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 BBAP wrote:
Well, yes - because it was designed to be the most versatile weapon in the Imperial arsenal. Works as intended. Explain why such a weapon is bad, please.

Because missile launchers were already supposed to fill that role: adequate against a wide variety of targets, but not the best weapon against any of them. Grav weapons break that rule and are great against most targets, with the only real weakness (low-save hordes) being compensated for by having lots of bolters on the best grav units.

The game is perfectly functional, barring a few oversights

Lol.

I think they're an inevitability of the design process regardless of the skill set your writers employ

And you're 100% wrong. A good process with skilled writers doesn't have rule problems because they playtest sufficiently to catch everything before the rules are printed. And they design the rules from the beginning with a goal of clarity and function. This is why games like MTG can function with no rule disputes at all, because every possible interaction has been covered.

Aren't grav weapons supposed to be very rare? Like, rarer than plasma? Sure seems to be a lot of rare weapons around.
The problem with grav is that its too good for a weapon that's meant to be versatile. Its a basic rule of game balance; the more something can do the less effective it must be at those roles compared to specialized variants. The term "jack of all trades, master of none" comes to mind. At the moment grav is pretty much "jack of all trades, master of them all". It out performs anti-vehicle weapons and outperforms plasma at theirs role, and its only weakness is a moot point as bolters, the standard weapon of a space marine army, already takes care of that.
Its just not a well balanced weapon. It should really have been a support weapon, that screws with enemy movement or their initiative or something.

As for functionality - A car without brakes is certainly functional, in that it can be driven. That doesn't mean you should drive it.

I'm pretty sure i could drive a cruise ship

 BBAP wrote:

Ruin wrote:
I have serious doubts the 40k rules designers in 1998 (which present day 40k is built on) intended anything like the unwieldy fustercluck we have in front of us...

The game is perfectly functional, barring a few oversights. What the old designers intended for the game, and your personal feelings about the sturcture and flow of the game, are not relevant.

LOL. You should do standup.

 Ubl1k wrote:
I'm pretty sure i could drive a cruise ship

Since when was a cruise ship a car
You probably could, but whether you should is another matter entirely

 Peregrine wrote:
Because missile launchers were already supposed to fill that role: adequate against a wide variety of targets, but not the best weapon against any of them. Grav weapons break that rule and are great against most targets, with the only real weakness (low-save hordes) being compensated for by having lots of bolters on the best grav units.

"All weapons and units must be mediocre" is not a rule. Missile Launchers cost too much and suck too hard to justify that cost. That's not a problem with Grav weapons. Similarly, in an army rocking a maximum of 50-60 infantry models at 1850pts, having those models be effective at shooting down more or less anything that comes at them is perfectly fine.

I don't see the validity of this complaint, and even if it were a valid issue it doesn't affect the functionality or flow of the game at all and hence is not relevant here.

I think they're an inevitability of the design process regardless of the skill set your writers employ

And you're 100% wrong. A good process with skilled writers doesn't have rule problems because they playtest sufficiently to catch everything before the rules are printed.

... which means I'm 100% right. Writers will make mistakes. The playtesters catch these mistakes, and then send the rules back to the writers to fix them. Test, re-write, test- rewrite, until you have a polished finished product. That's one way to do it. The other is to put the product out to gamers and patch any issues that arise. That's the direction GW seem to be taking with their game system.

If there's going to be an obvious best choice, why both including the other choices at all?

It makes more sense to have advantages and drawbacks to each of the choices, e.g. Grav is good if you expect to face Terminators. Plasma Cannons are good if you're expecting Marines. Heavy Flamers and Heavy Bolters are good if you're expecting a horde. Lascannons are good if you're expecting a lot of armor. Missile Launchers are good if you're expecting fliers or skimmers.

Seems to allow for more interesting decisions in army design than "Always take Grav."

Ruin wrote:
I have serious doubts the 40k rules designers in 1998 (which present day 40k is built on) intended anything like the unwieldy fustercluck we have in front of us...

Clearly you never played second edition.

 Melissia wrote:

Ruin wrote:
I have serious doubts the 40k rules designers in 1998 (which present day 40k is built on) intended anything like the unwieldy fustercluck we have in front of us...

Clearly you never played second edition.

Actually I have. Some of the things in 2nd ed, even at its end pale in comparison to the insanity we have in front of us now.

Not really. 2nd was a dumpster fire.

 BBAP wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
Because missile launchers were already supposed to fill that role: adequate against a wide variety of targets, but not the best weapon against any of them. Grav weapons break that rule and are great against most targets, with the only real weakness (low-save hordes) being compensated for by having lots of bolters on the best grav units.

"All weapons and units must be mediocre" is not a rule. Missile Launchers cost too much and suck too hard to justify that cost. That's not a problem with Grav weapons. Similarly, in an army rocking a maximum of 50-60 infantry models at 1850pts, having those models be effective at shooting down more or less anything that comes at them is perfectly fine.

I don't see the validity of this complaint, and even if it were a valid issue it doesn't affect the functionality or flow of the game at all and hence is not relevant here.

I think they're an inevitability of the design process regardless of the skill set your writers employ

And you're 100% wrong. A good process with skilled writers doesn't have rule problems because they playtest sufficiently to catch everything before the rules are printed.

... which means I'm 100% right. Writers will make mistakes. The playtesters catch these mistakes, and then send the rules back to the writers to fix them. Test, re-write, test- rewrite, until you have a polished finished product. That's one way to do it. The other is to put the product out to gamers and patch any issues that arise. That's the direction GW seem to be taking with their game system.

any game that needs as much FAQ as 40k has probably does not have terribly well written rules. I cant think of another game that has as many issues, particularly after so many editions that are just minor iterative changes, and every event has to run its own FAQ and changes just to make it playable.

 Asmodai wrote:
If there's going to be an obvious best choice, why both including the other choices at all?

My guess is there's a Missile Launcher on the Tactical sprue and they can't be arsed changing the mould, even though the weapon is now obsolete.

 Vaktathi wrote:
any game that needs as much FAQ as 40k has probably does not have terribly well written rules. I cant think of another game that has as many issues, particularly after so many editions that are just minor iterative changes, and every event has to run its own FAQ and changes just to make it playable.

I can't think of any tabletop games, but plenty of videogame developers are pursuing this model and a few of them are doing spectacularly well out of it. Bethesda games are generally unfinished, bug-filled beta test builds at release, yet they still manage to shift units because people want what they're selling. It remains to be seen whether GW's products are popular enough to reward that kind of business model. I'm guessing they're not, judging by their financials, but I don't run the company so I don't get to decide how they run their gak.

Martel732 wrote:Not really. 2nd was a dumpster fire.

So is 7th.

 BBAP wrote:
My guess is there's a Missile Launcher on the Tactical sprue and they can't be arsed changing the mould, even though the weapon is now obsolete.

If the weapon is now obsolete then it's a concession that GW sucks at writing rules. Obsolete weapons should not exist.

Davor wrote:

Martel732 wrote:Not really. 2nd was a dumpster fire.

So is 7th.

I saw more one turn tablings in 2nd than all other editions combined. There is no dumpster fire as big as the supernova dumpster fire of 2nd. The Tyranids could kill half your list before the game started and a piece of wargear could kill an entire IG list. Marines saved shuriken cannons on 6+ and shuriken catapults and sonic blasters on 5+. After people figured out how to exploit the game, I never saw an IoM list win. Oh, and Pulsa Rokkits. You don't get to play.

 Peregrine wrote:

 BBAP wrote:
My guess is there's a Missile Launcher on the Tactical sprue and they can't be arsed changing the mould, even though the weapon is now obsolete.

If the weapon is now obsolete then it's a concession that GW sucks at writing rules. Obsolete weapons should not exist.

Why not? I am just curious.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Why not? I am just curious.

Because if an option is just plain bad and obsolete then it should be removed from the game to simplify the rules.

 Peregrine wrote:
Because if an option is just plain bad and obsolete then it should be removed from the game to simplify the rules.

This just doesn't make any sense.

Even less so seeing as you recently argued in another topic that not every game is hyper competitive. Which directly translates to some games being something else, something else including concepts like "casual" - inwhich suboptimal options clearly have a place and uses, since people also make choices based on what they think is fun/cool/you name it.

In this, you are not correct.

Unless you underline that it is simply your opinion, and nothing more. Even then you won't be correct though, because opinions. Something you should consider doing more often, seeing as what you say isn't automatically a fact/all encompassing truth, and thinking it is doesn't make it so. Except maybe on a subjective level at best.

 Runic wrote:
Even less so seeing as you recently argued in another topic that not every game is hyper competitive. Which directly translates to some games being something else, something else including concepts like "casual" - inwhich suboptimal options clearly have a place and uses, since people also make choices based on what they think is fun/cool/you name it.

Having suboptimal choices doesn't improve casual gaming at all. Imagine missile launchers never existed at all, and grav always had the "good at everything" role. Now 8th edition arrives, and here casual players, have this weapon that is just a worse version of a grav cannon. How many casual players are going to be excited about this new "option"? Not very many of them. And why should they be? The new option adds nothing to the game, it's just extra rules text to fluff out the word count of the codex. So why should our evaluation of the worth of the missile launcher change just because it's already in the rules? Get rid of it and simplify the rules for everyone, casual or competitive.

Also, remember that removing an option from the rules doesn't mean removing fluff or models. For example, those missile launcher models could be representing grav missiles and use the rules for grav cannons. So it's not like removing obsolete options is going to invalidate anyone's army.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And from a broader game design point of view, outside of removing clearly obsolete clutter from the rules, suboptimal options still add nothing to the game. Causal players aren't going to suffer if the rules are improved so that all options are relevant and there's no such thing as suboptimal choices. Casual players can still make choices based on what is fun/cool/whatever, except now their armies aren't terrible anymore. So having suboptimal choices in the rules is a failure of game design, not a reasonable choice to market to a particular audience. The only choice that remains is what to do about suboptimal choices: remove them from the game entirely, or buff them until they're no longer suboptimal.

 Peregrine wrote:
If the weapon is now obsolete then it's a concession that GW sucks at writing rules. Obsolete weapons should not exist.

Wrong again. The Missile Launcher functions perfectly well - its rules are fine. If it cost 20pts less than a Grav Cannon it'd be a reasonable alternative - you get less firepower per model, but more models, and thus more weapons. It doesn't, though. It costs the same, so it's obsolete. GW has always had issues with consistency of points values. I think I said as much a couple of replies back. You can call this a "rules" issue if you want - and technically it is - but lumping everything from mechanical faults to twisty-ass point costings under the header of "rules issue" creates an argument so broad as to be useless.

There are games that recieve balance changes every week that have balance problems. Warhammer can never hope to have that kind of attention to rules you can simply stop wasting your effort. Popular RTS/1st person shooters/Dota-LoL type games with large followings are always nerfing buffing remaking and can never get it right. Even when they get it close something silly crawls into the ech chamber of complaints

One thing I have come to enjoy about 40k is that my buddies space marines rarely change much. And I don't feel like I am playing with a different set of Ork rules each week. WoW and LoL every 1st person shooter I have played could feel like a different game every week.

 BBAP wrote:
Wrong again. The Missile Launcher functions perfectly well - its rules are fine. If it cost 20pts less than a Grav Cannon it'd be a reasonable alternative - you get less firepower per model, but more models, and thus more weapons. It doesn't, though. It costs the same, so it's obsolete. GW has always had issues with consistency of points values. I think I said as much a couple of replies back. You can call this a "rules" issue if you want - and technically it is - but lumping everything from mechanical faults to twisty-ass point costings under the header of "rules issue" creates an argument so broad as to be useless.

Broken point costs are still broken rules, and still a failure of game design. They still come from the same failure to care about writing good rules and playtesting sufficiently to catch problems before they are published. So why do you keep using "GW's rule authors don't suck, they just suck instead" as a response?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Rismonite wrote:
Warhammer can never hope to have that kind of attention to rules you can simply stop wasting your effort.

The existence of MTG and its much better balance and rule clarity would be a pretty thorough counter to this idea. 40k rules are bad because GW's rule authors are lazy and/or incompetent, not because the task is impossible.

Good point about MTG. I like to think they don't have nearly the variables this game has. I would still point out that they playtest that game much more easily than 40k, you can play a game in minutes it makes gathering data much easier. As for balance, last I was looking anyways, you had about two decks at tournaments. That would be the meta deck, and it's hard counter. And a couple hints of flavor in a sideboard, provided you had room since at least 12 of the cards needed to be for the 3rd or 4th best deck in the meta in case some hipster was mucking about. It has been at least three years since I was watching MTG however.

Still MTG has nice things, like a flowchart for the phases of the game, definitions for what each card is, and exactly what each card does.

I still think balance will never really be achievable even with a polished ruleset. How many units in how many armies and what is really supposed to counter what in the first place?

 Peregrine wrote:

 Runic wrote:
Even less so seeing as you recently argued in another topic that not every game is hyper competitive. Which directly translates to some games being something else, something else including concepts like "casual" - inwhich suboptimal options clearly have a place and uses, since people also make choices based on what they think is fun/cool/you name it.

Having suboptimal choices doesn't improve casual gaming at all. Imagine missile launchers never existed at all, and grav always had the "good at everything" role. Now 8th edition arrives, and here casual players, have this weapon that is just a worse version of a grav cannon. How many casual players are going to be excited about this new "option"? Not very many of them. And why should they be? The new option adds nothing to the game, it's just extra rules text to fluff out the word count of the codex. So why should our evaluation of the worth of the missile launcher change just because it's already in the rules? Get rid of it and simplify the rules for everyone, casual or competitive.

Also, remember that removing an option from the rules doesn't mean removing fluff or models. For example, those missile launcher models could be representing grav missiles and use the rules for grav cannons. So it's not like removing obsolete options is going to invalidate anyone's army.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And from a broader game design point of view, outside of removing clearly obsolete clutter from the rules, suboptimal options still add nothing to the game. Causal players aren't going to suffer if the rules are improved so that all options are relevant and there's no such thing as suboptimal choices. Casual players can still make choices based on what is fun/cool/whatever, except now their armies aren't terrible anymore. So having suboptimal choices in the rules is a failure of game design, not a reasonable choice to market to a particular audience. The only choice that remains is what to do about suboptimal choices: remove them from the game entirely, or buff them until they're no longer suboptimal.

Despite all this there are still players who use squads with Missile Launchers, Lascannons or Autocannons out there, and anything similiar. And they like using them. There is no reason to remove suboptimal choices from the game, aside from someones opinion.

 Runic wrote:
Despite all this there are still players who use squads with Missile Launchers, Lascannons or Autocannons out there, and anything similiar. And they like using them. There is no reason to remove suboptimal choices from the game, aside from someones opinion.

And they could continue using those options with the grav cannon rules. If 8th edition replaces the lascannon stat line with the grav cannon stat line do you honestly think all of the "casual" players are going to have their game ruined forever? That STR 9 AP 2 is such an inherent part of their game experience that they can't possibly enjoy a balanced version?

(Of course there's also the option of buffing all the other weapons until they're equally viable, I'm not the one who said that the missile launcher is an obsolete option that should be replaced by grav.)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Rismonite wrote:
I like to think they don't have nearly the variables this game has.

This is wrong. MTG has far more possible interactions because of the tens of thousands of unique cards that exist. The reason MTG is successful in having functioning rules despite the vastly higher complexity is that, where GW ignores the entire concept of writing good rules, WOTC builds a solid foundation in the core rules and then carefully tests every new addition to make sure it works fine.

I would still point out that they playtest that game much more easily than 40k, you can play a game in minutes it makes gathering data much easier.

As for balance, last I was looking anyways, you had about two decks at tournaments. That would be the meta deck, and it's hard counter. And a couple hints of flavor in a sideboard, provided you had room since at least 12 of the cards needed to be for the 3rd or 4th best deck in the meta in case some hipster was mucking about. It has been at least three years since I was watching MTG however.

This is semi-accurate. It's usually more than just 1-2 decks, but remember that this is happening in hardcore competitive tournaments with tens of thousands of dollars in cash prizes at stake. Even a 1% advantage is significant in that environment. But in a more casual environment, where most MTG games are played, there are a lot more options. And it's still way better than in 40k, where balance is virtually nonexistent. Getting 40k to the level of MTG's balance would be a massive step forward.

I still think balance will never really be achievable even with a polished ruleset. How many units in how many armies and what is really supposed to counter what in the first place?

Again, other companies achieve much higher levels of balance with games that are at least as complicated. GW's failure to balance 40k is the result of incompetent and/or lazy rule authors, not an impossible task.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 BBAP wrote:
My guess is there's a Missile Launcher on the Tactical sprue and they can't be arsed changing the mould, even though the weapon is now obsolete.

If the weapon is now obsolete then it's a concession that GW sucks at writing rules. Obsolete weapons should not exist.

Why not? I am just curious.

Isn't it obvious? If noone uses an option, or if the option is flat out inferior compared to another, then it either has to be improved or removed.
Otherwise you're just keeping junk around. Say you have a piece of old equipment lying around that doesn't work anymore, and got replaced by something better a long time ago. Would you still keep it?
At the moment there are a lot of options in the game that aren't used.

To use necrons as an example-
Tesla Carbines are worthless compared to gauss blasters. There's no point in upgrading, even when they are free
Why take a hyperphase sword or a gauntlet of fire when I can have a warscythe for relatively cheap, that's just so much better?
Likewise, the staff of light is pretty crap. Before it was a power weapon and a ranged weapon, so it did have a bit of utility. Now its just a short ranged assault weapon that's not good in assault anymore, and I might as well charge with a warscythe at the range I could use it.

Just a thought on the subject of Missile Launchers, since they came up specifically - Why didn't they just make Flakk Missiles free? Most people agree that Missile Launchers are overcosted at 15pts, and they still were back at the start of 6th. This would have both weakened fliers, who were vastly OP at the start of the edition, and given Missile Launchers a reasonable buff that makes them more flexibile, and therefore stronger, without making them any more spammable then they currently are.

Waaaghpower wrote:
Just a thought on the subject of Missile Launchers, since they came up specifically - Why didn't they just make Flakk Missiles free? Most people agree that Missile Launchers are overcosted at 15pts, and they still were back at the start of 6th. This would have both weakened fliers, who were vastly OP at the start of the edition, and given Missile Launchers a reasonable buff that makes them more flexibile, and therefore stronger, without making them any more spammable then they currently are.

Because GW can't write rules. Flakk should have been a free option to begin with.
I guess they thought it would hurt flyer sales.

Variety in wargear and having some things being more of a niche choice instead of a more well rounded general purpose is fine and adds the choices or feeling of choice you have. Now the issue is when the general purpose weapon is so good at its job that it makes all the other options feel like garbage is when you have a big problem and that is something that Grav currently does. Its better than plasma in like 95% of situations, it makes heavy bolters look like junk (as do so many other things in this game), and it is able to harm any vehicle in the game with the added benefit of always immobilizing it when it does harm it (which is huge plus the whole immobilizing an already immobilized vehicle removing another hull point). With its high RoF and with the cannons having the reroll to wound/pen it is extremely effective against most targets and can spam volume of fire to brute force down things its not optimal at killing.

The old IoM arsenal is a good mix of weapons that have their own strengths and weaknesses. Lascannon is a stable vehicle killer with long range, multi melta / melta gun can wreck vehicles hard but had to be very close to do so which made using it more restrictive, Plasma Guns had volume of fire for high armor infantry/MCs that need number of shots to chew threw unlike the 1 shot lascannons and melta weapons. Heavy Bolter has relatively high rate of fire and decent strength to reliably wound medium infantry and cut through a lot of the xenos and non MEQ armor. Flamer weapons roast hordes and ignore cover naturally. Missile Launchers are the middle of the road weapon with not quite the kick of a lascannon but can fire frag missiles to cut down light infantry (personally I think frag missiles are just garbage but I get the design idea behind it). All of this being balanced with points so that heavy bolter is far cheaper than a lascannon. Throw Grav into the mix and you end up with plasmas and heavy bolter being nearly completely obsolete, lascannons/missile launchers look really cost ineffective in comparison, and only the melta/flamer weapons really have a distinct niche but the volume of fire from the Grav weapons make it so they can throw large numbers of dice at the sub optimal target to force it down through weight of fire. Grav is too good at everything and without enough weaknesses to offset it.

Long winded and slightly off topic tangent out of the way, the problem is that rules are written for the game without much thought put into making it balanced. GW just slaps together ideas without much consideration for their impact on the game or what purpose it should have and you end up with gak like Grav which makes so much stuff obsolete or units like the Gorkanaut which is just a piece of junk and basically does the same thing as the Deffdread for 2.5x the points cost (and it even fails at pulling off the Orky aesthetic). GW has no skill at writing rules and there is no clear leadership when it comes to maintain any sort of consistency between the codices or maintaining any sort of quality control. Not sure if what the original OP wrote is accurate but I will say GW's writers are either incredibly incompetent or hamstrung by some terrible leadership that results in rushed or compromised rules writing.

No the problem with GW is that they can't write rules and think "Hey this would be cool" without actually understanding what role it plays. They provide options for modeling purposes that are useless in game, perhaps under the delusion that people will assemble what they want and not care how it performs (which is usually untrue for most people), which again reinforces the fact they consider the game superfluous at best and useless at worst; simply a mechanism to sell models without caring about the fact I'd wager the majority of "hobbyists" only buy GW models because they play GW games, not to sit in a breakfront somewhere looking pretty (there are, of course, exceptions but I think the majority of people expect to actually use the models in games of Warhammer)

A lot of the writers now were designers before, as others have mentioned. It's mainly that they want to provide a ton of options to present the illusion of tons of various choices (a common laurel 40k is given is "variety of options" when most of the options are worthless and might as well not exist), while in reality they kind of just throw things together without even seeing how they interact with other things.

It's a combination of things really but the crux of the issue is that GW doesn't seem to simply be able to look at the stats of a weapon and judge if it's too good (i.e. there's never a reason to not take it over other choices in most cases, for example Grav) or too situational/useless (i.e. you almost never want to take this option because chances are it won't be as good as the other choices except in rare cases). If they could fix that simple fact and actually be able to look at something like Grav and go "You know, this weapon can deal with virtually everything in the game, it's probably a little too good since it will be the default choice to pick", there wouldn't be half these problems. Instead it's "Hey we need to give Space Marines a new gun since the model team put one on the sprue. Let's see... I know, we'll call it a Grav Gun. What should it do? Oh! It would be cool if it wounded you based on your armor save, so it's like a Plasma Gun! And how about if it immobilized a vehicle on a 6! Yeah, that would be neat!" and not actually look at how it impacts everything else, there would be less of these problems.