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Bharring wrote:
Mostly, I would argue that, in any system this complex, decent balance is an absurdly difficult task.

However, it only took reading the Serpent Shield rules when they leaked to see the problem right away.

I can understand balance being hard. But the serpent sheild. WTF.

No, it is not absurdly difficult. In fact I would not even call it difficult.

It would require a rewrite of the whole system sure, adjusting each unit profile as well as the core rules at least a little, and it would be incredibly hard for anybody within GW to actually make it happen. Actually doing it though? Spartan Games had pretty bad balance in Dystopian Wars 1st edition and 1.1 edition but they did just that. They got a huge about of the community in as playtesters and 2nd edition is amazing because it redid the stats on literally every unit in the game. People where excited about it's release, it was very well received when it hit, and it outsold 40k 7th by a significant margin in some places.

This was brought up in the '40k vs warmahordes' thread in Dakka Discussions as well, 40k is not actually that complex. Warmahordes has, and these where actually listed there, something like 900 unique abilities that units can have BEFORE you count the USRs.

Every other game on the market accomplishes much better balance than 40k, they are not any less complex than it and they are operating on a fraction of the budget GW are. Why is 40k so unbalanced then?

 jonolikespie wrote:
This was brought up in the '40k vs warmahordes' thread in Dakka Discussions as well, 40k is not actually that complex. Warmahordes has, and these where actually listed there, something like 900 unique abilities that units can have BEFORE you count the USRs.

And, more importantly, 40k has very little depth. A lot of its complexity isn't really adding anything interesting to the game, it's just a bloated mess of rules and exceptions to rules and exceptions to the exceptions. You could simplify 40k significantly without any real sacrifices in gameplay quality, and then the balance problem becomes a lot easier to solve.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:


You guys have odd definitions of 'not competitive.' One of you says losing is outright 'not fun,' while another says he likes to keep winning an option 'till as late in the game as possible.' I mean the logical conclusion of both statements is "winning is fun" or "I postponed the option of winning until after the end of the game" (which means I won).

Maybe its you who has an odd definition of 'not competitive'?

Don't think of it as caring about winning, so much as being concerned about the journey from terrain setup to shaking your opponent's hand. I can pretty much assure you all the people who said they're non competitive players would hate being stomped as much doing the stomping.

Winning or losing is secondary to the quality of the game had prior to tallying up points.

So yes, all these people who say they're not competitive are not competitive. Don't try and twist someone's desire to not lose as being competitive. At that point you might as well argue people play Monopoly or Snakes and Ladders competitively with Grandma.

 TNT925 wrote:
"How should GW bring balance back into the game?"

1) Change of mindset. GW needs to start viewing rules and balance as important, rather than just cash grabs to sell new models and expensive books and DLC.

2) Communication with the outside world. Players are very good at finding issues, broken combinations etc. - so if you want to improve balance it's useful to actually listen to them. Now, I'm not saying that everything players complain about is valid, but a lot of complaints are and many of them refer to things GW apparently didn't notice or care about.

3) Release errata/faqs more frequently. I could also add "proof-read your sodding books so that we don't have self-contradictory nonsense like Commissar Yarrick's rules". However, if that requires too much effort because the editors are all useless drunks or something, at least put out an faq when someone more competent finds them for you.

4) This goes with #2, but try to actually have some idea of what the meta of each edition is. So that you don't, for example, give a new book a ton of anti-infantry weapons in an edition that heavily favours vehicles or MCs. Similarly, if you're designing the core rules to heavily favour shooting over combat, it makes little sense to release new combat units that are basically worthless.

5) Give some thought to the pricing of wargear - especially in the case of combat wargear, and note that universal pricing is often a bad idea. A power fist, in most cases, isn't worth more than a plasmagun... so why is priced as being worth close to 2 plasmaguns? Also, why does a IG Commissar pay as much for a PF as a SM Chapter Master? Also also, why does a sergeant pay as much for a PF as a chapter master? It seems like one of those will get far more use out of it. Similarly, 30pts for Regeneration on a MC is bearable, 30pts for Regeneration on the Tyranid Prime (who also suffered a 50% price hike for no adequately-explained reason) is not. Finally, what is the attraction of a Plasma Pistol? You seem to value it equivalently to a Plasmagun, despite it being half as useful.

6) At least try to look like you're putting some effort into balance. As above, pricing all upgrades equally - regardless of differences in statline, survivability and cost, just comes across as lazy and stupid. As does weapons with prices that have been silly for some time, and still see no improvement (like the aforementioned plasma pistol).

7) Fire your playtesters and hire better ones. Ones who understand that the point of playtesting is to break a codex - rather than faffing around with narrative campaigns or lists that never include more than one of any non-troop unit.

8) Don't fix small problems with a sledgehammer.

9) Don't base changes to units on which models you want to sell.

 TNT925 wrote:

Do you think that it would be better if GW buffed the other codices to match Eldar?

No. It just creates an endless cycle of power creep.