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Dudeface wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
Which in reality beyond occasionally flipping which is the "best" option by mistake, is pretty much what we get now anyway.

Why "now"? It has never been any different.

You are correct but I'll grant Hellbore that they give the appearance of caring and adjusting more, more often. They haven't given anyone any reason to think they could or would handle it any differently under this guise, but that was the point really - they hypothetically would try corrections now, whereas they didn't before.

I'm glad you - unlike Hellbore - actually address the argument. The key difference here is, in my opinion, that it's not like GW has never tried to balance options in such a way, but they have failed over and over again despite seriously trying and actually implementing modern game design processes. While they are continuously getting at balancing units and armies, no such progress is being made for options.
And by options I mean anything that allows you to pick from a list of two or more things, be it warlord traits, psychic discipline, wargear or battle honors. Neither point costs, PL, pick two or free options have changed that there always is one or two superior choices, and maybe a third niche one. There is no strategic reason to pick any of the others unless the best options are unique. This is why splitting datasheets seems to work out ok, when in reality it is tweaking point costs, offering alternative abilities and different wargear to reduce problem they were never able to handle like crisis suits into another "balance 3 options against each other" puzzle they are able to solve.

They are failing to balance nob wargear. They are failing to balance tau commander wargear. They are failing to balance the knight chassis options on both imperial and chaos side. Carnifex, Leman Russ, Plague Marines, Helbrutes, Land Fortress, Battle Sister Squads, Havocs.
GW has been removing options left and right, but it's not like units with plenty of options have disappeared from the game. And yet, every single one of those is - barring some gentlemen running an old model and giving a damn about WYSIWYG - not run ignoring 90% of the possible configurations.

In addition, multiple narrative event organizers are outright banning the new character creations rules before they had the chance to land in people's hands, because it's just that badly balanced.

Just like Faster Than Light travel, which is possible in theory, the theory is meaningless to reality if you don't have the means to achieve it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Breton wrote:
One could even argue their target audience has changed. They're more about competitive gaming than a sandbox for narratives.

One surely has proof to support that? Crusade might not be as popular as matched play decks, but it's for sure drawing more people to narrative play than their half-assed campaign books with disconnected badly balanced missions were in the past.

 Jidmah wrote:


One surely has proof to support that? Crusade might not be as popular as matched play decks, but it's for sure drawing more people to narrative play than their half-assed campaign books with disconnected badly balanced missions were in the past.

Who said anything about their campaign books? I'm pretty sure I said competitive gaming (tournament play) than sandboxing for narratives (pickup and more). I don't see them putting on invitational Crusade Leagues. Since you want to be so combative I'll ask - When is the Crusades World Championships? is there a War-Com article about it?
https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/40dvsrcq/experience-the-world-championships-of-warhammer-in-spain-in-2026/

Breton wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:


One surely has proof to support that? Crusade might not be as popular as matched play decks, but it's for sure drawing more people to narrative play than their half-assed campaign books with disconnected badly balanced missions were in the past.

Who said anything about their campaign books? I'm pretty sure I said competitive gaming (tournament play) than sandboxing for narratives (pickup and more). I don't see them putting on invitational Crusade Leagues. Since you want to be so combative I'll ask - When is the Crusades World Championships? is there a War-Com article about it?
https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/40dvsrcq/experience-the-world-championships-of-warhammer-in-spain-in-2026/

By definition you can't have a crusade championship as it's not a competitive mode. It's not designed to bum rush through the crusade in 2 days to get to an end result.

That said GW does host multiple grand narrative events which are focused on narrative play. Most independent tournaments also hold a narrative event.

You're essentially going "well if people playing a casual long-form narrative system is so popular why aren't GW shoving 2 day competitive events out for it". Which is an oxymoron.

Do GW regularly push crusade groups? Honestly I dont think so, but likewise it's mote free-form nature doesn't really suit that either.

There is 100% more competitive matched play noise online though, which gives it the impression of being the most played.

Dudeface wrote:
There is 100% more competitive matched play noise online though, which gives it the impression of being the most played.

As with everything today, it highly depends on your social media bubble, really. Matched play clearly gets the most attention because it's the default way to play, but not all of it is tournament grade competitive. Some of the most successful battle report channels are run by fairly bad players. People prefer watching a nice person getting some rules wrong with a bad list against their buddy while socializing over a two highly competitive guys playing a perfect game against each other.

There are also large crusade-focused communities, but they tend to focus more on running crusades, which campaigns to run, grasping the rather complicated crusade rules or how to build your own campaign. It's comparable to TTRPGs. Just because there is less content for DMs/GMs than for broken combos, horror storries and insane character builds doesn't man that either is more relevant.

It's also worth noting that the majority of tactics applies equally to crusade and matched play. The only exception would be mission-focused strategy, which also has quite some impact on list building. On the flip side, crusade-specific tactics are rather rare since the main goal of crusade is either the narrative or leveling your army, not winning games. Some of GW's 10th edition crusades can be won as a whole even if you lose every single one of your games. It's quite difficult to be a successful content creator for something people don't actually care about. I know goonhammer is trying, but their crusade content is rather low quality compared to their competitive stuff.

Dudeface wrote:

Breton wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:


One surely has proof to support that? Crusade might not be as popular as matched play decks, but it's for sure drawing more people to narrative play than their half-assed campaign books with disconnected badly balanced missions were in the past.

Who said anything about their campaign books? I'm pretty sure I said competitive gaming (tournament play) than sandboxing for narratives (pickup and more). I don't see them putting on invitational Crusade Leagues. Since you want to be so combative I'll ask - When is the Crusades World Championships? is there a War-Com article about it?
https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/40dvsrcq/experience-the-world-championships-of-warhammer-in-spain-in-2026/

By definition you can't have a crusade championship as it's not a competitive mode. It's not designed to bum rush through the crusade in 2 days to get to an end result.

That said GW does host multiple grand narrative events which are focused on narrative play. Most independent tournaments also hold a narrative event.

You're essentially going "well if people playing a casual long-form narrative system is so popular why aren't GW shoving 2 day competitive events out for it". Which is an oxymoron.

Do GW regularly push crusade groups? Honestly I dont think so, but likewise it's mote free-form nature doesn't really suit that either.

There is 100% more competitive matched play noise online though, which gives it the impression of being the most played.

No, I'm essentially going the GW environment has changed, and they're no longer focused on the narrative player - to which someone tried to disagree. At which point I referred them to the article for the tournament and asked when the Crusade Invitational was. Because there isn't one. Because their focus isn't on the narrative player. You even agreed with this, then tried to deny it. Most tournaments have a narrative event. All of them have a tournament event. They don't even give you a downed starship and pilot in the boxed set anymore.

Breton wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

Breton wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:


One surely has proof to support that? Crusade might not be as popular as matched play decks, but it's for sure drawing more people to narrative play than their half-assed campaign books with disconnected badly balanced missions were in the past.

Who said anything about their campaign books? I'm pretty sure I said competitive gaming (tournament play) than sandboxing for narratives (pickup and more). I don't see them putting on invitational Crusade Leagues. Since you want to be so combative I'll ask - When is the Crusades World Championships? is there a War-Com article about it?
https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/40dvsrcq/experience-the-world-championships-of-warhammer-in-spain-in-2026/

By definition you can't have a crusade championship as it's not a competitive mode. It's not designed to bum rush through the crusade in 2 days to get to an end result.

That said GW does host multiple grand narrative events which are focused on narrative play. Most independent tournaments also hold a narrative event.

You're essentially going "well if people playing a casual long-form narrative system is so popular why aren't GW shoving 2 day competitive events out for it". Which is an oxymoron.

Do GW regularly push crusade groups? Honestly I dont think so, but likewise it's mote free-form nature doesn't really suit that either.

There is 100% more competitive matched play noise online though, which gives it the impression of being the most played.

No, I'm essentially going the GW environment has changed, and they're no longer focused on the narrative player - to which someone tried to disagree. At which point I referred them to the article for the tournament and asked when the Crusade Invitational was. Because there isn't one. Because their focus isn't on the narrative player. You even agreed with this, then tried to deny it. Most tournaments have a narrative event. All of them have a tournament event. They don't even give you a downed starship and pilot in the boxed set anymore.

There doesn't need to be a crusade invitational, it isn't a metric of success or popularity, they've produced enough materials and support for crusade to show they care and included it in their official events.

If you want to spin pointless statements around to prove subjective opinions, how many matched play expansion books have they included in the end of edition series? As a hint it's a lot lower than the narrative ones.

I have not agreed their focus isn't on narrative, I disagree strongly. I stated their public facing elements fixate on matched play, because the vocal online community does.

Ultimately you cannot prove me wrong, just as I cannot prove myself right. There is no evidence, as nobody collects the data. People can't even regularly define matched play or "not mactched play".