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Close enough is 45%-55% win rate in tournaments using the mission pack the points are balanced around with no options tanking or carrying the win rate of the faction. Naked Tacticals and Infantry Squads would absolutely tank your win rate currently. Strictly better costing more points is a rule that comes before that.
vict0988 wrote: Close enough is 45%-55% win rate in tournaments using the mission pack the points are balanced around with no options tanking or carrying the win rate of the faction.
My issue is this reads suspiciously almost identically to how 'perfect balance' is commonly presented. which kind of proves my point.
And respectfully what you wrote doesn't really answer what I'm asking.
How many units on the field from factions that are how big in terms of SKU and much of the game is allowed to be over/under costed and over/under powered in comparison to the rest, if we are to assume that some imbalance must exist because perfect balance is impossible.
45% to 55% sounds great but if that's conceived in an environment of (hypothetical) just intercessors and chaos marines for example (because its easier to balance e a game with fewer units), will.you justify and defend invalidating the other 99.999% of the game to the players who've invested in that.
This message was edited 4 times. Last update was at 2023/03/29 19:30:28
greatest band in the universe: machine supremacy
"Punch your fist in the air and hold your Gameboy aloft like the warrior you are"
vict0988 wrote: Close enough is 45%-55% win rate in tournaments using the mission pack the points are balanced around with no options tanking or carrying the win rate of the faction.
My issue is rgis reads suspiciously alnost identically to how 'perfect balance' is commonly presented. which kind of proves my point.
And respectfully you didn't answer fully.
How many units on the field from factions that are how big in terms of SKU and much of the game is allowed to be over/under costed and over/under powered in comparison to the rest, if we are to assume that some imbalance must exist because perfect balance is impossible.
I'm sorry I don't understand what rgis or SKU means. I assume rgis was a typo?
The moment GW sees statistically significant evidence that a datasheet is tanking or carrying the win rate of a faction or that a faction has a win rate above 55% or below 45% they should put it on a noticeboard to be fixed next year in the annual munitorum field manual points update. Perfect balance means that an army filled with melta has a 50% win rate against an army filled with tanks and a 50% win rate against an army filled with Guardsmen, is that ridiculous? Yes, but people bring it up as a reason we can't have points a couple of times a year, so that's why we say that GW should strive for the super ambitious but still possible 45-55% WR for all factions. It's not like raising a 35% WR faction to a 40% win rate faction isn't a step forward, but PL with a single update over the course of an entire edition is not good enough.
I'm sorry I don't understand what rgis or SKU means. I assume rgis was a typo?
Yeah, sorry- fat fingers plus typing on mobile. Check my 'edit' count at the bottom of my posts- ita me trying to fix things. Autocorrect is the bane of my life, haha! But yes, apologies.
Rgis is 'this', i think. I used sku as shorthand for 'size of faction' as roughy every box of 'things' in a faction is an sku, when it comes to things on a shelf in the shop. Hence 45 to 55% sounds great, but is that realistic in a factione of 60 skus (never mind in-squad options etc). Does 'good enough' mean gutting the range of units and factions as a hypotheticdl question. Good luck justifying that to the player base! Good luck running a business with that model too!
The moment GW sees statistically significant evidence that a datasheet is tanking or carrying the win rate of a faction or that a faction has a win rate above 55% or below 45% they should put it on a noticeboard to be fixed next year in the annual munitorum field manual points update. Perfect balance means that an army filled with melta has a 50% win rate against an army filled with tanks and a 50% win rate against an army filled with Guardsmen, is that ridiculous? Yes, but people bring it up as a reason we can't have points a couple of times a year, so that's why we say that GW should strive for the super ambitious but still possible 45-55% WR for all factions. It's not like raising a 35% WR faction to a 40% win rate faction isn't a step forward, but PL with a single update over the course of an entire edition is not good enough.
But tournaments is an artificial and seriously skewed meta. And I'd argue tourneys are not a 'gold standard' to measure the game by. If you're focusing on this you're already admitting 80+% of the game is whack and excluded from the debate. You're talking about 45 to 55% of a tiny skewed fraction of the game. Which goes back to what is 'good enough'. Does the casual scene, b, c, d-tier etc units not matter?
For what it's worth perfect balance is an impossibility as you rightly point out. Context matters.
Issue with multiple drafts of points changes every week is excess book keeping. It adds an element of 'chaos' to the game. When pp did this 'living rulebook' cid thing, the community for the most part died off and the weekly/monthly adjustments really annoyed a lot of folks.
This message was edited 5 times. Last update was at 2023/03/29 20:00:38
greatest band in the universe: machine supremacy
"Punch your fist in the air and hold your Gameboy aloft like the warrior you are"
Balance is secondary to representing fluff and models, if the Tactical Squad datasheet cannot be balanced then the game should just be a little imbalanced.
Tournaments can have variety, when they don't it's usually a sign of imbalance. If bringing a D tier unit can be statistically proven to tank tournament win rates then it needs a buff. The opinions of competitive playtesters should also be taken into account.
Annual means once a year, it's not really book keeping anyway, you just pick whatever units you want and then your app should take care of it. If you are a competitive player you can make an excel sheet with what you think each unit is worth and compare with whatever GW's current price is and try building lists around things you think are underpriced. I think rules changes are what actually creates problems, my list will automatically have the right points, but if I don't remember a rules update or don't even know it's happened then we won't be playing the game as it's meant to be played.
How about we talk about what we do when we don't use point values?
Many historical wargamers don't collect "an army" like we do, they collect "a battle."
Essentially the gamer collects representative forces for both sides of a conflict (along with the terrain- there's a big focus on historical accuracy in that side of the hobby).
I get the impression that some of the folks at GW like to play like this. Find or create a bit of fiction that they like- especially one that isn't a pitched battle between balanced forces- and just throw down that way.
This way you can end up simulating conflicts like Rocks Drift or the defense of Ultramar against Hive Fleet Behemoth (ie- fielding a whole ton of Terminators against endless waves of bugs). Or have outnumbered defenders of a fortress fight off a siege.
The problem, of course, is that this isn't the way most of us interact with the hobby. We mostly meet up with people at game stores, and when creating imbalanced scenarios, we mostly use point values anyway (like the defenders of the fortress have half the point value of the attackers or some such).
odinsgrandson wrote: How about we talk about what we do when we don't use point values?
Many historical wargamers don't collect "an army" like we do, they collect "a battle."
Essentially the gamer collects representative forces for both sides of a conflict (along with the terrain- there's a big focus on historical accuracy in that side of the hobby).
I get the impression that some of the folks at GW like to play like this. Find or create a bit of fiction that they like- especially one that isn't a pitched battle between balanced forces- and just throw down that way.
This way you can end up simulating conflicts like Rocks Drift or the defense of Ultramar against Hive Fleet Behemoth (ie- fielding a whole ton of Terminators against endless waves of bugs). Or have outnumbered defenders of a fortress fight off a siege.
The problem, of course, is that this isn't the way most of us interact with the hobby. We mostly meet up with people at game stores, and when creating imbalanced scenarios, we mostly use point values anyway (like the defenders of the fortress have half the point value of the attackers or some such).
As a person, who play mostly that way, I'll answer. For such games to be balanced gaming experience, you have to take into account way more parameters than in symmetrical matched play, and must know your game system inside out. You don't have the crutch of "meta" and since you do not restrict armies to top choices only, you have to be able to balance way broader pool of units against eachother. Fortunately, we have this great tool, called brain, which can be trained by experience reinforced by academic knowledge. To a point where you can establish a reasonable starting point just by "eyeballing" the possible flow of the game and then adjusting this result further by careful analysis of the game tree. If you want to be precise, you can also go into way more detail than linear points provide, and use multi-dimensional metric to assess forces and non-model based assets. But I really don't expect a typical pick-up sunday gamer, or even typical competitive player to invest so heavily in learning game theory and math a bit more complex than simple mathhammer algebra to be able to play toy soldiers. So, typically, such scenarios are just played "for gak and giggles" and nobody expects those scenarios to be balanced
vict0988 wrote: It's not like raising a 35% WR faction to a 40% win rate faction isn't a step forward, but PL with a single update over the course of an entire edition is not good enough.
Statisticaly speaking if an army with 35-40% win rate plays vs an army with 50% win rate, or above the number of games needed for the worse army to win is huge. A person could go an entire edition without winning and to get the feeling that they can win would require them to play mulitople battles a week, which most people won't be able to do.
And you can see it in AoS. Cruel boys went from 20 something to 30 something win rate, and now I think they are low 40s. But it doesn't matter, they still have the lowest win rates of all AoS armies, and when played vs a good one, they just get blown off the table, bar some dice magic combined with double turn.
If you have to kill, then kill in the best manner. If you slaughter, then slaughter in the best manner. Let one of you sharpen his knife so his animal feels no pain.
vict0988 wrote: Balance is secondary to representing fluff and models, if the Tactical Squad datasheet cannot be balanced then the game should just be a little imbalanced.
My take on it is that 'everything should have a place*'.Balance is nice but if its not necessarily balanced, i don't necessarily mind a lack of it provided the game/mrchanics/scenario is 'interesting'.
*with the caveat not all things work well in all.conditions/combinations/scenarios and against all opponents, therefore a not-insignificant amount of game-building and 'list-matching'becomes a crucial.foundational.element in 'good gaming', and in ensuring everything has a place. as i see it. 'Out of the box' universal points values can often become a hindrance or a red herring.
Tournaments can have variety, when they don't it's usually a sign of imbalance. If bringing a D tier unit can be statistically proven to tank tournament win rates then it needs a buff. The opinions of competitive playtesters should also be taken into account.
Every game system I ever played ultimately devolved to a handful of go-to builds, crutches and learn-by-rote 'strategies'. It's inescapable. Competitive plsytesters should be listened to, but in my experience competitive plsylisters often think they should be listened to exclusively. I disagree. The game is bigger than 'just' tournaments.
Annual means once a year, it's not really book keeping anyway, you just pick whatever units you want and then your app should take care of it. If you are a competitive player you can make an excel sheet with what you think each unit is worth and compare with whatever GW's current price is and try building lists around things you think are underpriced. I think rules changes are what actually creates problems, my list will automatically have the right points, but if I don't remember a rules update or don't even know it's happened then we won't be playing the game as it's meant to be played.
(1) not everyone plays with, or wants to play with an app.
(2) points changes and rules changes are both sidea of the exact same coun. Frequent points changes and an unstable list-building world were things that contributed to a lot of people leaving the pp games when they did this during mk3. Lists/collections become invalidated etc etc and no one knew if yheir lidt would even be valid in 6 months. Not something that bothers me but to a lot of people in the competitive scene having to.constantly re-adjust and stay on top of things was mentally draining. I don't disagree.
greatest band in the universe: machine supremacy
"Punch your fist in the air and hold your Gameboy aloft like the warrior you are"
45% to 55% sounds great but if that's conceived in an environment of (hypothetical) just intercessors and chaos marines for example (because its easier to balance e a game with fewer units), will.you justify and defend invalidating the other 99.999% of the game to the players who've invested in that.
Isn't even that great, from round 2 of a tourney you have a won both games 30% for 55 and 20% for 45. And that difference tends to hold throughout the comp with the 55% force being roughly 50% more likely to have won all their games. (55 30 17 9 5.0
vs 45 20 11 6 3.4)
odinsgrandson wrote: How about we talk about what we do when we don't use point values?
Many historical wargamers don't collect "an army" like we do, they collect "a battle."
Essentially the gamer collects representative forces for both sides of a conflict (along with the terrain- there's a big focus on historical accuracy in that side of the hobby).
I get the impression that some of the folks at GW like to play like this. Find or create a bit of fiction that they like- especially one that isn't a pitched battle between balanced forces- and just throw down that way.
This way you can end up simulating conflicts like Rocks Drift or the defense of Ultramar against Hive Fleet Behemoth (ie- fielding a whole ton of Terminators against endless waves of bugs). Or have outnumbered defenders of a fortress fight off a siege.
The problem, of course, is that this isn't the way most of us interact with the hobby. We mostly meet up with people at game stores, and when creating imbalanced scenarios, we mostly use point values anyway (like the defenders of the fortress have half the point value of the attackers or some such).
As a person, who play mostly that way, I'll answer. For such games to be balanced gaming experience, you have to take into account way more parameters than in symmetrical matched play, and must know your game system inside out. You don't have the crutch of "meta" and since you do not restrict armies to top choices only, you have to be able to balance way broader pool of units against eachother. Fortunately, we have this great tool, called brain, which can be trained by experience reinforced by academic knowledge. To a point where you can establish a reasonable starting point just by "eyeballing" the possible flow of the game and then adjusting this result further by careful analysis of the game tree. If you want to be precise, you can also go into way more detail than linear points provide, and use multi-dimensional metric to assess forces and non-model based assets. But I really don't expect a typical pick-up sunday gamer, or even typical competitive player to invest so heavily in learning game theory and math a bit more complex than simple mathhammer algebra to be able to play toy soldiers. So, typically, such scenarios are just played "for gak and giggles" and nobody expects those scenarios to be balanced
To me, that sounds like you either make fine-tuning the balance of a scenario into a major part of your hobby, or you just 'eyeball it' and kind of accept that it might be imbalanced.
odinsgrandson wrote: How about we talk about what we do when we don't use point values?
Many historical wargamers don't collect "an army" like we do, they collect "a battle."
Essentially the gamer collects representative forces for both sides of a conflict (along with the terrain- there's a big focus on historical accuracy in that side of the hobby).
I get the impression that some of the folks at GW like to play like this. Find or create a bit of fiction that they like- especially one that isn't a pitched battle between balanced forces- and just throw down that way.
This way you can end up simulating conflicts like Rocks Drift or the defense of Ultramar against Hive Fleet Behemoth (ie- fielding a whole ton of Terminators against endless waves of bugs). Or have outnumbered defenders of a fortress fight off a siege.
The problem, of course, is that this isn't the way most of us interact with the hobby. We mostly meet up with people at game stores, and when creating imbalanced scenarios, we mostly use point values anyway (like the defenders of the fortress have half the point value of the attackers or some such).
As a person, who play mostly that way, I'll answer. For such games to be balanced gaming experience, you have to take into account way more parameters than in symmetrical matched play, and must know your game system inside out. You don't have the crutch of "meta" and since you do not restrict armies to top choices only, you have to be able to balance way broader pool of units against eachother. Fortunately, we have this great tool, called brain, which can be trained by experience reinforced by academic knowledge. To a point where you can establish a reasonable starting point just by "eyeballing" the possible flow of the game and then adjusting this result further by careful analysis of the game tree. If you want to be precise, you can also go into way more detail than linear points provide, and use multi-dimensional metric to assess forces and non-model based assets. But I really don't expect a typical pick-up sunday gamer, or even typical competitive player to invest so heavily in learning game theory and math a bit more complex than simple mathhammer algebra to be able to play toy soldiers. So, typically, such scenarios are just played "for gak and giggles" and nobody expects those scenarios to be balanced
To me, that sounds like you either make fine-tuning the balance of a scenario into a major part of your hobby, or you just 'eyeball it' and kind of accept that it might be imbalanced.
Does that sound right to you?
„Sounds right” as in „do I understand correctly”, or as in „you really think it is how it should be”?
My gaming background prior to wargames are pen&paper RPGs on one hand, and sports Bridge on the other. The thing about Bridge is that it is a game about game theory. I played Bridge for so long, I simply can’t not look for a wider system in games I play. So yes, a huge part of my hobby is not only about designing well thought scenarios, but also game design as a field of knowledge.
But there are tools, that could be widely adapted, that would make scenario preparation and cooperative listbuilding a more straightforward task. However, a prerequisite for their use is an intent of players to cooperate at game preparation stage, which is largely absent in 40K community. To a point, that we had numerous discussions here, that no communication beyond „2000pts matched, latest GT rules” should be expected from players before the game.
I think some folks here really need to try Chain of Command... or really a whole variety of other systems.
Terms like "balance" have little meaning, because the game is mostly skill expression. Even the units you bring is a form of skill expression - in a way utterly different from 40k's. There's almost no math involved ("ooh the KV-2 has 13 HE dice for 10 support points and the T-34 has only 5, for 7, hmm" said no one ever). There are so many more tools and functions available to units in CoC that calculating unit lethality and utility mathematically becomes extremely less important relative to the actual manner the tool is employed... i.e., skill.
Storm of Vengeance is a narrative campaign where there is a list of the historic forces that fought the scenario. For example for the Scenario 3 it is said
"The Dark Angels may choose a 500 point force and
the Orks a 750 point warband."
and
"HISTORICAL FORCES
Dark Angels Army Veteran Sergeant Naaman
Ravenwing Bike Squad Aquila
Scout Squad Arcanus
Ork Force Nazdreg
Mekaniak Grodmek
Painboy Lurksnag
Gretchin Standard Bearer Smirkin
Drillboss Nardrill
Deathskull Lootas
Stormboyz
Blood Axe Kommandos
Bad Moon Boyz
Goff Skarboyz
Gretchin"
A scenario like this could be balanced much more easily that a normal battle even if it has its own special objectives, so it's great for narrative gaming but also for competitive play. Now the problem is having the concrete miniatures but someone with a medium sized army can fit a not so big scenario like this with some proxying.
I don't think that this should be the only way to play 40k but it should be an option that is given more support. I love the 2nd edition version of Storm of Vengeance and I would like to see more books like it.
Light your way in the darkness with the pyres of burning heretics.
I am using a method gleaned from a video game (Age of Wonders Planetfall). This game also has costs for units and upkeep although armies are limited by allowing only a maximum of six unit in a single stack whereas stack is the synonym for army. Furthermore the game rates units (apart from characters) in Tiers of 1 to 4 and battlefield roles like skirmishers (damage dealers) and specialists (support). Characters (Leaders & Heroes) are rated in levels from 1 to 20 or 30.
I will give here a quick example without using costs of what two opposing Planetfall armies which include six units with a 40K skin would look like:
Remove all points, put a cap on the number of total units you can bring (deck size), cap on the total number of duplicates you can bring (playsets), and allow sideboards for tournament play. TCG's have more choice than any wargame could hope for and they just live with the reality that not all pieces are equal. They even facilitate more diversity of lower powered cards via alternative formats.
If for example you could only bring 10 units max and no more than 2 of the same units and you had 4 units in your sideboard. You would then likely tailor each unit to a specific role and based on the mission/opponent you would have some agency to bring the best tools to bear.
I do not think that each unit should be balanced against each other unit, that is impossible. Sometimes you should just let pauper units be pauper while the ubers duke it out.
Remove all points, put a cap on the number of total units you can bring (deck size), cap on the total number of duplicates you can bring (playsets), and allow sideboards for tournament play. TCG's have more choice than any wargame could hope for and they just live with the reality that not all pieces are equal. They even facilitate more diversity of lower powered cards via alternative formats.
If for example you could only bring 10 units max and no more than 2 of the same units and you had 4 units in your sideboard. You would then likely tailor each unit to a specific role and based on the mission/opponent you would have some agency to bring the best tools to bear.
I do not think that each unit should be balanced against each other unit, that is impossible. Sometimes you should just let pauper units be pauper while the ubers duke it out.
There obviously would be more nuance to it than that, but I figured giving a high level pitch "make list building into a deck builder" would suffice enough for this wish list thread lol
Remove all points, put a cap on the number of total units you can bring (deck size), cap on the total number of duplicates you can bring (playsets), and allow sideboards for tournament play. TCG's have more choice than any wargame could hope for and they just live with the reality that not all pieces are equal. They even facilitate more diversity of lower powered cards via alternative formats.
If for example you could only bring 10 units max and no more than 2 of the same units and you had 4 units in your sideboard. You would then likely tailor each unit to a specific role and based on the mission/opponent you would have some agency to bring the best tools to bear.
I do not think that each unit should be balanced against each other unit, that is impossible. Sometimes you should just let pauper units be pauper while the ubers duke it out.
The problem with straight up copying TCGs is that you don't spend hours upon hours assembling and painting your cards. You are not attached to your decks like 40k players are to their armies. In TCG world, banning a card or a deck may cost you money in those rares you needed to sell your kidney for, but doesn't cost you your precious hobby time. Also, a commonly raised objection against sideboards is that it makes transporting your army more difficult.
But what could and should be adapted from the world of TCGs are varied casual/tournament formats. If done right, every unit in the game could be made useful in at least one of them. But this would require 40k community to change mentality from the current "only 2k pts, latest GT matched is the 'proper' 40k", to "any format that is fun, challenging and played using 40k models and 40k rules is proper 40k".
Also card games have resource management as a form of balance. In MTG, i can't just play the biggest strongest units because i'll get outraced by aggro decks. 40k doesnt have that kind of balance so that suggestion means everyone would simply bring the biggest units in their armies
Tittliewinks22 wrote: I do not think that each unit should be balanced against each other unit, that is impossible. Sometimes you should just let pauper units be pauper while the ubers duke it out.
OP's question is 'how else could the game be balanced?' and your answer is 'don't even try, may the best wallet win'.
Tittliewinks22 wrote: I do not think that each unit should be balanced against each other unit, that is impossible. Sometimes you should just let pauper units be pauper while the ubers duke it out.
OP's question is 'how else could the game be balanced?' and your answer is 'don't even try, may the best wallet win'.
Daemon's advocate: I feel like the notion that it was okay for some units to stink so long as other units in the army made up for it may have been sort of embraced by GW back in the day pre-allies. Back when both players were limited to a single force org chart, you could sort of get away with having a faction's HQs or troops be a bit meh with the understanding that another force org role would be picking up the slack.
But if that ever was consciously a thing, it stopped working when we gained the ability to take allies, weird detachments, and otherwise minimize the use of "tax slots." I feel that's why obsec became a thing; because troops were frequently just less efficient versions of better units in your army, and GW wanted to give players a reason to field those underperformers.
ATTENTION. Psychic tests are unfluffy. Your longing for AV is understandable but misguided. Your chapter doesn't need a separate codex. Doctrines should go away. Being a "troop" means nothing. This has been a cranky service announcement. You may now resume your regularly scheduled arguing.
JNAProductions wrote: Spinning off from the Points Value thread, there's people saying that points don't function as a balancing mechanism.
This thread is to give space for alternatives-if not points, then how are you going to balance differing factions and armies?
That last update was the test balloon. Points aren't even points anymore. Points are Powerlevel pretending to be points with a few exceptions. They've been trying to push Power Level for a while now, and failing because the players don't want to change. So the solution was to change Points into Power Level so they didn't have a choice and didn't have to think about it too much. I mean we already did the math, and the questions. Power Level was 1/20th of the points with free upgrades - and we already asked way back then if free upgrades were paradigm changing - nobody thought so then. But they still generally didn't like power level. Probably a change for change's sake thing.
So its points. But it's points that works like power level. The interesting thing is what they'll do now that they're getting rid of FOC/Detach/etc (Which was Beta Tested by Arks of Omen Dets).
They say we'll still see a lot of (what were but not anymore because FOC slot stuff is obsolete) "battleline/troops" on the board - Will "Troops" get a boost to more than the "Objective Control" stat or did they rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic?
How much will subfaction homogenization suck? Will the hate directed at Chaos Marines which is expanding into seperate rather than subfactions reverse the trend for them, or for everyone else?
Will Subfactions even be a thing anymore? If all Aggressors play the same because they've all got the same doctrine/Super Doctrine - can Bobby G give rerolls to Salamander Aggressors? Will you still have to tell your opponent they're Ultramarine Aggressors that borrowed some gear from the Salamanders and haven't repainted it yet? What about Subfactions that might have bespoke rules?
GW has a history of doing the bare minimum on these updates, and not thinking about the next step - that was just one example of the "next step". What rules are going to stick around that will have no meaningful impact like Subfactions.
Tittliewinks22 wrote: I do not think that each unit should be balanced against each other unit, that is impossible. Sometimes you should just let pauper units be pauper while the ubers duke it out.
OP's question is 'how else could the game be balanced?' and your answer is 'don't even try, may the best wallet win'.
Daemon's advocate: I feel like the notion that it was okay for some units to stink so long as other units in the army made up for it may have been sort of embraced by GW back in the day pre-allies. Back when both players were limited to a single force org chart, you could sort of get away with having a faction's HQs or troops be a bit meh with the understanding that another force org role would be picking up the slack.
But if that ever was consciously a thing, it stopped working when we gained the ability to take allies, weird detachments, and otherwise minimize the use of "tax slots." I feel that's why obsec became a thing; because troops were frequently just less efficient versions of better units in your army, and GW wanted to give players a reason to field those underperformers.
That's not a desirable state regardless, even if the old FOC kept the imbalance from being as readily apparent. You don't want slots to be dominated by useless units; it's tacit incentive to min-max into other slots, and nobody likes having to take tax units. I don't think GW ever did it deliberately (unless it was really amateur hour codex writing- but I feel like Chambers or Cavatore would have nipped that in the bud) but they definitely struggled at times to make Troops useful.
I'm actually optimistic that GW finally ditching the atavistic remnants of the old FOC, and replacing obsec with the less-powerful OC stat, will force them to give Troops units interesting roles that make them worth the points. I could see them being the bastion of reaction abilities that give them flexibility, in lieu of raw damage or sheer damage-sponging.
Tittliewinks22 wrote: I do not think that each unit should be balanced against each other unit, that is impossible. Sometimes you should just let pauper units be pauper while the ubers duke it out.
OP's question is 'how else could the game be balanced?' and your answer is 'don't even try, may the best wallet win'.
I think you misunderstand some of the terminology that I used. Pauper is a lower powered format for TCG's. Uber is a high powered format for various video games. Neither have any relevance to cost of entry for miniatures games.
Tittliewinks22 wrote: I do not think that each unit should be balanced against each other unit, that is impossible. Sometimes you should just let pauper units be pauper while the ubers duke it out.
OP's question is 'how else could the game be balanced?' and your answer is 'don't even try, may the best wallet win'.
Daemon's advocate: I feel like the notion that it was okay for some units to stink so long as other units in the army made up for it may have been sort of embraced by GW back in the day pre-allies. Back when both players were limited to a single force org chart, you could sort of get away with having a faction's HQs or troops be a bit meh with the understanding that another force org role would be picking up the slack.
But if that ever was consciously a thing, it stopped working when we gained the ability to take allies, weird detachments, and otherwise minimize the use of "tax slots." I feel that's why obsec became a thing; because troops were frequently just less efficient versions of better units in your army, and GW wanted to give players a reason to field those underperformers.
That's not a desirable state regardless, even if the old FOC kept the imbalance from being as readily apparent. You don't want slots to be dominated by useless units; it's tacit incentive to min-max into other slots, and nobody likes having to take tax units. I don't think GW ever did it deliberately (unless it was really amateur hour codex writing- but I feel like Chambers or Cavatore would have nipped that in the bud) but they definitely struggled at times to make Troops useful.
I'm actually optimistic that GW finally ditching the atavistic remnants of the old FOC, and replacing obsec with the less-powerful OC stat, will force them to give Troops units interesting roles that make them worth the points. I could see them being the bastion of reaction abilities that give them flexibility, in lieu of raw damage or sheer damage-sponging.
It's unrealistic to expect every unit to be viable in a competitive setting that only has 1 format (anything goes). Every single game (board game, card game, video game, etc) that has choice of which pieces to use there will always be overperformers and underperformers. The only true way to make all 100 space marine datasheets useable is to impose various formats that put restrictions that prevent the top tier stuff.
Competitive Pokemon is a close comparison to wargames. You build your list from the options available in the tier list you are playing in, nothing prevents you from taking lower powered units in higher tiers, but lower tiered formats prevent the higher tier choices from dominating. Gamefreaks doesn't need to balance out every mon against each other since that is impossible.
40k won't adapt that type of tiered format system so the community should just adopt the fact the game will never be balanced without extreme homoginization of units or significant blanding of datasheets.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Another concept that competitive formats could adopt to assist with balance/skew type would be a player ban system.
In MOBA's teams can ban certain characters before the game starts to prevent a hard counter to their strategy/playstyle.
In Dice Throne tournaments you typically bring 3 classes and your opponent bans 1 before you pick and play.
40k Competitve could allow you to ban a unit from the opponents force before the game starts. This would flip list building on it's head from a competitive standpoint. Some immediate considerations with a system like this is that you would not want to invest too many points in any single given unit for fear of being at a massive disadvantage, you would also want to bring redundancies for core parts of your strategy. It would remove death star as a type of force.
You could even implement this type of system with a harsher restriction on unit availability (no duplicates except troops) kind of thing.
This idea is not plug and play into 40k as is, and would need a lot more datasheet changes in order to facilitate, but as I have suggested before with other wacky ideas, I do not think 40k is balanceable to a meaningful degree.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2023/03/31 16:51:01
I cut the rest of your post out because frankly, not interested in replying to it.
In AoS, the way it works is that you have a subfaction keyword added or in the case of something like a named hero or unit it's on there from the outset but doesn't necessarily break the rest of your subfaction's setup. It just won't do anything for non-subfaction stuff.
EX: Guilliman can be taken in a Salamanders detachment, but will not have the Salamanders keyword nor can he gain it or buff it unless he has a straight buff to Adeptus Astartes units.
We have already seen a bit of this in the Guard book, with Death Korps of Krieg, Cadian, and Catachan all becoming fixed keywords while there is no <Regiment> present.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2023/03/31 16:58:19
Tittliewinks22 wrote: I do not think that each unit should be balanced against each other unit, that is impossible. Sometimes you should just let pauper units be pauper while the ubers duke it out.
OP's question is 'how else could the game be balanced?' and your answer is 'don't even try, may the best wallet win'.
I think you misunderstand some of the terminology that I used. Pauper is a lower powered format for TCG's. Uber is a high powered format for various video games. Neither have any relevance to cost of entry for miniatures games.
Tittliewinks22 wrote: I do not think that each unit should be balanced against each other unit, that is impossible. Sometimes you should just let pauper units be pauper while the ubers duke it out.
OP's question is 'how else could the game be balanced?' and your answer is 'don't even try, may the best wallet win'.
Daemon's advocate: I feel like the notion that it was okay for some units to stink so long as other units in the army made up for it may have been sort of embraced by GW back in the day pre-allies. Back when both players were limited to a single force org chart, you could sort of get away with having a faction's HQs or troops be a bit meh with the understanding that another force org role would be picking up the slack.
But if that ever was consciously a thing, it stopped working when we gained the ability to take allies, weird detachments, and otherwise minimize the use of "tax slots." I feel that's why obsec became a thing; because troops were frequently just less efficient versions of better units in your army, and GW wanted to give players a reason to field those underperformers.
That's not a desirable state regardless, even if the old FOC kept the imbalance from being as readily apparent. You don't want slots to be dominated by useless units; it's tacit incentive to min-max into other slots, and nobody likes having to take tax units. I don't think GW ever did it deliberately (unless it was really amateur hour codex writing- but I feel like Chambers or Cavatore would have nipped that in the bud) but they definitely struggled at times to make Troops useful.
I'm actually optimistic that GW finally ditching the atavistic remnants of the old FOC, and replacing obsec with the less-powerful OC stat, will force them to give Troops units interesting roles that make them worth the points. I could see them being the bastion of reaction abilities that give them flexibility, in lieu of raw damage or sheer damage-sponging.
It's unrealistic to expect every unit to be viable in a competitive setting that only has 1 format (anything goes). Every single game (board game, card game, video game, etc) that has choice of which pieces to use there will always be overperformers and underperformers. The only true way to make all 100 space marine datasheets useable is to impose various formats that put restrictions that prevent the top tier stuff.
Competitive Pokemon is a close comparison to wargames. You build your list from the options available in the tier list you are playing in, nothing prevents you from taking lower powered units in higher tiers, but lower tiered formats prevent the higher tier choices from dominating. Gamefreaks doesn't need to balance out every mon against each other since that is impossible.
40k won't adapt that type of tiered format system so the community should just adopt the fact the game will never be balanced without extreme homoginization of units or significant blanding of datasheets.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Another concept that competitive formats could adopt to assist with balance/skew type would be a player ban system.
In MOBA's teams can ban certain characters before the game starts to prevent a hard counter to their strategy/playstyle.
In Dice Throne tournaments you typically bring 3 classes and your opponent bans 1 before you pick and play.
40k Competitve could allow you to ban a unit from the opponents force before the game starts. This would flip list building on it's head from a competitive standpoint. Some immediate considerations with a system like this is that you would not want to invest too many points in any single given unit for fear of being at a massive disadvantage, you would also want to bring redundancies for core parts of your strategy. It would remove death star as a type of force.
You could even implement this type of system with a harsher restriction on unit availability (no duplicates except troops) kind of thing.
This idea is not plug and play into 40k as is, and would need a lot more datasheet changes in order to facilitate, but as I have suggested before with other wacky ideas, I do not think 40k is balanceable to a meaningful degree.
Good points all around. Especially "ban" mechanic is a very good one for countering skew, to the point that it is used in some countries for government procurements (I hope this is a proper term for polish "zamówienia publiczne"), where both highest and lowest price offers are rejected outright. But I can already hear the scream of 40k competitive players, that they do not have 100% control over all possible parameters at pre-table stage of the game.
As to "not balanceable" - well, it isn't for one reason only - you can't have a cookie and eat a cookie. 40k playerbase demands the game to have ridiculous amount of "options", far, far more than the "engine" of this game could ever handle (see 1pt bolter debate in a parallel thread). On top of that, opposes introduction of pretty much any dynamic balancing mechanisms, because in the eyes of way too many 40k players, 40k is about list building and winning the game before it even started,.
Tittliewinks22 wrote: I do not think that each unit should be balanced against each other unit, that is impossible. Sometimes you should just let pauper units be pauper while the ubers duke it out.
OP's question is 'how else could the game be balanced?' and your answer is 'don't even try, may the best wallet win'.
I think you misunderstand some of the terminology that I used. Pauper is a lower powered format for TCG's. Uber is a high powered format for various video games. Neither have any relevance to cost of entry for miniatures games.
No, I'm commenting more broadly on the notion of adopting CCG-like deliberate imbalance. I'm pretty familiar with what comes of CCGs where it's accepted that not all cards are balanced and wallet-warrioring your way to an ideal deck gives a marked advantage. 40K already has enough problems with the cost of building a tournament-ready list; making the power disparity between such an optimized and a more casual list worse by giving up on trying to balance at all would not be an improvement.
Of course, formats that impose restrictions on what you can use are, de facto, a crude balancing mechanism- determining what to allow and ban for a given format requires an assessment of relative value between cards. If you can do that, you can assess relative value between units in 40K and assign points.
Tittliewinks22 wrote:It's unrealistic to expect every unit to be viable in a competitive setting that only has 1 format (anything goes). Every single game (board game, card game, video game, etc) that has choice of which pieces to use there will always be overperformers and underperformers.
I can sit down to play Chain of Command right now and pick any of the platoons and have a good time with a decent chance of winning. Some might be a bit stronger than others, some might require more finesse to get the most out of them, but none are brokenly overpowered or underpowered.
The game would not be better if they threw out the careful (if imperfect) balancing mechanism in play and just accepted that nobody would ever want to play anything besides the very best platoons. It'd be worse. Far worse. Zero advantage to such a system. Absolutely no reason to do such a thing.
I've heard some variation on 'perfect balance is impossible so it's pointless to even try' about a thousand times now and still don't find it remotely convincing. Given how hard Age of Sigmar flopped when the only balancing mechanism was model count- certainly not ushering in some new and exciting golden age of competitive gaming- I'm inclined to say that the idea that just using a unit cap will lead to a better competitive experience is utter nonsense.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2023/04/01 00:48:08
