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I forgot to answer your question about relevance. it is very relevance to the discussion here.

Even in Chess the game is inbalance. So is just a matter of degree of inbalance to which we call the game "balance". What CKO is saying that standard/degree should set by GW alone and whatever GW said that degree to be. What Reecius is say the degree of inbalance in 40k right now is unacceptable. So therefore Reecius want to fix it and CKO disagree with 3rd party changing the degree of what define "balance". The rest is just supporting ideas on why their opinions why should one weight in more in their favor. The discussion here is matter of opinions so there are no right or wrong answer to it. It is just up to every gamer to say i accept this degree of inbalance to be "balance" and anything belong that is inbalance.

tyllon wrote:
So therefore Reecius want to fix it and CKO disagree with 3rd party changing the degree of what define "balance". The rest is just supporting ideas on why their opinions why should one weight in more in their favor.

It's actually more nuanced than that because CKO said that he's fine with TOs making changes to make their events more enjoyable, he just didn't like it being called making changes to make their events more "balanced". But he was totally OK with the things Reecius was proposing, from the posts he made clarifying things... just not the way Reecius phrased it.

In the end, it sounds like the vast majority of people want something done, and we can call it pickled herring for all I care as long as it gets done!

 CKO wrote:
I am a play test dummy for people in my group as they see me as the competitive guru, I am fully aware of the current meta.

Oh boy we got a bad ass over here!

Balance,

Let me say that I consider myself to be a very competitive player. I enjoy Winning. But I am able to take getting my butt kicked in stride. What I do not enjoy is giving or getting a butt kicking when the out come is out of my control. Balance is intended to make the game fun for both parties.

There really are three different types of balance in 40 gaming, and 3 different mind sets when it comes to tournaments.

Balance:

1. Army Balance, each individual army has its own balance; they have really good things that have a drawback to fielding. The army onto its self has a hard counter. No one army has distinct advantage over every other army.
2. Player skill Balance, This one is an intangible aspect 0f the game. Some players have better tactics, other players get more luck at rolling of dice.
3. Game rules balance, this where the current set of rules goes way out of control. When you are allowed to ally in option from another army that takes away all or most of your armies weakness make the game basically pointless to play. Models that can basically end the game on turn one, that are meant to be played in very large games (APOK). Really have no place

Mindsets: Now I know these have some gray area. But for the most part you will fall into one of these.

1. Win at all cost player: It is a tournament I will bring the biggest and best things and use every trick in the book, money is no option, I will spend whatever it takes to win. I don’t need skill.
2. Skills mean everything play: I want to prove that I am the best player. I will take the army that I have designed to be competitive. But requires me to play the game move correctly, make correct decisions each round. If I do and my dice do not let me down I should win.
3. I just came to have fun and play new people. I do not care what happens.

If you are able to bring a model(s) that on turn one will end the game. What is the point. Why bother collecting, painting and taking your models to a game. Why not just show up with your lists, and toss a couple dice and call it a day. You would save alot of money. With the current rule set and to some point the last couple of additions, Most experienced players and TOs could gather both lists in any given game, and with 85-90% accuracy tell you before the game is played who is going to win. I know this to be true, I have done this in the past. We had a tournament at my last store where 20 players were in the event. As turn one got underway, I sat down with the TO, we reviewed all 20 lists while turn one games where going on. Individually we recorded who we thought the top 6 would be and in what order, who would win the first round at each table. We had a very simular top 6, and had correctly determined the outcome of each of the first round results. Surprised that we had gotten each one right, we did the same for round two. And we got 9 out of 10 games correct. One guy had some really bad luck. Finally it came down to the final round where we again got 9 out of 10 games correct. Of the final 6 we were again correct on 5 out of the 6. I had the top 3 correct, and the TO had the top 2 his 3rd place had got knocked out in round 2.

The fact that a game that involves rolling dice can be predicted shows just how imbalanced the game has become. Adding or taking away things that make a game un-fun for one or both side is what makes a good tournament. The game is about having Fun. Be honest with yourself, and others you game with, do you really have fun, learn anything for a game that when you look across the table you know what the outcome is going to be, and you know someone is not going to have a good time playing the game.
To me the best games are the ones that go down to the wire, and both sides have to really work to get the victory. If is rewarding to know that you did your very best no matter the outcome. Having taken the time to collect my army, assemble, paint, transport, set up, to turn around and put all my models back into their case after 1-2 rounds is more of a waste of time than a full filling game. That game where we were evenly matched, that went the full amount of turns, and one person squeaked out a win, those are the ones that are the best. I could continue my rant but I will end it here.

I see where you're coming from but I can't agree with you regarding chess. So it's looking like there won't be much change other than incorporating the FAQs, Escalation and SHA. To claim otherwise or use it as a soapbox is a bit much IMO .

Maybe if we're talking about balance and what that means, we should have an example of what it would look like in a perfect world?

A codex is internally balanced when there is a compelling reason to take all units from the codex. Each unit has a particular combination of role, specialties and deficiencies which is at a price point reflective of this combination. If unit A and unit B cost the same amount of points, then unit A should be good at things that unit B is not good at, and vice-versa.
There should not be units within a codex which have the same or better performance in all areas to other units for less points cost. There should not be a unit that no-one would take in a competitive game because it does nothing well or nothing special.

It's harder to define inter-codex balance. What is the *real* difference between making sure your army is competitive by taking anti-tank and anti-infantry, and making sure your army is competitive by taking a seer-star?
I think this can be incorporated in to my definition of internal balance by adding an addendum to 'internal balance': no unit should have so many benefits that, no matter what its points cost, it is an effective unit. I don't think that necessarily solves it, but it's possibly a start.

A balanced game, or a fun game, between people should involve them making two competitive lists, and the skilled player having a greater chance of winning. There shouldn't be a situation where someone has built a 'take al comers' list and immediately loses against particular armies. There shouldn't be situations which essentially boil down to 'do I shoot first?'.


Perhaps we should look at the units/combinations that people consistently consider 'unbalanced'. Or 'unfun', if you prefer that.
* Most ranged Strength D weapons.
* Units with 2+(+) re-rollable saves.
* AV12 Flyers
* Tau Buff commanders; Coteaz; Farseer; The Baron.
* 34 point inquisitors
* FMC or Flyer spam

What is wrong with these things? Why are they unfun? And how can we fix them?

I think cawizkid is pretty much there with Trasvi adding the between armies balance.

I'm not sure inside one army the balance needs to perfect. It's ok if there are two different things which achieve same thing if they are costed similarly. This allows variation to look and feel, however there shouldn't be that many of them. However there also should not be units which you have to take in order to be competitive. Frankly all units in the army should be competitive.

Between armies balance requires two things. First that game rules create need for different kinds of abilities for army which is fielded and that there is no "can win alone" units. For example Siren Prince is example of how not to do it. As an example for 40k rules could be high T multi W units vs vehicles which is (or certainly was when I was playing) poor. As high T and multi W is harder to kill than vehicle.

Trasvi wrote:

Perhaps we should look at the units/combinations that people consistently consider 'unbalanced'. Or 'unfun', if you prefer that.
* Most ranged Strength D weapons.
* Units with 2+(+) re-rollable saves.
* AV12 Flyers
* Tau Buff commanders; Coteaz; Farseer; The Baron.
* 34 point inquisitors
* FMC or Flyer spam

What is wrong with these things? Why are they unfun? And how can we fix them?

Like I mentioned earlier, I think it can be summed up as "I'm not playing the same game as you.". Most of these tactics make a large part of the rules (cover, armour, shooting) irrelevant. If those things are important to your army, you're out of luck, the only thing that matters is if you have a very specific counter--and if those specific counters are actually available to you and don't get marked for death and destroyed on turn one.

@Dozer Blades. because the advantage of white is so so small that most will say the game is balance. however, every competitive chess player knows the advantage of white. So chess is not a perfectly balance game. almost but not perfect.

@RiTides. He is an almost elite player so therefore by definition he is not an elite player. His "What the hell are you talking about Willis?" comment really shows how bad he is.

What Reecius is saying, the percentage of winning should be proportionally related to the skill gap between 2 players with a right amount of fluctuation to increase the fun factor. Without the fluctuation, 40k will just become chess like. however, if the basic fluctuation is so great then the skill gap have too little influence over the outcome. In other words, the increase in skill level does not have a strong correlation to the percentage of winning. That a game will play by itself and it is not fun in Reecius's view. I will insert 40k having too much basic fluctuation but that my assumption after i read it not what Reecius is saying.

Any "elite" players will got that and most of non "elite" players too. This is the topic most "elite" players cry about in any 40k tournament and why 8th Fantasy is dead at tournament.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Elemental wrote:

Trasvi wrote:

Perhaps we should look at the units/combinations that people consistently consider 'unbalanced'. Or 'unfun', if you prefer that.
* Most ranged Strength D weapons.
* Units with 2+(+) re-rollable saves.
* AV12 Flyers
* Tau Buff commanders; Coteaz; Farseer; The Baron.
* 34 point inquisitors
* FMC or Flyer spam

What is wrong with these things? Why are they unfun? And how can we fix them?

Like I mentioned earlier, I think it can be summed up as "I'm not playing the same game as you.". Most of these tactics make a large part of the rules (cover, armour, shooting) irrelevant. If those things are important to your army, you're out of luck, the only thing that matters is if you have a very specific counter--and if those specific counters are actually available to you and don't get marked for death and destroyed on turn one.

To me, traveling around to play in tournaments and run into the same army from New York to Hong Kong. That the not fun part. Flying 13 hours to a tournament and fighting the same army back home. you got the WTF feeling. btw i live in west coast.

Well said sir. I agree with pretty much everything you've said .

cawizkid wrote:
1. Army Balance, each individual army has its own balance; they have really good things that have a drawback to fielding. The army onto its self has a hard counter. No one army has distinct advantage over every other army.

While I think this is definitely true, IMO it needs to be stronger. One can tailor a hard counter to pretty much any list you could ever think of. But is it reasonable to expect that those counters will be present in a blind encounter? Perhaps: a list is balanced if it is reasonable to think that another non-tailored balanced list capable of beating this army is present at the same tournament. Or even: a list is balanced it it is reasonable that a Take-All-Comers list is able to defeat it.

In this way, Gunline Tau are balanced because while they are powerful, another army of a similarly competitive build from any codex is capable of winning.
However 6 Imperial Knights are not balanced because the only try of army really capable of bringing them down is deep-strike-melta-spam. Which you would need to field in such numbers that it would be bad against most other lists.
-- Now I'm sure that someone will pick on my examples; please realise the specifics aren't the point. Its whether you need to tailor your list to beat the enemy, and whether that tailored list would be a reasonable army to take against other enemies,

I've been involved in organizing a few 40K tournaments over the last 6 months. During the "no holds bared" events the formula to winning was simple,
Did you bring a superheavy with a ranged D weapon?
Did you get first turn?
If you can answer yes to both questions you win.
If either is a no you lose.
In an event where rounds take 2-3 hours, watching a game last less than 5 minutes (elder revenant vs elder revenant) is amusing once, tragic the 5th time that day.

Call it what you like, when balance is an issue, the game suffers, and good companies work to fix that. To take an example from MtG, the few times I can remember that Magic's (Standard) meta became exceedingly limited due to strategies that invalidated almost every other strategy, it was in no way good for the game.

The worst example was during Mirrodin block when you either played affinity or anti-affinity. Anti-affinity was tailored solely to beat affinity decks, because nothing else could stand against it. Players left in droves, and they had to ban the cards that let the affinity deck be so unbelievably efficient.

The difference is, that WotC takes the tournament scene seriously, at least for the standard and modern formats (which are analogous to the current edition of 40k). Say what you will about the quality of their playtesters, the speed at which they correct problems, and their attempts to balance the game, but making an honest effort to keep the most popular play formats balanced keeps the casual tournament player in the game, and keeps the hardcore tournament player from getting bored and moving on to something else.

cawizkid wrote:

Mindsets: Now I know these have some gray area. But for the most part you will fall into one of these.

1. Win at all cost player: It is a tournament I will bring the biggest and best things and use every trick in the book, money is no option, I will spend whatever it takes to win. I don’t need skill.
2. Skills mean everything play: I want to prove that I am the best player. I will take the army that I have designed to be competitive. But requires me to play the game move correctly, make correct decisions each round. If I do and my dice do not let me down I should win.
3. I just came to have fun and play new people. I do not care what happens.

Great post, and it's interesting to see this broken down, but I can't help but think that this sort of thinking misses out the vast majority of tournament attendees (and players) who sit in a sort of 2.5.

The majority of tournament attendees I meet are certainly non-competitive sorts, and probably bring the models they like rather than that current top list (for aesthetic/financial/time reasons). But it's not like they don't care what happens. They're not just throwing dice around for fun, like in your number 3. They may not be expecting to win the whole tournament, but they'll probably bring the most competitive list they can with the models they own, and would like to think that they're in with the chance of winning a few games at least, through luck and skill.

Being a 'non-competitive' or 'casual' player doesn't mean that you enjoy being insta-stomped by the current buy-to-win army or ridiculous combo.

Why not add more to the fire.

If GW had written the rules for chess, it be kinda like:

Black gets 2 to 8 pawns, 0 - 3 knights, 0 - 2 rooks, 0 - 2 bishops, 1 king

White gets 2 to 8 pawns, 0 - 2 knights, 0 - 2 rooks, 0 - 2 bishops, 1 king and 0 - 3 queens

The core rules would be the same.

On everyday but Tuesday white chooses whether to go first.

For each queen white takes, a pawn can be promoted to be any other piece.

The "fluff" would be that white controlled the galaxy. Black were the renegades going against the empires rule. In all books on the subject white would be on the verge of losing but would pull out a win at the last minute.

People would complain at the imbalance of the game asking for white and black to at least have similar power. Others would say it has always been thus and to get over it.

Game players would ask if a white piece could be promoted to being a queen under the queen promotion rule. Some would say that doesn't make any sense and was obviously not intended. Others would say its RAW.

Then some would ask if a piece was promoted to being a queen, wouldn't that unlock yet another piece to be promoted? The same groups would line up to say yes or no.

GW would publish a FAQ on it that says, "work it out with your opponent".

All tournaments would be white vs white. The list would be 1 king and 17 queens. Games would be decided by who goes first. People would complain about te imbalance of it.

Eventually people stop buying chess pieces. Because all that's required to play is to say what you intend to bring and each person rolls a die; highest roll wins. Some players figure out that if it's all down to a chance die roll then craps might be more fun.

I think the word "fun" is killing this game, the assumption being that it is universal and in no way subjective.

 Crablezworth wrote:
I think the word "fun" is killing this game, the assumption being that it is universal and in no way subjective.

I think the word "game" is killing this game, the assumption being that we're not simply paying to participate in a real-time adaptation of the end-of-year profit report for a manufacturer of the World's greatest Fine Collectibles.

It's all about playing with like minded fellows!

The word balance is only killing the game because GW pretends it doesn't exist or matter.

 carlos13th wrote:
The word balance is only killing the game because GW pretends it doesn't exist or matter.

It's a bit harsh to say that GW pretends balance doesn't matter. GW have always insisted on the narrative being key, rules don't matter so much under this aegis. Competitive play certainly doesn't exist in their eyes.


IMO if you support tourney as competitive play then you should not be relying on GW rulsets as is.

Lack of balance does just affect tournament players it effects every single casual player. Think it's fun for a few guy to pick an army he likes the sound of and make a list that by all accounts should work really well but just get stomped because he choose a sub par army and no matter what list he makes with that army it's a non competitive codex.

Narrative being key is an utter cop out a way of shifting fixing the rules onto the player. Players pay a lot for the rules having to pay for the rules, codex possibly a data slate then all the models that go along with that. The fact that some armies are powerful as feth and others are useless is not narrative, it's bad game writing, not to mention much of the poor game balance actually goes against the fluff and destroys narrative.

I think it's harsh that GW charge for such poorly written rules.

I think the OP made a mistake. The title should read: "Gamesworkshop" One Word That's Killing 40k.

As others have said balance is a benefit to both competitive and casual players. Nobody expects perfect balance in a game that has continual changes but GW could go a long way towards trying to balance the game.

And chess is a very balanced game. Keep in mind in a tournament you will normally play black and white the same number of times (or close as possible). So any issues about white moving first are mitigated by playing both colours. Normally the same in friendly games. This means your gaming experience with chess will be very balanced with regard to the game itself. 40K is nothing like this.

And I agree the arguments about narrative gaming are a cop-out. GW makes many rules that go against narrative or fluff that are not needed or to say another way that there are many times that fluff could easily be represented in the game but GW botches it or doesn't care - hardly focused on the narrative.

And if you don't care about rules or will make/change them as you go along then rules or balance is not a concern for you anyways (and that's fine if you're happy with that) - you can set up your models and throw lego bricks at them to decide which are casualties or just go 'pew-pew' your tac marine is dead'. Rules are needed for a game/contest between two people and when having the same objectives the game needs balance to give each player the same approximate chances of winning (does not mean same army).

 carlos13th wrote:
Lack of balance does just affect tournament players it effects every single casual player. Think it's fun for a few guy to pick an army he likes the sound of and make a list that by all accounts should work really well but just get stomped because he choose a sub par army and no matter what list he makes with that army it's a non competitive codex.

Or heck, someone who gets a Revenant or Riptides, just because he thinks the models are wicked awesome, and then finds nobody wants to play him, and he's TFG before the game even starts.

 Elemental wrote:

 carlos13th wrote:
Lack of balance does just affect tournament players it effects every single casual player. Think it's fun for a few guy to pick an army he likes the sound of and make a list that by all accounts should work really well but just get stomped because he choose a sub par army and no matter what list he makes with that army it's a non competitive codex.

Or heck, someone who gets a Revenant or Riptides, just because he thinks the models are wicked awesome, and then finds nobody wants to play him, and he's TFG before the game even starts.

There are many power builds that are quite fluffy armies, or are distinctly 'normal' armies that people can stumble upon by accident.
There are going to be a lot of long-time Armoured Company generals taking a lot of hate in the next few months as they show up with ~8 leman russ.

40k is unbalanced and its hurting many peoples' enjoyment of the game to the point where they're leaving for the many other games out there. If GW doesn't fix this they'll find themselves in a slow decline.

 MWHistorian wrote:
40k is unbalanced and its hurting many peoples' enjoyment of the game to the point where they're leaving for the many other games out there. If GW doesn't fix this they'll find themselves in a slow decline.

Guess you haven't read the 7th edition rumors. Unbound armies. GW likes to make the internets squirm.

Battle forged armies... GW also isn't stupid (well, you know what I mean!)

Also, at least you'll have a chance to negate those game-altering psychic powers now.

If it makes armies like this one (centurionstar with Tigurius) less effective, then maybe the pendulum will swing back a bit... nothing to do but wait and see at this point. I can't see any TOs making more tweaks until we see how 7th ed shakes out.

 RiTides wrote:
Battle forged armies... GW also isn't stupid (well, you know what I mean!)

Also, at least you'll have a chance to negate those game-altering psychic powers now.

That, or it's just a blind cash-grab by a company with zero long-term strategy and a complete lack of communication with its customers, and it won't really fix anything, just create bigger problems elsewhere.

If balance is your one and only concern in organizing a tournament you could always write up a generic marine armylist and make everyone use it in the ultimate mirror match.

 Byte wrote:

 MWHistorian wrote:
40k is unbalanced and its hurting many peoples' enjoyment of the game to the point where they're leaving for the many other games out there. If GW doesn't fix this they'll find themselves in a slow decline.

Guess you haven't read the 7th edition rumors. Unbound armies. GW likes to make the internets squirm.

They've also reported close to a 30% drop in profits in their last report... I don't think that is the internet that is squirming right now.