8th edition live stream Q&A info 24/4/2017

Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you:

No adverts like this in the forums anymore.
Times and dates in your local timezone.
Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance.
Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely.
Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net.

If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

**Jambles**

bob82ca wrote:
Every great game design uses an element of "rock-paper-scissors", and I'm talkin EVERY good game. Think Pokémon...

I don't even know where to start with this.

It's just, obviously untrue.

And I can't believe your go-to example of a great, balanced game was Pokemon, of all things.

You ever seen competitive 'Mons? There's only about 15 of the... what, more than 800 now?... that actually get used competitively, and more than half of those are legendaries... It's hilarious watching an entire tournament with every player bringing the exact same team of 5 with one extra that varies slightly (Gengar, Bronzong, Hitmontop, Kyogre in three out of four of the top teams at the 2016 World Championships!) And people get on 40k for having a very homogeneous top-tier...

**nordsturmking**

davou wrote:
bob82ca wrote:

Every great game design uses an element of "rock-paper-scissors", and I'm talkin EVERY good game.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(game)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cricket

I could go on for a very long time

i was about to say the same.

**Marmatag**

Honestly I would hope for relatively minor changes. 7th edition is fun. They could make the game very viable with some minor adjustments. Completely reinventing the game is totally unnecessary. Anything can hurt anything is a step in totally the wrong direction. It doesn't solve any problems with MCs, it's a combination of being hard to wound AND having ridiculous saves, mobility, and overall shooting/melee power. Maybe this is done in response to the buff they've given to vehicles, but who really knows.

**Grimgold**

Luciferian wrote:
bob82ca wrote:
The only good thing that I got out of the live stream was the introduction of command points. It might be enough to save the game for me if it's done well. It's going to have to carry a lot of weight to make this new version any good.

Here are some glaring problems I see with the new game:

Every great game design uses an element of "rock-paper-scissors", and I'm talkin EVERY good game. Think Pokémon, water beats fire, fire beats grass you get the idea. RTS games cavalry is strong vs. swords weak vs spears. Spears are weak vs. swords. And this was very true for the current edition of WH40k and the editions that came before. The AP system creates all sorts of unique stories whenever you play a new opponent. "I've got this unit with power weapons that could shred his infantry but I better steer clear of his terminators because if I get stuck fighting those guys, I cant beat their 2+ armor".

Now the problem with 8th edition is that much like AOS they have done away with the "rock-paper-scissors" approach. Some could argue that you instead have rock and paper. That is really strong guys and weak infantry guys. But you definitely do not have the dynamic gameplay that you find with the current AP system. Forget for a second what the unit looks like on the battlefield, at the end of the day you have a mass of wounds and a set damage output. When you come to that realisation, than you can see that much of the tactics are gone and you are only mindlessly rolling dice. The game becomes simplified to trying to bring your larger weapons to bare on an ideal target instead of wasting it to overkill some guardsmen. Again this is just rock and paper at this point.

The removal of templates and armor values is also troubling to me. You can't deny that moving away from templates is better for competitive games because it removes some unnecessary squabbling about scatter location etc. But I fear that these changes take away too much of the flavour of 40k. There's nothing more satisfying than dropping a pie plate on a condensed unit that only rolled a 1 on their consolidation roll. Also these changes water down the gameplay significantly. There is little need to think about spacing your models and the removal of armor facing takes the positioning tactics out of tank warfare.

Overall I see the new changes as being a downgrade for gameplay unfortunately. Hopefully the new command point system can carry the rest of the weight.

Rock, Scissors, Paper is great until you introduce Riptides as an option that beats everything else

Yea olde game of rock, paper, scissors, nuke.

**Marmatag**

davou wrote:
bob82ca wrote:

Every great game design uses an element of "rock-paper-scissors", and I'm talkin EVERY good game.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(game)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cricket

I could go on for a very long time

And those are games with identical factions... You have no choice when you sit down to play chess on which pieces you'll use, or constructing a chess army. And you know your opponent has the exact same thing.

You get rock-paper-scissors when you start to add choice, and diversity between player's options.

If you start to add options to a chess game, suddenly you would have counters. A bishop heavy list is countered by a pawn heavy list, but a pawn heavy list is easily handled by a knight heavy list. Who knows.

**BrianDavion**

why are we assuming RPS won't factor into 8th? at least as much as it did in 7th edition, where let's face it there was a one size fits all solution in more armies then I'd like. how do space marines kill infantry? grav cannons! how to do they kill tanks? grav cannons? lightly armored infantry? well centurions have heavy bolters so.. yeah they work for that too.

my HOPE is that the new way of doing things will see more varity, using space marines again, with any luck we'll see lascannons being used vs tanks, heavy bolters with light infantry, grav or plasma vs heavy infantry.

we'll have to wait andsee

**Formerly Wu**

Kanluwen wrote:

I REALLY hope that isn't the case and they were just trying to use examples that would be recognizable.

I far, far, far prefer the system in AoS where it's fixed. I HATE Strength and Toughness. It's such a ridiculous system.

I had a similar reaction. My thought is that their playtesting showed tough targets were needing an inordinate amount of wounds to survive.

High-strength special/heavy weapons are much more prevalent in 40k than they are in AoS, so perhaps the system just needed that extra bit of granularity.

**Grimgold**

davou wrote:
bob82ca wrote:

Every great game design uses an element of "rock-paper-scissors", and I'm talkin EVERY good game.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(game)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cricket

I could go on for a very long time

The point he is trying to make is that a perfect balance scheme is the least appropriate for a game like 40k. Just so everyone is using the same nomenclature, There are a few ways to balance a game:

Perfect balance - Both parties have exactly the same tools and utilities, the two you mentioned (go, chess) are a subcategory of this called perfect information games.

Perfect imbalance - many aspects of the game are balanced, but features are added to make the factions unique, these features aren't necessarily balanced against each other, but created in such a way that no feature is always superior to the others. Magic the gathering and league of legends (most MOBAs actually) use this balancing scheme.

Circular balance - There is no balance between factors, instead, A beats B, B beats C, and C beats A. This is the simplest form of perfect balance, but it plays completely different from other perfect balance games because it's more about anticipating your opponent's choices than long term strategy and maximizing resources. Rock paper scissors is the OG here.

Random Balance - The least interesting of the balance schemes when played as a perfect information game, everybody has the same opportunities, but the winner is determined randomly. With imperfect information, it becomes more of a bluffing and guessing game, which is much more interesting. Examples include Poker and candy land.

When people say Rock paper scissors they are generally not referring to circular balance and instead mean perfect imbalance, a balance scheme where a factor can be superior, but not in all situations. For instance, in a perfect balance game eldar and space marines would have the same armor save and movement, in an imperfect balance game eldar can be faster and space marines can be tougher, to take it further towards incomparables, eldar can have battle focus and space marines can have ATSKNF. Both are powerful rules, but there will be situations where one is demonstrably better than the other.

People think they want perfect balance, but they don't, perfect balance doesn't allow for flavor, customization, and good or bad metagame decisions, such as bringing a bad army comp.

**Rismonite**

I think the value of a list in powerlevel points and it's value in granular points should equal 3000 total to equal a 1500 style game to make list building harder *cough* I mean more interesting

**davou**

Thats not what he said though, he tried to suggest that no games without an element of rock paper scissors are good.