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Being the most successful military force in the galaxy, dominating most of the galaxy by default, isn't 'a compliment?

 Melissia wrote:
Being the most successful military force in the galaxy, dominating most of the galaxy by default, isn't 'a compliment?

Not when the person you quoted was saying they won't be competitive. Nobody cares what the fluff is, if the rules are trash.

And yet people still play armies that aren't Space Marines or Eldar.

Which doesn't actually address anything being said.

Just because you aren't actually paying attention to the conversation being had doesn't mean there is no conversation going on.

The conversation which you replied to was someone saying "orks will never be competitive" with some fluff about how Orks dominate the galaxy. That didn't even remotely relate to the question of orks being competitive or not. Also stop with your condescending and rude tone.

Wayniac: Try actually reading the post in question.

 Capt. Camping wrote:
Because of fluff, orks will never be competitive

The base of the post is "Orks are not competitive", and the reason given for their non-competitiveness is "their fluff", IE the lore.

I was disagreeing with this by providing a counter-argument that, actually, Orks ARE very good in the lore, because they dominate the galaxy in spite of every other species' attempt to stop them, including the powers of Chaos and the intergalactic threat of Tyranids. Clearly, Orks in the lore are not notorious push-overs that can't fight worth crap which is how many people believe them to be in the tabletop. And therefor, the reason for their non-competitiveness is NOT lore, because the lore indicates far more strength than the tabletop metagame would otherwise show. I would posit the reason is simply because GW doesn't put all that much thought in to the game to begin with, actually, but that's neither here nor there.

My post was thus relevant to the discussion at hand. If you have something stuck that far up your craw about what I've posted, feel free to PM the mods about it, because I'm not budging nor responding any further to your objections.

Wayniac wrote:
That's not really a compliment though. Orks are basically the cannon fodder of the setting, so what if they never permanently lose and come back later? Orks almost every time they show up get the gak kicked out of them, and the argument was about the game, not the fluff. In the fluff Orks are actually terrifying, on the tabletop they are basically easy to beat to keep up that "noble Imperium defeating the enemies of Mankind" stuff.

Inescapable conclusion: GW's rule authors are incompetent.

 Peregrine wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
That's not really a compliment though. Orks are basically the cannon fodder of the setting, so what if they never permanently lose and come back later? Orks almost every time they show up get the gak kicked out of them, and the argument was about the game, not the fluff. In the fluff Orks are actually terrifying, on the tabletop they are basically easy to beat to keep up that "noble Imperium defeating the enemies of Mankind" stuff.

Inescapable conclusion: GW's rule authors are incompetent.

Pretty much this.

Yeah, the rules are mindnumbingly unclear and inconcise. I play lots of MTG in addition to 40k. WOTC has taken so much care to make a complex system straightforward and easy to understand. MTG is easy to pick up but difficult to master, which should be a goal for any and all interactive entertainment. GW, however, has a verbose encyclopedia for a rule book.

GW also doesn't seem to have anyone in overall charge of each system, nor do they seem to have any sort of design bible for their systems. You can see evidence of this in the way they keep releasing stuff that breaks the game in various ways.

Two good examples of this:

1. Grav Cannons. They completely invalidate a lot of the SM heavy weapons and are too good against too many things, making them a go-to choice in pretty much all cases. They shouldn't have been allowed anywhere near a table in their current form because of this and that's the sort of decision for a design lead to take and a design bible to prohibit.

2. Formations and Decurion-style detachments. I don't actually have a problem with the concept of formations but the execution once again showed GW lack leadership at the design level. GW shouldn't have released the Decurion halfway through an edition without also having some sort of plan in place to bring the earlier armies back into line with this entirely new way of building armies. But no, the GW approach is to say "screw it" and release anyway and let the earlier armies catch up eventually. These sorts of mid-edition changes in direction just shouldn't happen in a well run game.

I know there are reasons other than pure design ones for some decisions. Marketing is probably too heavily involved in the design process, which is another issue.

Getting back to the original point about having novelists writing rules, I'm reminded of an interview with Jervis (or maybe Rick Priestley) a long time ago when he actually said they don't write rules in a dry, legalistic fashion because they wanted the rules to be approachable and readable. That's ludicrous to me for a number of reasons. Firstly, clarity is the most important thing when writing rules. Secondly, I don't care how florid your prose is, reading a rulebook the size of 40k's is not an enjoyable experience. Just give me the rules as concisely and accurately as possible so I have to spend as little time as possible with my head buried in your book .

Slipspace wrote:
GW also doesn't seem to have anyone in overall charge of each system, nor do they seem to have any sort of design bible for their systems. You can see evidence of this in the way they keep releasing stuff that breaks the game in various ways.

Two good examples of this:

1. Grav Cannons. They completely invalidate a lot of the SM heavy weapons and are too good against too many things, making them a go-to choice in pretty much all cases. They shouldn't have been allowed anywhere near a table in their current form because of this and that's the sort of decision for a design lead to take and a design bible to prohibit.

2. Formations and Decurion-style detachments. I don't actually have a problem with the concept of formations but the execution once again showed GW lack leadership at the design level. GW shouldn't have released the Decurion halfway through an edition without also having some sort of plan in place to bring the earlier armies back into line with this entirely new way of building armies. But no, the GW approach is to say "screw it" and release anyway and let the earlier armies catch up eventually. These sorts of mid-edition changes in direction just shouldn't happen in a well run game.

I know there are reasons other than pure design ones for some decisions. Marketing is probably too heavily involved in the design process, which is another issue.

Getting back to the original point about having novelists writing rules, I'm reminded of an interview with Jervis (or maybe Rick Priestley) a long time ago when he actually said they don't write rules in a dry, legalistic fashion because they wanted the rules to be approachable and readable. That's ludicrous to me for a number of reasons. Firstly, clarity is the most important thing when writing rules. Secondly, I don't care how florid your prose is, reading a rulebook the size of 40k's is not an enjoyable experience. Just give me the rules as concisely and accurately as possible so I have to spend as little time as possible with my head buried in your book .

Eloquently phrased. As another MTG player, it's painful to try to resolve something confusing with the 40k rulebooks.

Slipspace wrote:
GW also doesn't seem to have anyone in overall charge of each system, nor do they seem to have any sort of design bible for their systems. You can see evidence of this in the way they keep releasing stuff that breaks the game in various ways.

Two good examples of this:

1. Grav Cannons. They completely invalidate a lot of the SM heavy weapons and are too good against too many things, making them a go-to choice in pretty much all cases. They shouldn't have been allowed anywhere near a table in their current form because of this and that's the sort of decision for a design lead to take and a design bible to prohibit.

2. Formations and Decurion-style detachments. I don't actually have a problem with the concept of formations but the execution once again showed GW lack leadership at the design level. GW shouldn't have released the Decurion halfway through an edition without also having some sort of plan in place to bring the earlier armies back into line with this entirely new way of building armies. But no, the GW approach is to say "screw it" and release anyway and let the earlier armies catch up eventually. These sorts of mid-edition changes in direction just shouldn't happen in a well run game.

I know there are reasons other than pure design ones for some decisions. Marketing is probably too heavily involved in the design process, which is another issue.

Getting back to the original point about having novelists writing rules, I'm reminded of an interview with Jervis (or maybe Rick Priestley) a long time ago when he actually said they don't write rules in a dry, legalistic fashion because they wanted the rules to be approachable and readable. That's ludicrous to me for a number of reasons. Firstly, clarity is the most important thing when writing rules. Secondly, I don't care how florid your prose is, reading a rulebook the size of 40k's is not an enjoyable experience. Just give me the rules as concisely and accurately as possible so I have to spend as little time as possible with my head buried in your book .

This is all baseless conjecture and proves nothing. Imbalances are supposed to exist in games, GW is clever enough to make sure they are obvious.

Of course there is someone in charge of each system. It's Duncan. The rules are written in a manner that thins them down.

 Peregrine wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
That's not really a compliment though. Orks are basically the cannon fodder of the setting, so what if they never permanently lose and come back later? Orks almost every time they show up get the gak kicked out of them, and the argument was about the game, not the fluff. In the fluff Orks are actually terrifying, on the tabletop they are basically easy to beat to keep up that "noble Imperium defeating the enemies of Mankind" stuff.

Inescapable conclusion: GW's rule authors are incompetent.

Dull surprise.

 techsoldaten wrote:
This is all baseless conjecture and proves nothing. Imbalances are supposed to exist in games, GW is clever enough to make sure they are obvious.

Of course there is someone in charge of each system. It's Duncan. The rules are written in a manner that thins them down.

The issues isn't "Imbalances are supposed to exist in games", but how that imbalance works. You could say rock, paper, scissors isn't balanced either, but it's still fair. We don't have rock, paper, scissors with SM heavy weapons, we have Rock, paper, scissors, Tactical nuclear warhead.

"Imbalances are supposed to exist in games,"

That's blatantly false. Differences are supposed to exist, not imbalancing differences.

Peregrine wrote:
Inescapable conclusion: GW's rule authors are incompetent.

And they are giving a seminar about rules design.

Martel732 wrote:
"Imbalances are supposed to exist in games,"

That's blatantly false. Differences are supposed to exist, not imbalancing differences.

"Rock is imbalanced when compared with scissors."

Expand your scope. There is no perfectly balanced scenario.

If differences exist, imbalances exist, this is a fact. But the presence of imbalances doesn't mean an imbalanced game.

Differences aren't imbalances. Rock has a job. That is to defeat scissors. That doesn't mean it's imbalanced vs scissors. You can't compare a unit to what it's meant to hard counter. You have to look at how many units a given units counters and it countered by. That's where imbalance comes into play.

"If differences exist, imbalances exist, this is a fact"

I disagree. It's not a fact at all.

Balance is a unit being fairly costed for how it fares vs the FIELD, not one of its counters, nor something it itself counters.

There's also differences in situational balance but not overall balance.

I think a pretty obvious example of this is in 30k, where the Legio Cybernetica army can field an entire phalanx of monstrous creatures with little effort, and is generally capable of fielding and defeating most Legion lists due to resilience alone...

... except that none of the robots are scoring. This means that in an overall game-state sense, Cybernetica are fairly weak in 30k. In any individual game, however, they will feel very strong, because until victory points are counted, they are very durable and killy for the price of their machines.

 Melissia wrote:
Being the most successful military force in the galaxy, dominating most of the galaxy by default, isn't 'a compliment?

Orks don't need compliments about their dominance of the galaxy. They just do it for fun, and they don't wipe out the other races because it's good to have some variety in your wars.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Davor wrote:

Peregrine wrote:
Inescapable conclusion: GW's rule authors are incompetent.

And they are giving a seminar about rules design.

Who actually paid to attend that?