mentality.

There it is, the good old "blame the players" approach. Any game with the variety 40k offers will never have that perfect balance. What I would expect is to at least not instantly lose because I have the misfortune to play the "wrong" army, or my opponent happens to play the "right" army. 40k is one of the few games this gets applied to. Other games seem capable of achieving at least enough balance that playing the game out doesn't become a tedious dice-rolling slog to an inevitable conclusion.

For the record, most of my games are with like-minded players who don't take meta lists. The experience is still too-often poor, especially when a Codex has just been released.

Unless GW expiriances a big drop in the money they make, and I mean like something really big and substential. Something that could cost some people at the company their jobs and, or make the investors really unhappy, they have no entice to change anything. More players, fewer players. Doesn't matter if price hikes cover the difference and people buy out all the production GW can muster anyway.

As the balance goes, I have little idea and no personal expiriance how editions prior to 8th looked like. But comparing to 8th, the changes are a lot more often and the differenes in power between top armies and the rest are a lot bigger. A 2.0 marine drop right now, would just be considered a new codex, by people who aren't alergic to marines. Not sure if it is better or worse. Long dominations are good for people who play those top armies, and 8th did have soup, which 9th only has for eldar. On the other hand an army being fun to play for 2-5 months is longer then most people here take to collect one. It also has a much bigger impact on the non tournament players, who don't want to play the best army or the best build. In the past, at least some of the armies, were odd skews, so there was a chance that your opponent is not going to bring 80 poxwalkers and 40 pink horrors. Now the over power happens on units that make people play the faction, and the really good books were so over all over costed and buffed in rules, that a casual list isn't much less powerful then the real one. Which again makes it really hard for people with weaker armies or lists to not play some sort of tournament lists or its close version.
But non of those things impact the game in lower sells, in fact they probably buff them. So again there is little interest from GW to change their model.

No they dont have the rules making talents for it anymore for their core games, but they are clouse with some of the specialist games, so look AWAY from 40k/aos, and the grass is greener.

You don't need talent to make a balance games. Make 10 factions name their rules different, but have the same effects, change the names of stratagems but not the effects and remove or limit any form of units and armies with rules that ignore core mechanics and you have a balance game of mostly mirror matchs.

Slipspace wrote:
When I'm talking about "wrong" armies, I mean trying to play an underpowered Codex against an overpowered one, even with both armies being non-skew lists. At no point should a designer be aiming to make having a "wrong" army a feature.

There's no such thing as wrong armies. I believe it's a matter of wrong lists instead.

My armies orks and firstborn SW and played lots of times against drukhari and now tyranids and harlequins. Those armies are clearly better but I won several games against them without even playing tournament winning lists. With the exception of maybe a couple of armies, anyone can win against the top armies, even stomping them pretty hard. Just not against the top lists. Yes sometimes it might require some tailoring but I don't see it as a problem since I don't believe in TAC lists anyway, most of the times I know in advance what player and faction (but not list) I'm going to face. And if I were a tournament player I'd either tailor against the top tiers or field a total anti meta list.

Slipspace wrote:

There it is, the good old "blame the players" approach. Any game with the variety 40k offers will never have that perfect balance. What I would expect is to at least not instantly lose because I have the misfortune to play the "wrong" army, or my opponent happens to play the "right" army. 40k is one of the few games this gets applied to. Other games seem capable of achieving at least enough balance that playing the game out doesn't become a tedious dice-rolling slog to an inevitable conclusion.

For the record, most of my games are with like-minded players who don't take meta lists. The experience is still too-often poor, especially when a Codex has just been released.

Yes, I do blame the players since I disagree with what's a lot of players think these days. I don't like 2000 points games as the standard format for example and would love 1500 points ones. Nowhere in GW books it's said or even encouraged to play 2000 points on a regular basis, so it's definitely all on the players. I hate when players refuse to play on larger boards just because they feel they'd play a non official game then, despite min size is only recommended. I also blame the players who want to play competitively without putting the required effort and resources in it and complaining if they can't keep up, and I blame GW for encouraging competitive gaming so much.

When a codex is new it's not always a matter of power creep, rather than people who don't know the opponent's force and have to get some experience and adapt to the new stuff. The ork codex freaked out the community at some point but it was never OP in the first place, simply people needed to adapt and a very few things (that was very unlikely to see in casual games) needed their correction.

I think underworlds is pretty well balanced. Ar least as balanced any game with 30+ "factions" can be. With the right practice and a bit of luck, I think any warband can win any event.