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Wayniac wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
afaik he is also one of the few that likes the accursed weapons for chosen and Terminators.

hey now I like that myself. Mainly because they never give all the options so you are forced to source bits, 3d print, or have a hodgepodge squad with no synergy. I'd rather have the former than the latter any day.

Same. I fully expect power weapons to go the same way. And I'll be glad to go back to that, rather than the constant yo-yo effect of swords>axes, then axes>swords then swords>axes and maces always sucking except for a few corner cases of high toughness and bad armor.

 Strg Alt wrote:
Having "Box set vs. Box set" battles is an asinine idea hatched from the ill brain of a marketing manger. This proves game designers are treated like crap in that company otherwise it wouldn´t come to such an embarrassing development.

This is the dumbest thing I think anyone has ever said on this website.

"Hey guys, what if we made a game mode where people can buy a basic starter set and play them against each other in a way that's fun? It would work as an easy introduction to the hobby and the game while making starting an army less intimidating!"

"REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE WHY U HAVE ILLL BRAIN?!?? ONLY BIG MEATY GAMERZ DESERVEPLAY GAEM!!!!"

 Gangland wrote:

 Strg Alt wrote:
Having "Box set vs. Box set" battles is an asinine idea hatched from the ill brain of a marketing manger. This proves game designers are treated like crap in that company otherwise it wouldn´t come to such an embarrassing development.

Eh, seems like a decent way to give new players the ability to get into the game together while not being shoe horned by what is in the starter. It is gw though so...

Instead everyone is short horned by what is in the combat patrol box.

I hope little Timmy wans a bajillion Poxwalkers and no tanks.

Non-problem totally solved! Much improvement. Many wow.

PenitentJake wrote:

 Strg Alt wrote:

The next one would be to reduce factions from over twenty to about six. This would drastically reduce bloat and make the game far easier to balance for any dev. Many franchises have only about six different factions and they are fine but 40K needs to be the black sheep in that regard.

Wayniac wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Reducing factions? These suggestions are getting worse...

And yet the game is worse for them existing.

The game is certainly LESS BALANCED for having them, and for some players, that does mean WORSE.

But for many of us, balance is A consideration as opposed to THE consideration. Many of us are okay with BALANCED ENOUGH.

And does anyone else think that the number of subfactions in 40k might be the reason it dominates the market? You can talk about Warmahordes all you want, but they're a blip on the radar for this industry. Ditto on Infinity, or Command and Conquer, or Dust, or any of the other games people talk about here. And I'm not saying that those games aren't good- I bet they're all really fun, and of course they're more balanced. But they are all so limited in what they offer by way of comparison that if they were the only game you had, you'd be bored in a decade if not five years.

40k on the other hand has enough in it to keep people playing for life. And it does keep people playing for life. Not all, but some. And new people keep joining too.

Fortunately, GW knows this, so no one who advocates for a mere 6-10 factions will ever get their way. You might get a "40K Arena" variant that includes only 6-10 factions. But if you did, your store might still keep playing regular old 40k, in which case you spend an edition or two pissing and moaning about how broken that thing was rather than playing the varient they created to cater to you... until 5-10 years later the 6-10 faction tournament variant faded into obscurity or disappeared completely, like all games that are limited to 6-10 factions eventually do.

Meanwhile, 40k will outlive all of us. And all the other games that sacrifice scope for balance.

What do you mean by subfactions? If you mean minor nonsense like Ynnari (which no one plays) or Inquisition (which I'm not sure even exists?) then yeah no, they're not why 40k dominates the market.

40k dominates the market because it's been around for over 30 years, has a bat-gak, over the top setting that's been memed to hell. Being about to build and paint your army how you want also helps.

It does have a decent variety of armies, but if you break it down into what people actually play there's only about 12 I think? Maybe a couple of more?

If you count every variation of Space Marine chapter you do get into silly territory, but that's not really variety now is it?
It's just another color of marine with some special equipment and special snowflake rules.
You might as well just give a hundred models a different hat and gun and say you have hundred separate armies.

Having such variety is certainly nice to have as it does give the players options, but I don't think its as important as you make it out to be.

The way I see it, if the sub-faction has nothing really going for it or is pretty one note, then it should be folded into a main faction.

So knights, Talons of the Emperor and the Inquisition should just be a LoW option available to all Imperials and Harlequins should be available to DE and CWE as they used to be.

Ynnari has potential to be something unique, but if they continue to do nothing with them they should either be dropped or become some unique unit type for DE and CWE like Harlies.

GSC are probably unique enough to not really be a subfaction but a faction in their own right.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Voss wrote:

Wayniac wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
afaik he is also one of the few that likes the accursed weapons for chosen and Terminators.

hey now I like that myself. Mainly because they never give all the options so you are forced to source bits, 3d print, or have a hodgepodge squad with no synergy. I'd rather have the former than the latter any day.

Same. I fully expect power weapons to go the same way. And I'll be glad to go back to that, rather than the constant yo-yo effect of swords>axes, then axes>swords then swords>axes and maces always sucking except for a few corner cases of high toughness and bad armor.

Yeah, that's something they added in 6th (I think? Might have been 7th) and it was just as awkward back then.
That's a bit too much granularity.

Wayniac wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Reducing factions? These suggestions are getting worse...

And yet the game is worse for them existing.

You're damn right that the game is worse for these consolidationists existing.

 Dysartes wrote:

Wayniac wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Reducing factions? These suggestions are getting worse...

And yet the game is worse for them existing.

You're damn right that the game is worse for these consolidationists existing.

Can we please not stoop to othering and labeling people for their opinion on model soldiers? Or wishing that they'd cease to exist? That's a little harsh for talking about a hobby.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:


What do you mean by subfactions? If you mean minor nonsense like Ynnari (which no one plays) or Inquisition (which I'm not sure even exists?) then yeah no, they're not why 40k dominates the market.

40k dominates the market because it's been around for over 30 years, has a bat-gak, over the top setting that's been memed to hell. Being about to build and paint your army how you want also helps.

It does have a decent variety of armies, but if you break it down into what people actually play there's only about 12 I think? Maybe a couple of more?

If you count every variation of Space Marine chapter you do get into silly territory, but that's not really variety now is it?
It's just another color of marine with some special equipment and special snowflake rules.
You might as well just give a hundred models a different hat and gun and say you have hundred separate armies.

Having such variety is certainly nice to have as it does give the players options, but I don't think its as important as you make it out to be.

The way I see it, if the sub-faction has nothing really going for it or is pretty one note, then it should be folded into a main faction.

So knights, Talons of the Emperor and the Inquisition should just be a LoW option available to all Imperials and Harlequins should be available to DE and CWE as they used to be.

Ynnari has potential to be something unique, but if they continue to do nothing with them they should either be dropped or become some unique unit type for DE and CWE like Harlies.

GSC are probably unique enough to not really be a subfaction but a faction in their own right.

A couple points of order :

Ynnari are about 1.5 to 3% of the field, which is the same as Blood Angels, DE, and others. They are not rare.

Pretty much every single army is represented in tournaments right now and even if you wanted to group DA / DW / SW / BA / GK, CK / IK, and TS / DG / WE into their respective "parent" factions you still have 16...

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
The massive options are why 40k is so bloated.

Wayniac wrote:
So I'd argue while losing options would absolutely suck, it may very well be what's needed to kill the bloat. The massive options are why 40k is so bloated.

Options aren't what's causing the bloat. Every Primaris Marine unit having a slightly different bolter by default is bloat. 12 different types of Scything Talons is bloat. 40 strats in 7 broad categories per Codex is bloat. Space Marines having 10+ psychic disciplines is bloat.

An option between a Meltagun, Plasma Gun and Flamer is nothing compared to that.

And the answer, despite what some people may want to do, isn't to just cut everything. Then you've got the opposite problem, where everything is the same and it's boring. Bloat's bad, but I'll take bloat over boring.

Yeah but Grav has no reason to exist. Making them alternative Plasma models is perfectly reasonable.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:


What do you mean by subfactions? If you mean minor nonsense like Ynnari (which no one plays) or Inquisition (which I'm not sure even exists?) then yeah no, they're not why 40k dominates the market.

40k dominates the market because it's been around for over 30 years, has a bat-gak, over the top setting that's been memed to hell. Being about to build and paint your army how you want also helps.

It does have a decent variety of armies, but if you break it down into what people actually play there's only about 12 I think? Maybe a couple of more?

If you count every variation of Space Marine chapter you do get into silly territory, but that's not really variety now is it?
It's just another color of marine with some special equipment and special snowflake rules.
You might as well just give a hundred models a different hat and gun and say you have hundred separate armies.

Having such variety is certainly nice to have as it does give the players options, but I don't think its as important as you make it out to be.

The way I see it, if the sub-faction has nothing really going for it or is pretty one note, then it should be folded into a main faction.

So knights, Talons of the Emperor and the Inquisition should just be a LoW option available to all Imperials and Harlequins should be available to DE and CWE as they used to be.

Ynnari has potential to be something unique, but if they continue to do nothing with them they should either be dropped or become some unique unit type for DE and CWE like Harlies.

GSC are probably unique enough to not really be a subfaction but a faction in their own right.

A couple points of order :

Ynnari are about 1.5 to 3% of the field, which is the same as Blood Angels, DE, and others. They are not rare.

Pretty much every single army is represented in tournaments right now and even if you wanted to group DA / DW / SW / BA / GK, CK / IK, and TS / DG / WE into their respective "parent" factions you still have 16...

How is 3% not rare? That's still a pretty small percentage. I'm more surprised that so few play Blood Angels and Dark Eldar, considering how I see more of them.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

How is 3% not rare? That's still a pretty small percentage. I'm more surprised that so few play Blood Angels and Dark Eldar, considering how I see more of them.

theres ~26 factions in 40k according to google.

26/100 gives us a 3.8% playrate if every faction was even.

(don't quote me on that tho, i suck at statistics)

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
How is 3% not rare? That's still a pretty small percentage. I'm more surprised that so few play Blood Angels and Dark Eldar, considering how I see more of them.

Partially it's because the field is so diverse right now. This is one of the few times in history that you can play most any army and do reasonably well.

SM (x10+)
Grey Knights
Custodes
Sisters of Battle
Ad Mech
Imperial Guard
Knights
Chaos Knights
CSM
Thousand Sons
Death Guard
World Eaters
Daemons
CWE
Dark Eldar
Harlequins
Ynnari
Tyranids
GSC
Orks
Tau
Necrons
Votann

So 23 by my count. Obviously more if you want to separate out BA/DA/SW/DW/BT etc. I'm not sure I'd treat Ynnari as a thing in themselves for the same reason.

Clearly if you assume Marines are 20% (at least), that's 80/22=3.63% for everyone else.

In practice you've got say Marines at 20%, Guard at 10%, Custodes and Daemons at say 6-7%~. So its more like 57.5%/19=3%

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
How is 3% not rare? That's still a pretty small percentage. I'm more surprised that so few play Blood Angels and Dark Eldar, considering how I see more of them.

Partially it's because the field is so diverse right now. This is one of the few times in history that you can play most any army and do reasonably well.

I'm assuming you mean in tournaments.
Which is still great, mind you, as it does indicate that the game is actually somewhat balanced, but that still doesn't really reflect how often the army is actually played. How do I know that some armies are over-represented or under-represented in a tournament?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tyel wrote:
SM (x10+)
Grey Knights
Custodes
Sisters of Battle
Ad Mech
Imperial Guard
Knights
Chaos Knights
CSM
Thousand Sons
Death Guard
World Eaters
Daemons
CWE
Dark Eldar
Harlequins
Ynnari
Tyranids
GSC
Orks
Tau
Necrons
Votann

So 23 by my count. Obviously more if you want to separate out BA/DA/SW/DW/BT etc. I'm not sure I'd treat Ynnari as a thing in themselves for the same reason.

Clearly if you assume Marines are 20% (at least), that's 80/22=3.63% for everyone else.

In practice you've got say Marines at 20%, Guard at 10%, Custodes and Daemons at say 6-7%~. So its more like 57.5%/19=3%

That looks about right. That is kind of nuts how about half of the factions are some flavor of marine. So much for being the rarest army in the setting I guess.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

That looks about right. That is kind of nuts how about half of the factions are some flavor of marine. So much for being the rarest army in the setting I guess.

and people love to dog on 30k for being a marine-only game lol

"You better start believing in marine-only games, you're in one"

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
How is 3% not rare? That's still a pretty small percentage. I'm more surprised that so few play Blood Angels and Dark Eldar, considering how I see more of them.

Partially it's because the field is so diverse right now. This is one of the few times in history that you can play most any army and do reasonably well.

I'm assuming you mean in tournaments.
Which is still great, mind you, as it does indicate that the game is actually somewhat balanced, but that still doesn't really reflect how often the army is actually played. How do I know that some armies are over-represented or under-represented in a tournament?

It is at least some data that Daedalus can use. Your claim was that nobody plays Ynnari, which you have no data on.

Sincerely,
Ynnari player

ERJAK wrote:

Heafstaag wrote:
I hope they do something about the missions. I don't know what, but all the missions feel like they are similar, with having terrain in basically the same place, and objectives in the same place, etc...

I don't know exactly what, but secondaries are lame, the maelstrom type game mode is a bit more fun, but still lame.

Giving some missions something similar to 7th ed fantasy victory conditions would be great. You tally up how many points of the enemy's army you killed, and your opponent does the same, and you see who got more.

If I recall if you were within a certain amount of points it was a draw.

If people feel like adding certain things to spice it up then make objectives worth so many points at the end, or killing the warlord worth so many points, etc.

Just some thoughts.

So your idea to make missions more interesting is...kill points? Really? The least interesting mission mechanic ever is what's gonna fix missions.

Dude, if you're talking about adding 'slay the warlord' as 'spicing things up' ...you've just made some doggak boring missions.

The missions ARE similar, they're basically the same nonsense with the ITC secondaries baked into the base rules thanks to the tournament players having the loudest voices.

yeah the current missions are sooooo fething boring and the main reason i've dropped 40k

variations of

"Hold 1, Hold 2, Hold more" + secondaries that are basically picked during listbuilding isnt interesting.

AoS has much more interesting mission even if its only because they each have a twist on top of the basic hold1-2-more. And battle tactics >>>>>> secondaries

 Eldarsif wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
How is 3% not rare? That's still a pretty small percentage. I'm more surprised that so few play Blood Angels and Dark Eldar, considering how I see more of them.

Partially it's because the field is so diverse right now. This is one of the few times in history that you can play most any army and do reasonably well.

I'm assuming you mean in tournaments.
Which is still great, mind you, as it does indicate that the game is actually somewhat balanced, but that still doesn't really reflect how often the army is actually played. How do I know that some armies are over-represented or under-represented in a tournament?

It is at least some data that Daedalus can use. Your claim was that nobody plays Ynnari, which you have no data on.

Sincerely,
Ynnari player

It was admittedly an exaggeration on my part. They still seem to be really uncommon and woefully underdeveloped for an army that was supposed to be a major part of the Psychic Awakening.
I suppose, based on my observations, that they could be comparable to Sisters of Battle before that army finally received something from Games Workshop. There's people who play them somewhere in the world, but chances are you're not going to meet one unless you're really lucky.

Wayniac wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Reducing factions? These suggestions are getting worse...

And yet the game is worse for them existing. . .

No it f***ing isn't.

The funny thing about cutting factions is that everyone who suggests it, never assumes their army is going to get cut. Obviously their stuff will stay. All that extra stuff from some other group needs to go though.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
yeah the current missions are sooooo fething boring and the main reason i've dropped 40k

variations of

"Hold 1, Hold 2, Hold more" + secondaries that are basically picked during listbuilding isnt interesting.

AoS has much more interesting mission even if its only because they each have a twist on top of the basic hold1-2-more. And battle tactics >>>>>> secondaries

100%

They've never been any good. I've been pointing out their design flaws from day 1. But... Tourny-gakkers.

Above all else, the 10th ed. missions are what I'm most curious about. I fear that because that smug feth-stick Mike Brandt is still around that we're in for another edition of the most poorly designed missions to have ever been conceived.

 evil_kiwi_60 wrote:
The funny thing about cutting factions is that everyone who suggests it, never assumes their army is going to get cut. Obviously their stuff will stay. All that extra stuff from some other group needs to go though.

This.

I don’t mind gazilion of factions/subfactions existing, but what I do mind is that some of them are openly treated like children of worse gods and neglected entirely or partially for literal decades. Meanwhile a single „megafaction” wearing power armour is so oversupportef it tires even some players of this faction. And given that even large unique chapters like BA, DA and SW have less players than Eldar or Guard * it is seriously annoying and what drives me and my group away from official 40k and makes us spending our money on 3rd party models.

* (I don’t have time to find a link, but there is an European statistics site which has this kind of tournament data aggregated over more than a decade).

 evil_kiwi_60 wrote:
The funny thing about cutting factions is that everyone who suggests it, never assumes their army is going to get cut. Obviously their stuff will stay. All that extra stuff from some other group needs to go though.

Well, what else are you going to cut? You can't drop Votann, because they just got released and they do have a decent roster. Eldar and Dark Eldar are staples of the setting along with Orks, Chaos, Imperial Guard and Space Marines.
Sisters of Battle are getting more of the limelight after being neglected for a couple of decades and they seem to have a fairly developed roster.
Tyranids and Necrons are also a pretty big part of the setting, being existential threats and they've also been around for a while and have developed rosters.
GSC and Ad Mech seem to be shaping up nicely, having their own identities, aesthetics and unit variety.
Custodes...do have an army. Most of it seems to be forgeworld but its still an army. Personally I think having them as an independent force on the tabletop is a mistake, but they do seem to have a decent bit of unit variety.

So what does that leave you? Well, it leaves you with Ynnari, who have to borrow units from Eldar and Dark Eldar, knights, whose armies consist of 1-2 models which is pretty silly, and all of those marine chapters which don't really need a separate codex anymore because of the keyword and <faction> mechanics.

If anything needs trimming it's those. Not deletion, mind you, because losing units is bad, but merging them with a larger faction.
Personally I would prefer them to develop Ynnari though and actually give them some units of their own with their own aesthetic style. It is kind of sad that there was furor over them during the release of eighth ed that didn't really amount to anything.

With the 10th approach to subfactions seemingly being a two page spread with 3-4 paragraphs of rules, 3 relics, a warlord trait and 6 strategems, having a bunch of them doesn't seem to be much of a problem.

In practice, it'll be pretty quick to memorize the half-dozen or so that people in my Crusade group will be using for their armies.

The question with subfactions is if Space Marines chapters get the subfaction treatment of only being two pages or they get the "entire supplements dedicated to each one of them" treatment.

There is where most of the (sub)faction bloat is located.

So is it known or was it alluded to if the indexes will have the 2-page faction rules or if the indexes are paired down more and the 2-page faction rules will be in the codexes?

 Ct. 4dxqgr+huluIsSpy wrote:

 evil_kiwi_60 wrote:
The funny thing about cutting factions is that everyone who suggests it, never assumes their army is going to get cut. Obviously their stuff will stay. All that extra stuff from some other group needs to go though.

Well, what else are you going to cut?

You start by cutting and consolidating all the Bolter variants. Then you consolidate silly things like Predator Destructor and Predator Annihilator together. Then you intelligently mash much of the bespoke special rules ointo USRs, then you very aggressively do the same for Strats, WL traits, etc. Then take a hard look at weapon profiles across the board. Is there a "Blight Axe", "Blood Axe", "Wolf Axe", and "Skull Axe" that all do about the same thing? Generify it.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Ct. 4dxqgr+huluIsSpy wrote:

 evil_kiwi_60 wrote:
The funny thing about cutting factions is that everyone who suggests it, never assumes their army is going to get cut. Obviously their stuff will stay. All that extra stuff from some other group needs to go though.

Well, what else are you going to cut?

You start by cutting and consolidating all the Bolter variants. Then you consolidate silly things like Predator Destructor and Predator Annihilator together. Then you intelligently mash much of the bespoke special rules ointo USRs, then you very aggressively do the same for Strats, WL traits, etc. Then take a hard look at weapon profiles across the board. Is there a "Blight Axe", "Blood Axe", "Wolf Axe", and "Skull Axe" that all do about the same thing? Generify it.

Yeah, that'll do too.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
yeah the current missions are sooooo fething boring and the main reason i've dropped 40k

variations of

"Hold 1, Hold 2, Hold more" + secondaries that are basically picked during listbuilding isnt interesting.

AoS has much more interesting mission even if its only because they each have a twist on top of the basic hold1-2-more. And battle tactics >>>>>> secondaries

I fell like this really misrepresents the missions.

Recover the Relics - kill units
Tear Down Their Icons - plant and defuse explosives
Data Scry-Salvage - hack terminals
Abandoned Sanctuaries - king of the hill
Conversion - breakthrough
etc

What secondaries you can easily give up happens at list building. What you choose to score does not.

 JNAProductions wrote:
You do realize that people can have multiple desires, right?

I want 40k to be balanced.
I also want 40k to have customization, and lots of it.

I understand that these are, if not mutually exclusive, still hard to get together. But that doesn’t invalidate desires.

I know my girlfriend does...