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 Canadian 5th wrote:

It's not a matter of need. It's a hypothetical point to prove your rationale is bankrupt. If everyone can just play the same deck (caw blade), then there's no reason to encourage a diversity of deck archetypes. Hell, right now GW seems to have taken it to heart, and just *really* wants everyone to play Primaris.

Caw Blade? My man, that's a deck older than my last game of 40k. Maybe you should stop talking about MtG if that's the most modern deck you can name.

So he should stop talking about out-of-date MTG decks but you can continue talking about your out-of-date 40k experience....

BTW, this is about 40k & minis gaming. Not LoL & however some video game company balances it's game.
40k =/= LoL.
Miniature Wargaming =/= video games.

ccs wrote:
So he should stop talking about out-of-date MTG decks but you can continue talking about your out-of-date 40k experience....

You mean my playing games in 8th edition and not playing in 9th because we're locked down and my friends don't have time to game? That's really not that out of date compared to Caw-Blade which was a deck back in 2011.

BTW, this is about 40k & minis gaming. Not LoL & however some video game company balances it's game.
40k =/= LoL.
Miniature Wargaming =/= video games.

Games are games. Balance is balance. Both require math and logical rules which come together to create a specific outcome based on what the people playing the game do within the bounds of the game's logic.

40k would be no different in terms of rules and balance if it were to be played in VR without any physical pieces at all. Technically you could play it with pure math and involve only your mind and some paper to do calculations on but the juice isn't worth that much squeezing.

What does MTG, LOL, etc have to do with 40k?

Last time I checked 40k is neither(thank fething god).
Both are horrible games. I would rather hang out with Sisyphus and help him out with his boulder than play either.

Racerguy180 wrote:
What does MTG, LOL, etc have to do with 40k?

Last time I checked 40k is neither(thank fething god).
Both are horrible games. I would rather hang out with Sisyphus and help him out with his boulder than play either.

How are THOSE horrible games compared to 40k? You can even objectively defend them as better, especially for the price point.

Racerguy180 wrote:
What does MTG, LOL, etc have to do with 40k?

Last time I checked 40k is neither(thank fething god).
Both are horrible games. I would rather hang out with Sisyphus and help him out with his boulder than play either.

How does any of this impact the fact that the mechanical balance of a game is purely a product of logic and thus can be discussed in abstract terms using comparables from other genres?

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

Racerguy180 wrote:
What does MTG, LOL, etc have to do with 40k?

Last time I checked 40k is neither(thank fething god).
Both are horrible games. I would rather hang out with Sisyphus and help him out with his boulder than play either.

How are THOSE horrible games compared to 40k? You can even objectively defend them as better, especially for the price point.

The irony is that if he hates LoL his issue with it is probably the balance as you should expect a 50-50 win rate once you're properly rated as a player. For anybody who can't handle losing that must feel awful.

You're really bad at reading clauses. You should probably avoid games like MtG and YGO because the placement of a comma in those games can change an entire card. What I said with that final sentence is that I played almost every army in 4th and 5th using proxied models. Nothing more and nothing less.

Show me the clause in that post? You never mentioned 8th. If you said it somewhere else fine, but you would think, in being asked "So ... you don't even play 40k?", you'd have at least said "Played a few games of 8th". Not that "a few games of 8th" has much to do with where we are in 9th but at any rate, you didn't mention it. And you originally said you couldn't actually get your group to play games like 40k, but now you don't play because of lockdown? I mean fair enough, that applies to most of us, but "I don't play because I can't get my group to play 40k (but I have played a few games) ≠ I haven't played recently due to lockdown. lol

Ok - sorry for the derail all. I'm done. I promise. Just wanted to call that out.

"ignore" activated. lol

I've never played it, as I have no use for it. simple as that.

A fair amount of my friends do and everytime they show me the gameplay...it reinforces my decision. I get the appeal, its just unappealing to me.

Same for MTG/pokemon/any other CCG. I remember when Magic came out and my opinion of the game hasn't changed.

Tycho wrote:
Show me the clause in that post?

That bit with the comma separating two clauses in a sentence. It's pretty clear.

You never mentioned 8th. If you said it somewhere else fine, but you would think, in being asked "So ... you don't even play 40k?", you'd have at least said "Played a few games of 8th". Not that "a few games of 8th" has much to do with where we are in 9th but at any rate, you didn't mention it.

A few games of 8th mean very little overall so I didn't care to mention them.

And you originally said you couldn't actually get your group to play games like 40k, but now you don't play because of lockdown? I mean fair enough, that applies to most of us, but "I don't play because I can't get my group to play 40k (but I have played a few games) ≠ I haven't played recently due to lockdown. lol

My group doesn't want to invest in 40k. I can't go to clubs because of lockdown, no contradiction at all.

Racerguy180 wrote:
I've never played it, as I have no use for it. simple as that.

A fair amount of my friends do and everytime they show me the gameplay...it reinforces my decision. I get the appeal, its just unappealing to me.

Same for MTG/pokemon/any other CCG. I remember when Magic came out and my opinion of the game hasn't changed.

So you're mocking games you have next to no knowledge of because you don't think they're relevant to 40k but you can't actually know that because you have nothing beyond a surface-level knowledge of them...

If on a surface level(mechanically)they have zero appeal to me, why would I waste time hoping they would miraculously be better?
Does the game get better?
Do all of the things that I dislike change, the more you play?

Are either one of them a tabletop wargame with miniatures that you build, paint and then play with?
Can you go back and play with the original LOL stats? Can you play without some mechanic you don't like?

Something tells me no.

Racerguy180 wrote:
If on a surface level(mechanically)they have zero appeal to me, why would I waste time hoping they would miraculously be better?
Does the game get better?
Do all of the things that I dislike change, the more you play?

Are either one of them a tabletop wargame with miniatures that you build, paint and then play with?
Can you go back and play with the original LOL stats? Can you play without some mechanic you don't like?

Something tells me no.

What does any of this have to do with game balance?

 Canadian 5th wrote:

Racerguy180 wrote:
If on a surface level(mechanically)they have zero appeal to me, why would I waste time hoping they would miraculously be better?
Does the game get better?
Do all of the things that I dislike change, the more you play?

Are either one of them a tabletop wargame with miniatures that you build, paint and then play with?
Can you go back and play with the original LOL stats? Can you play without some mechanic you don't like?

Something tells me no.

What does any of this have to do with game balance?

Compare similar games then

But you don't have to compare similar games. You are comparing mechanics and their impact on stuff like win ratios or player retention.



Also I am rather confused on how building or painting models impacts the game balance at all. Specialy considering you don't need to paint the army to play the game.

Karol wrote:
But you don't have to compare similar games. You are comparing mechanics and their impact on stuff like win ratios or player retention.



Also I am rather confused on how building or painting models impacts the game balance at all. Specialy considering you don't need to paint the army to play the game.

Thanks, Karol, we don't always agree but you nailed it here.

But you don't have to compare similar games. You are comparing mechanics and their impact on stuff like win ratios or player retention.



Also I am rather confused on how building or painting models impacts the game balance at all. Specialy considering you don't need to paint the army to play the game

I didn’t see where anyone said the thing about building or painting but if someone did say that then you are correct.

The issue with comparing “similar mechanics” is that you at least want to compare how a mechanic works, for example, in another war game. Nothing really works in a 40k vs video game comparison, and as far as ccgs go, despite what some would have you think, 40k is still very far away from a ccg. The context within which, a mechanic lives, is very important to how it works and its relative affect on the game it governs. That’s why it’s important to at least try to compare similar games.

MTG is a FAR better, more tactical game than 40k has ever been. While I dislike much of the modern design philosophy, the game is still fun (which 40k as not been for me since mid-7th) and the rules are the clearest I've ever encountered. It would be amazing if GW studied their process and replicated it.

If something has 60% win ratio, and something else has under 40%, then it doesn't matter what it is. It is always a sign of something being wrong. could be comparing long distance running to 100 dash, and the comparation would work.

Tycho wrote:

But you don't have to compare similar games. You are comparing mechanics and their impact on stuff like win ratios or player retention.



Also I am rather confused on how building or painting models impacts the game balance at all. Specialy considering you don't need to paint the army to play the game

I didn’t see where anyone said the thing about building or painting but if someone did say that then you are correct.

The issue with comparing “similar mechanics” is that you at least want to compare how a mechanic works, for example, in another war game. Nothing really works in a 40k vs video game comparison, and as far as ccgs go, despite what some would have you think, 40k is still very far away from a ccg. The context within which, a mechanic lives, is very important to how it works and its relative affect on the game it governs. That’s why it’s important to at least try to compare similar games.

Racerguy180 wrote:Are either one of them a tabletop wargame with miniatures that you build, paint and then play with?
Can you go back and play with the original LOL stats? Can you play without some mechanic you don't like?

This looks like one to me.

As for the debate around mechanics, I'm going to define it clearly.

All games by definition must be logically solvable. All games that have any form of asymmetry, even as minor as who plays first, will have some form of imbalance. How different games deal with their levels of imbalance is therefore completely within the scope of a balance discussion.

This is exactly how I've used LoL and MtG, as examples of how other games deal with imbalance and why different games have to approach balance differently. I've also used LoL as a means of demonstrating that perfect balance my, in fact, not be the most desirable level of balance for the players. Do you dispute that these points relate to 40k?

Well GW ways of dealing with an army being bad is to make people buy a good army. And dealing with a good army goes along the lines, why are you asking for stuff if your army is good and if you want a good army play the play a good one, instead of your bad one.

And it can go on for years. Because GW makes big core changes to armies, if they are puting out a new codex, and they don't work the same amount of time on all books clearly from the boks qualities, and if there are new model lines coming out.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
I often regret selling models, but then I remember why I sold them in the first place.
I don't have the space to keep them. Lord knows I don't have enough space to keep the models I'm currently using.
Additionally, I wouldn't want to use the models anyway. They're from a time where I was much worse at building and painting than I am now, I don't like what I did anymore.

I just sold 6k of Eldar, 3k of Chaos and 7k of Dark Angels and it was just a weight off my mind.

I have so much to paint still and I was honestly never going to finish it all. I've only painted about 35% of my 20k of Nids.

This is exactly how I've used LoL and MtG, as examples of how other games deal with imbalance and why different games have to approach balance differently. I've also used LoL as a means of demonstrating that perfect balance my, in fact, not be the most desirable level of balance for the players. Do you dispute that these points relate to 40k?

The MTG reference is applicable now more than ever since GW has adopted a similar resource mechanic system to drive the game in 9th edition even more so than it did in 8th.

The main problem with the type of balance these players are looking for is no longer possible with 40K because the line has literally gotten to large to allow it. to many factions with to many units with to many special rules.
At least the old USRs kind of kept everybody on the same page.


As i stated in an earlier post back between 2nd-4th edition the core of the game was focused on lore driven rules/restrictions more than equalizing factions against each other. as they all had built in flaws and strengths that you as a player had to exploit on the table.

A better comparison of balance can be seen in other things Andy Chambers has worked on over the years after leaving GW. his rules for DUST warfare/1947 (the miniature rules not the board game rules) are incredibly balanced with every unit having a hard counter in game and with only 4 main factions and each faction limited to a single special weapon type different from all the other factions. it is very easy to have a balanced game where certain armies don't overpower others no matter how new they are when you limited the scope of the game a little (it is still really big in unit options, but not to the extent GW has gone with 40K )

 Canadian 5th wrote:
If there was a style of army in 40k that could either table you by turn 2 or flame out spectacularly most players probably wouldn't want that army to be good. That's assassin's in LoL, they either snowball and carry or lose and contribute nothing.

...a lot of games of 40k are decided by turn 2 anyway. Your point isn't really relevant.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

Caw Blade? My man, that's a deck older than my last game of 40k. Maybe you should stop talking about MtG if that's the most modern deck you can name.

Irrelevant. I know plenty of newer decks; I picked caw blade because of a trait it has. Do you know what it is? It's really easy if you understand the context.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

You seem to be ignorant of the fact that there have been many armchair quarterbacks picked up as video scouts and analysts in recent years...

But what percentage of armchair quarterbacks make good video scouts? I think it's probably a vanishingly small amount. You never really knocked down my point.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

You have to prove that it has intentionally bad balance as a core gameplay element to draw players into their next match.

It's not to draw people into their next match, it's to make them spend money. Here's a good video on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPHPNgIihR0

 Canadian 5th wrote:
That's where battle reports and tournament writeups come into the equation. I can probably analyze more games in my free time than somebody who plays does because I can spend that three hours watching a couple of games while you get in merely one.

If you were any good to begin with you'd understand that there's no substitute for actual practice.

 aphyon wrote:

This is exactly how I've used LoL and MtG, as examples of how other games deal with imbalance and why different games have to approach balance differently. I've also used LoL as a means of demonstrating that perfect balance my, in fact, not be the most desirable level of balance for the players. Do you dispute that these points relate to 40k?

The MTG reference is applicable now more than ever since GW has adopted a similar resource mechanic system to drive the game in 9th edition even more so than it did in 8th.

I think that's the exact reason the comparison doesn't work at all. Yes, 40k incorporates a lot of CCG mechanics into its games now with the wombo-combo stratagem system. The key difference is that 40k is like playing a game with almost all the resources always available - they've completely missed the crucial elements that allow you to balance a CCG. It's the resource mechanic that attempts to balance CCGs by restricting what mana and which cards you have available at any given time. 40k's biggest problem is it doesn't do that effectively. I always have access to all my stratagems (cards) and I have a predefined pool of CPs (mana) that I'm completely in control of managing too.

If these mechanics more closely followed how CCGs work they might be more interesting.

Oh, we are at the "40k is the only game in the universe that can't be balanced" discussion again.

You're wrong. Every game can be balanced with sufficient effort. Especially since 40k is vastly less complex than both MtG and LoL.

 Jidmah wrote:
Oh, we are at the "40k is the only game in the universe that can't be balanced" discussion again.

You're wrong. Every game can be balanced with sufficient effort. Especially since 40k is vastly less complex than both MtG and LoL.

Is MtG more complex though ? Depends on the format I'd say. Standard MtG (the format with the lowest number of cards to choose from) is IMHO less complex than 40k. I also play Pioneer format (an "eternal" format, whereas Standard is a "revolving" format), and perhaps that is indeed more complex than 40k (soooo many cards have been produced in all those editons, it is a nightmare to try to anticipate what you I would face when I used to head out for a small tournament). Never tried LoL.

At any rate GW could really benefit from the methods of people at MtG (except from the people who have been in charge of green-blue cards in recent editions, these dudes need to go back to balancing school), who are decades ahead in terms of competence

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/06/its-possible-to-build-a-turing-machine-within-magic-the-gathering/

Slipspace 795143 11027264 wrote:
I think that's the exact reason the comparison doesn't work at all. Yes, 40k incorporates a lot of CCG mechanics into its games now with the wombo-combo stratagem system. The key difference is that 40k is like playing a game with almost all the resources always available - they've completely missed the crucial elements that allow you to balance a CCG.
If these mechanics more closely followed how CCGs work they might be more interesting.

But the mechanics themselfs don't matter. It is just like with sports, it doesn't matter what the sport is about, but if you want to check if something is wrong with it, you check who is winning and how often. If it is expected for multiple armies to play with the same rule set, and the rule set does not matter as long as it is the same one, then if you get something like harlis and tau from 9th in it at the same time, then something was done wrong with the rules. Same way as it is with ccg. If Wizards makes Oko and suddenly 80% of decks run him, to a point where even anti Oko decks run Oko, then clearly some balance problem is at hand. The style of the mechanics, its number, its kind do not matter. Only thing that matters is checking if the game is able to produce results close to a 50/50 split for most armies. Then you can check stuff like going first, pre change, impacting the game a lot or specific match ups.


And GW has all the power to change and switch any mechanics they want, just like they have the option to test rules, or even whole games, in and outside of house. They do not do it though. What ever can be said about Wizards and Hasbro, at least their reaction time is much faster then that of GW, if they really drop the ball. When Inari or Castellan builds were wrecking 8th ed, both were left without any serious changes for close to a year, and the change was not a fix, but a nerf so hard that since then we don't really see people playing with either. Same with loyal 32, and I assume a lot of things in prior editions.

I feel bringing in MTG just raises the question of "what is balance".

The desire in 40k (I think anyway) is that two people can bring armies, and each have roughly 50/50 chance to win. This is why discussions that tend towards more rock/paper/scissors are unpopular. People don't want a game that takes 3~ hours where you know one side is almost certain to win because they brought tanks and their opponent brought all the anti-tank. They want a 50/50 - or at least near as.

You might then upgrade it to "each have a 50/50 chance to win, allowing for player skill" (exactly how you quantify it being unclear but recognising experience applies to just about all games and so must apply to 40k).

Certainly the idea two people can turn up with random cards in MTG and have a 50/50 chance to win that game is false. Skill and decision making is undoubtedly a factor - but there is also just what you have in your deck, and the order that it happens to be piled up in front of you.

So I'm not sure what people mean by when they say its "balanced". I think the idea is that even though you can bring the most filthy aggo deck in the game, and crush loads of people, there are plenty of decks *other* people could bring that would stack the odds in their favour against you. Saying "I play Red/Blue, bring me your tears" isn't the same as "I play [top list] of [top faction]" in 40k, to which there likely is no hard counter at all.

In the same spirit of League - if its balanced, why are there lists of bad champions to avoid (and good ones to play)? I feel in League characters can more easily be tweaked due to the vast amount of information compared with 40k. If you assume most people are past their improvement cycle, you can easily track their performance with one character and another. You can then see relatively clearly if people are getting better results with A rather than B.

Whereas that doesn't happen in 40k - due to time and money commitments. It would be great if we could somehow study what happens when you take multiple people who are say losing 60-70%+ of their games and give them whatever people think is the best list in the game for 10-20 games.

But yes. 40k can be balanced. All of the 8th edition CAs moved things in the right direction. I think this latest free update does so too. Some people would just like GW to move things a bit faster, and perhaps show their workings/thinking so they seemingly *learn* from past errors.

Karol wrote:

Slipspace 795143 11027264 wrote:
I think that's the exact reason the comparison doesn't work at all. Yes, 40k incorporates a lot of CCG mechanics into its games now with the wombo-combo stratagem system. The key difference is that 40k is like playing a game with almost all the resources always available - they've completely missed the crucial elements that allow you to balance a CCG.
If these mechanics more closely followed how CCGs work they might be more interesting.

But the mechanics themselfs don't matter. It is just like with sports, it doesn't matter what the sport is about, but if you want to check if something is wrong with it, you check who is winning and how often.

That tells you if something is winning a lot, not why. Without knowing why you can't ever hope to achieve balance. My comment was directly talking about how the difference in mechanics between CCGs and 40k make balance more difficult in the latter. So mechanics do matter, because those are the things you use and the things you change to create balance.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tyel wrote:


So I'm not sure what people mean by when they say its "balanced". I think the idea is that even though you can bring the most filthy aggo deck in the game, and crush loads of people, there are plenty of decks *other* people could bring that would stack the odds in their favour against you. Saying "I play Red/Blue, bring me your tears" isn't the same as "I play [top list] of [top faction]" in 40k, to which there likely is no hard counter at all.

To stick with the MTG theme, I think Mark Rosewater's 20 tenets of good game design give a good indication. Translating a little for 40k, in a balanced game you want players who take thematically "correct" armies to be able to do well and you want the route to victory to be fun, whatever that means in context. I think the former part is where 40k falls down a lot and causes a lot of problems. Nobody likes being told they wasted their money because the faction they chose is bad, or the units they bought are terrible. I think what balance should mean is taking a relatively typical army for your chosen faction should give you a decent chance to win against someone of equal skill. Further, I don't think any units should be completely useless to the point of being a waste of money. All units should have some purpose in certain kinds of list.

The problem with that is GW often makes business decisions that affect game balance. The large number of SM untis that perform the same role is a good example. It's hard for every unit to effectively fill a niche when there are 3 or 4 other units all trying to fill the same niche.

A constructed format is considered balanced (or healthy) when there are 3-4 distinct top decks with a few second tier decks, which all have reasonable chance of winning. A badly balanced constructed environment is when one or two decks and their direct counters dominate the meta. With every release, they have to take care that standard format remains healthy, while also not fething up any of the eternal or long-lived formats.

At the same time, they also have to balance the same cards for drafting, which requires no color to be significantly stronger than any other, and every color to make sense drafting at least as a support to another. In some sets they also have to balance color pairs or triplets.

WotC has repeatedly seen that sales are directly connected to the balance of drafting and tournament formats - both combo winter and raffinity almost killed the game. Whenever they mess up their balance, they lose money.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Slipspace wrote:
That tells you if something is winning a lot, not why. Without knowing why you can't ever hope to achieve balance. My comment was directly talking about how the difference in mechanics between CCGs and 40k make balance more difficult in the latter. So mechanics do matter, because those are the things you use and the things you change to create balance.

In my opinion, GW is making most of this harder for themselves than necessary. They have so many more tools to tweak unit than WotC has to tweak a card. If WotC needs to balance something like the Oko example Karol gave post mortem, their only option is to banhammer it and print a weaker version later, because they have printed millions of cards and spread them across the globe.

GW isn't really limited outside of the physical models, so while you can't suddenly give eradicator bolters, there is some wiggle space, like inventing new wargear for stuff already found on models (see DG releases).

However, they could easily change the whole statline up and down, change weapon profiles, add, change or remove bespoke rules and stratagems, add detachment or army-wide rules and even add or remove keywords like CORE. There are so many ways to fine-tune units, and yet the only way we ever see is points, and some things simply can't be fixed with points.
Honestly, 9th's editions codices feel like the first time they have ever been using their whole toolbox to update armies.

It's honestly stunning to see people assert that 40k cannot ever possibly be balanced.

It's not a learning AI algorithm, or something. It's not beyond human comprehension. Humans built it and continue to build it. It's utterly 100% transparent - or, if it's not, it could be if the designers chose to make it so.

Watching people talk about 40k is just weird. Like people standing in front of a ruined building and going:
"This building cannot be repaired; such architecture is a lost art and arcane beyond reason." literally while the guy who designed and built the building is standing in the same room whistling to himself while building other, better buildings.

40k is the product of human minds, not an independently growing algorithm nor a living thing. We don't have to do scientific tests on it to break it down to its components in some kind of physics lab before understanding it like it were some kind of mysterious phenomenon.

Humans build it. Humans could build it better, but chose not to for any number of possible reasons. That's why 40k is the way it is. Not because it's some inscrutable, unfathomable eldritch horror beyond such mundane concerns as "balance".