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Those perfectly symmetrical scenarios and generic, army-agnostic, player-selectable (and therefore min-maxable) secondary objectives are a product of competitive play favoring mirror matches.

Designing the game for competitive play has implications well beyond balance. I used to think that designing the game around balanced competitive play would be a net positive for all types of players; but having seen the direction GW has gone with that over the course of 8th and 9th I don't think I do anymore.

 catbarf wrote:
Designing the game for competitive play has implications well beyond balance. I used to think that designing the game around balanced competitive play would be a net positive for all types of players; but having seen the direction GW has gone with that over the course of 8th and 9th I don't think I do anymore.

GW has never designed the game for *balanced* competitive play.

Agreed, 40k isn't advertised as a competitive game. It will never be a perfect balanced competitive game.

Hecaton wrote:

ccs wrote:
Disagree on the last bit. Different forces SHOULD have different goals.

With how abstract the secondary system is, it's not really necessary. And it leaves too much room for "this faction has good secondaries, and this faction has bad ones."

While it might not be necessary, if we have to suffer this crap? Then - for better or worse - I'd prefer it to be more faction specific vs generic.

ccs wrote:
While it might not be necessary, if we have to suffer this crap? Then - for better or worse - I'd prefer it to be more faction specific vs generic.

I'd rather the game be more balanced, and you should too.

Hecaton wrote:

ccs wrote:
While it might not be necessary, if we have to suffer this crap? Then - for better or worse - I'd prefer it to be more faction specific vs generic.

I'd rather the game be more balanced, and you should too.

Why? I don't believe this balance you all crave will produce a more fun, more interesting, game.

Boosykes wrote:
They were clearly over powered they got nerfed. Why do people bitch about this?

Did you spend any time to see how the nerfs interacted with the army's other rules? I haven't read a single post where anyone has complained about the nerf of Auto Wounding Unmodified 6's.....what you are most likely confused about is your read half of what they write about how the "Needed" nerf trashes all of the other triggers they built into weapons. GW did what they always do......"They don't research or test rules because the Sales department runs the company".

ccs wrote:

Hecaton wrote:

ccs wrote:
While it might not be necessary, if we have to suffer this crap? Then - for better or worse - I'd prefer it to be more faction specific vs generic.

I'd rather the game be more balanced, and you should too.

Why? I don't believe this balance you all crave will produce a more fun, more interesting, game.

To be blunt, you're utterly wrong.

A game where the outcome is predetermined because one side has unearned advantage is unlikely to be fun.

Removing faction secondaries doesn't lead to balanced game though.

And it's the tournament try hard's pretending to play competively that are pushing for predetermined outcomes. You can see how the so called "competetive" games ARE right now entirely predeterminable. That's how the try hard's want it...

See armies, roll for first turn, you know the winner. Thanks to scenario system these tournament try hard's push you can even figure out final vp score in advance within few points if you want to figure it out

Try hard's want to remove all variety from results so everything has to have bazillion rerolls and scenario needs to be one they can math out in advance. End result. Game is 100% predetermined. Idea of game that isn't predetermined is anathema to the tournament try hard's.

tneva82 wrote:
Removing faction secondaries doesn't lead to balanced game though.

no, but it reduces the number variables you need to tweak to get better balance

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Removing faction secondaries doesn't lead to balanced game though.

no, but it reduces the number variables you need to tweak to get better balance

The more I play AoS 3.0 the more I like the approach to secondaries there. Much more fluid and you select them depending on how you are doing and what's on the board.

Even if I do like the secondary approach in 40k I think it tends to be too static sometimes.

Sort of moving beyond Votann, but I do think the issue of the last few posts is that "balanced" means very different things to different people.

I think its fair to say "try hards" don't like a significant number of games being purely a function of "bad rolls" - so yes, do like rerolls etc to make that probability low.

But really... does anyone like this? Trying to remove luck from a game of dice might seem counter-intuitive, but I think any game with a high luck-failure rate produces a lot of "feels bad" moments. As an example, I've gotten far saltier over failing 3 7"~ charges than any "gotcha" in 40k. This failure has often decided (to a certain measure of decided) a game. But mathematically, before rerolls/bonuses etc, it will happen about 1 every 5 games.

But I'm not really sure reducing this is about making the game "predetermined". What at least some of the try hards want is to try and get a certain mathematical parity. (Some I admit have clear favourites - or prefer a system where you buy an OP army, play for 12-18 months with the confidence they are OP/GT win capable, then sell it and buy the next).

But GW's history of approaching mathematical parity is poor. Creep is a feature of 40k's sales process, not a bug. Its in every edition, and I think just about every game.

Secondaries are therefore good because they attempt to move the the game away from being purely a function of "my army is more efficient for its points than your army", which is how competitive 40k played before. There's a question of whether the ones in the game are the best - but I don't think abandoning that dimension entirely would make the game more interesting.

Whether this makes 40k more or less "fun" is somewhat subjective. Its clearly making it more of a "game" than some simulation of a skirmish. And to go back to the start - some people may enjoy the wild swings that come from a few unrerollable dice determining big outcomes. But I think its clearly a divide.

I mean HH 2.0 has been great in some ways for dispelling (for me at least) any vague illusions of "wasn't it better in the old days". No it was not.

oni wrote:I love how secondary mission objectives are always pointed to as a primary reason one faction wins vs. another.

And yet so many people still refuse to acknowledge that the current mission design that relies so heavily on secondary mission objectives is the real issue.

Mike Brandt = The New Matt Ward

People need to stop obsessing over outcome of games.

Competitive play is fething cancer.

How dare you besmirch the good name of our glorious asshat Matt Ward...I couldn't type that with a straight face.
feth both of them...esp Brandt!

Competitive play isn't cancer, the "feth over the other guy" mindset is.

 oni wrote:
I love how secondary mission objectives are always pointed to as a primary reason one faction wins vs. another.

And yet so many people still refuse to acknowledge that the current mission design that relies so heavily on secondary mission objectives is the real issue.

Bullgryn lists do well in secondaries. Chimera lists do badly in secondaries

Is a lot shorter than.

Bullgryn lists are undercosted given their performance relative to their cost within the context of the current secondaries. Chimera lists are overcosted given their performance relative to their cost within the context of the current secondaries.

Even though points are ultimately what is wrong, saying the points are too low is putting the cart in front of the horse. Points should be adjusted based on how well the datasheets play the mission. Missions should not be adjusted based on points, especially not the secondaries which apply to multiple factions because then you get problems like ITC Champions missions created where Bullgryn needed to be nerfed so they changed a secondary which unnecessarily hit Canoptek Wraiths.

You could apply the same thing to any other mission set, like units that are good at grabbing a relic will need to cost more points in a mission set with a relic grabbing mission. Saying that scouts are OP because of a relic mission would be identifying the immediate cause instead of the root cause which is being undercosted given the performance relative to their cost within the context of the missions. Secondaries are probably a little too important at the moment because the designers decided to take transfer power from primaries to tertiaries instead of from secondaries to tertiaries and faction secondaries should removed, but those are not attacks on secondaries, just their current incarnation, same way you probably have criticisms of the execution of even your most favourite mission set (that you didn't homebrew).

ccs wrote:
Disagree on the last bit. Different forces SHOULD have different goals.

Pull levers, go there, kill that. That's every objective possible, when and where to pull levers, go places or kill things might be changed, but if you really think about it, if the faction has properly been designed the factions will naturally pull levers, go places and kill things in different ways. Astra Militarum might send waves of infantry to a place where a lever needs to be pulled, World Eaters might send a single unit to cut through everything between that lever and the unit and have that same unit pull that lever, Harlequins might send a single unit like the World Eaters but instead of killing everything, they'll just dodge around them. Necrons don't need a secondary objective that rewards you for killing things with your characters, give the characters good attack profiles and/or rewards for killing things and they will naturally be used to kill things.

 vict0988 wrote:
Even though points are ultimately what is wrong, saying the points are too low is putting the cart in front of the horse. Points should be adjusted based on how well the datasheets play the mission. Missions should not be adjusted based on points, especially not the secondaries which apply to multiple factions because then you get problems like ITC Champions missions created where Bullgryn needed to be nerfed so they changed a secondary which unnecessarily hit Canoptek Wraiths.

You could apply the same thing to any other mission set, like units that are good at grabbing a relic will need to cost more points in a mission set with a relic grabbing mission. Saying that scouts are OP because of a relic mission would be identifying the immediate cause instead of the root cause which is being undercosted given the performance relative to their cost within the context of the missions. Secondaries are probably a little too important at the moment because the designers decided to take transfer power from primaries to tertiaries instead of from secondaries to tertiaries and faction secondaries should removed, but those are not attacks on secondaries, just their current incarnation, same way you probably have criticisms of the execution of even your most favourite mission set (that you didn't homebrew).

But having several different points values for units depending on scenario is going to be incredibly complicated for players, even if you thought GW could actually get it right.
Which is why if you care about balance (and you may not, for various reasons) missions should probably tend to be standardised. In much the same way maps should be standardized in a moba, RTS etc.

This standardisation can admittedly produce boredom if you play all the time. But there's nothing stopping you playing some asymmetrical scenario if you want.

tneva82 wrote:
Removing faction secondaries doesn't lead to balanced game though.

Not necessarily, but again, I feel that secondaries are abstract enough that faction-specific secondaries are not necessary.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

tneva82 wrote:
Try hard's want to remove all variety from results so everything has to have bazillion rerolls and scenario needs to be one they can math out in advance. End result. Game is 100% predetermined. Idea of game that isn't predetermined is anathema to the tournament try hard's.

Incorrect. It only seems predetermined to you because you can't play at that level. If one player's skill vastly outstrips another's, the outcome should be more or less predetermined.

Tyel wrote:


But having several different points values for units depending on scenario is going to be incredibly complicated for players, even if you thought GW could actually get it right.
Which is why if you care about balance (and you may not, for various reasons) missions should probably tend to be standardised. In much the same way maps should be standardized in a moba, RTS etc.

This standardisation can admittedly produce boredom if you play all the time. But there's nothing stopping you playing some asymmetrical scenario if you want.

I had a similar thought regarding having multiple points systems, but came to the conclusion that it might not be as bad as it first seems. At present, we currently have two points systems (namely points and power levels) and I think we effectively have three ways to play: matched play (where you'll encounter faction secondaries), Tempest of War (randomized secondaries with no faction secondaries), and narrative/crusade (scenario-specific secondaries only...I'm a guard-only player, so I'm prepared to be told I don't understand crusade haha).
I don't think it would be too much extra effort to juggle three points systems (the key is that GW can't then add more points systems on top of that one). On the other hand, I suppose it could be argued that each new mission pack would introduce a new points system, so maybe it is as bad as it first seems Thinking about the potential complications, I can envision that complicating pick up games at your FLGS. Not being someone who plays at a FLGS, I can't really speak to whether that complication would be worthwhile or not though. I only play Tempest of War at the moment (if guard ever gets their codex, I'll probably also start playing crusade), so I'd welcome having a separate points system for Tempest of War that is balanced without taking faction secondaries into account (of course, there's not currently a ready source of data that I know of for GW to analyze for balancing Tempest of War).

Marginalized is a strong word for having an army of toy soldiers nerfed before anyone even bought it.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Marginalized is a strong word for having an army of toy soldiers nerfed before anyone even bought it.

It's their way of saying that nerfs to their overpowered stuff are problematic.

 catbarf wrote:
I used to think that designing the game around balanced competitive play would be a net positive for all types of players; but having seen the direction GW has gone with that over the course of 8th and 9th I don't think I do anymore.

I think it is a net positive, but like all things you can go too far and lose sight of other important factors of game design.

bibotot wrote:
So Necron, Tyranids, and Harlequins are still OP as hell while Astra Militarum and Space Marines are pathetically weak (do you see the trend here?). And now LoV gets massively nerfed even before they see the light of day.

I really can't stand this business model. It's so easy to crush the LoV because they have few players still, whereas existing armies have legions of players and model-buyers who would not be happy with their armies being nerfed. Like, really? We all knew the Tyranid and Tau Codice were going to break the game in 2022, and GW released them anyway. But the LoV gets boycotted to the point of GW panicking? Come on.

As vexing as it is, I wish the LoV would win at least a few tournaments before they get nerfed. Then, people will also know better what makes them strong and adjust accordingly.

I don't know what website you go one has you thinking like this, but you need to stop using it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Hecaton wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Marginalized is a strong word for having an army of toy soldiers nerfed before anyone even bought it.

It's their way of saying that nerfs to their overpowered stuff are problematic.

Legit can't tell if it's too much Tumblr or too much Parler but it's too much of something.

Tyel wrote:

Spoiler:

 vict0988 wrote:
Even though points are ultimately what is wrong, saying the points are too low is putting the cart in front of the horse. Points should be adjusted based on how well the datasheets play the mission. Missions should not be adjusted based on points, especially not the secondaries which apply to multiple factions because then you get problems like ITC Champions missions created where Bullgryn needed to be nerfed so they changed a secondary which unnecessarily hit Canoptek Wraiths.

You could apply the same thing to any other mission set, like units that are good at grabbing a relic will need to cost more points in a mission set with a relic grabbing mission. Saying that scouts are OP because of a relic mission would be identifying the immediate cause instead of the root cause which is being undercosted given the performance relative to their cost within the context of the missions. Secondaries are probably a little too important at the moment because the designers decided to take transfer power from primaries to tertiaries instead of from secondaries to tertiaries and faction secondaries should removed, but those are not attacks on secondaries, just their current incarnation, same way you probably have criticisms of the execution of even your most favourite mission set (that you didn't homebrew).

But having several different points values for units depending on scenario is going to be incredibly complicated for players, even if you thought GW could actually get it right.
Which is why if you care about balance (and you may not, for various reasons) missions should probably tend to be standardised. In much the same way maps should be standardized in a moba, RTS etc.

Sorry, my message came out wrong, I believe that there should be one set of tournament missions that GW balances pts around and I would personally prefer those missions be ones with secondaries. Trying to nail down mission balance based on points that have assigned per GW's patented dart board method just doesn't work, you will always end up with an unbalanced game mode.

DeadliestIdiot wrote:
I don't think it would be too much extra effort to juggle three points systems.

Agreed, assuming both players use Battlescribe it's just a question of changing what game system it's being interpreted as. All the difficulty would be on the backend of the developer of the new mission sets that would have to update the points. The problem with balancing points is getting enough playtesters, even if you have a solid foundation in math and you establish unit A needs to cost 5-8 pts, unit B needs to cost 100-120 pts, unit C needs to cost 40-45 pts such that you get rock paper scissors effect of A>B>C>A following fluff you still have the issue of unit A doing missions really well and needing to be 9 pts and therefore underperforming in the rock paper scissors mission-less game and B being a liability in missions and therefore needing to be 95 pts to be worth bringing despite the mission liability and that can only be found through playtesting. Balancing a mission set for 8th would probably be a lot easier because of the lack of new releases.

The idea players will juggle multiple point systems seems optimistic given the various threads on here that develop into "PL must be destroyed".

It just feels a bit "40k as computer game". Which I guess is fine if you are playing on TTS, or can draw from massive collections. But I think a lot of people go "this is my 2k list, I've bought it, built it, maybe even painted it, and that's all I have." If its 2k points in scenario A, 2100-2200 in scenario B and 1800-1900 in Scenario C, that's creating a problem.

I guess to a degree you'd say they'd get over it and adapt accordingly - but it does seem like adding complexity to the process.

Tyel wrote:
The idea players will juggle multiple point systems seems optimistic given the various threads on here that develop into "PL must be destroyed".

It just feels a bit "40k as computer game". Which I guess is fine if you are playing on TTS, or can draw from massive collections. But I think a lot of people go "this is my 2k list, I've bought it, built it, maybe even painted it, and that's all I have." If its 2k points in scenario A, 2100-2200 in scenario B and 1800-1900 in Scenario C, that's creating a problem.

I guess to a degree you'd say they'd get over it and adapt accordingly - but it does seem like adding complexity to the process.

The age of unchanging 2k armies is long gone and good riddance, GW updates points more than twice a year. You need to have a good chunk more than 2k and then you can include more or less of your collection depending on how your models are doing pts-wise at the moment, if anything having more pts systems would reduce the likelihood of someone who only barely scrapes by 2000 pts or 50 PL or 40,000 tiny-pts has enough models to field a full army in at least one pts-system.

Not to diminished the potential for complications of multiple points systems, another alternative is to simply not play a 2k points (or equivalent) game.

2k points on the minimum size board is something that feels unnecessarily restrictive (my group typically goes for 1250pts, although we're more or less stuck with the minimum size board)

I personally play on TTS (I don't have the time, money, or dedicated space to support building and painting physical models at the moment), so thanks for catching the potential model availability issue that escaped me.

DeadliestIdiot wrote:
Not to diminished the potential for complications of multiple points systems, another alternative is to simply not play a 2k points (or equivalent) game.

2k points on the minimum size board is something that feels unnecessarily restrictive (my group typically goes for 1250pts, although we're more or less stuck with the minimum size board)

I personally play on TTS (I don't have the time, money, or dedicated space to support building and painting physical models at the moment), so thanks for catching the potential model availability issue that escaped me.

Well the games "standard" was 1500 for 5 editions, it only increased due to the US player base wanting more redundancy and fewer chances of encountering hard counters.

 jaredb wrote:

 oni wrote:
I love how secondary mission objectives are always pointed to as a primary reason one faction wins vs. another.

And yet so many people still refuse to acknowledge that the current mission design that relies so heavily on secondary mission objectives is the real issue.

Mike Brandt = The New Matt Ward

People need to stop obsessing over outcome of games.

Competitive play is fething cancer.

There isn't anything wrong with competitive play. 40k just isn't a game well suited for it. Games workshop only officially advertises one of their games as competitive, and 40k isn't it.

As it is, the Generals Handbook is the best way to organize pick up games with folks you don't know so everyone is on the same page. It's the official standard, so it's the one everyone will use. So, as that is the case, secondaries are an important aspect to consider. You might not play games this way, but the majority do.

Your statement regarding “the majority do” is precarious at best and most likely entirely untrue. There is a very vocal sect of players who hold similar beliefs to yourself but they are not in any reasonable manner, The Majority. The killer part are the players who hold those same beliefs but who never participate in competitive play beyond PUGs and rather parrot this odd viewpoint to make themselves sound like experts.

You are just being condescendingly argumentative for the sake of being argumentative from a position with little relative stability.