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Spoletta wrote:

Snugiraffe wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

 auticus wrote:


Here's a good one. Address how competitive players do seek imbalance actively. They seek to make a 2000 point army list into a 5000 point army list. Thats one of my key tenants after all. You quoted it. So address it. Address how that is wrong and why its wrong.

Debate over lol.

Nobody ever denied this. We take the most OP units to make the most OP army. That does not mean "most competitive players want the game to be imbalanced", lul wut. This is your problem. You take ANYTHING even remotely related, and just say "this! This supports my stance!" when it in no way does.

(Emphasis mine)

But in a really well balanced game, you wouldn't be able to squeeze an inordinately greater value of points into any given list than the points limit actually allows. In other words, there would not be any OP units (disregarding circumstantial issues, which would ideally be taken care of by being so random as to be beyond either players' control). Therefore, doesn't 'We take the most OP units to make the most OP army.' mean that you need a certain measure of imbalance in the first place? Which is what auticus is saying many players want, assuming I get what he's driving at.

Hmm, my reading on that is that competitive players will do what they must to stay competitive, not that they like doing it.

I hate tripoint. But GW forces me to do it because of fallback. Yes this is spot on.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
And yet Tournament missions often played at carb and copy preknown tables which allow for perfect listbuilding planning and therefore ultimatly putting the onus back on listbuilding is not of their own volition?

to reiterate since you avoid answereing it.

I didn’t avoid answering anything, you posted while I was typing quite clearly.

That being said I’m not sure how to answer it because I genuinely have no idea what you’re trying to say. Can you rephrase this?

Ok,

Why are carb and copy tables and preknown conditions, handed out like candy, making certain factions pick or just discard options, /respectivley HAVE TO, due to these circumstances clearly favouring certain factions and army setups?
And is this not happening out of their own volition, respectively the organizers own volition?

That is selfwished and made imbalance, is it not?
It also exemplifies certain broken units and structures, does it not?

The idea with those things is actually to improve balance mate, that’s why it exists in the first place. There’s an argument to be made that things like ITC didn’t do a very good job of this, but that’s exactly what people COMPLAINED about and requested improved. These were designed for the opposite of what you say, this goes AGAINST the idea that competitive players don’t want balance. The last thing TOs are doing when they host a 40k tournament is saying “nah, this isn’t unbalanced enough, we need to make it MORE imbalanced”, these rules exist to try and make a balanced playing field.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Martel732 wrote:

Spoletta wrote:

Snugiraffe wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

 auticus wrote:


Here's a good one. Address how competitive players do seek imbalance actively. They seek to make a 2000 point army list into a 5000 point army list. Thats one of my key tenants after all. You quoted it. So address it. Address how that is wrong and why its wrong.

Debate over lol.

Nobody ever denied this. We take the most OP units to make the most OP army. That does not mean "most competitive players want the game to be imbalanced", lul wut. This is your problem. You take ANYTHING even remotely related, and just say "this! This supports my stance!" when it in no way does.

(Emphasis mine)

But in a really well balanced game, you wouldn't be able to squeeze an inordinately greater value of points into any given list than the points limit actually allows. In other words, there would not be any OP units (disregarding circumstantial issues, which would ideally be taken care of by being so random as to be beyond either players' control). Therefore, doesn't 'We take the most OP units to make the most OP army.' mean that you need a certain measure of imbalance in the first place? Which is what auticus is saying many players want, assuming I get what he's driving at.

Hmm, my reading on that is that competitive players will do what they must to stay competitive, not that they like doing it.

I hate tripoint. But GW forces me to do it because of fallback. Yes this is spot on.

Exactly this. Competitive players exploit imbalance because you’d be making your list worse by not doing it. That doesn’t mean we wouldn’t prefer a balanced game to compete within, where the winner was decided by skill at list building and gameplay rather than who’s faction was most OP. At the very least, BETTER balance as flawless balance is no doubt impossible

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
And yet Tournament missions often played at carb and copy preknown tables which allow for perfect listbuilding planning and therefore ultimatly putting the onus back on listbuilding is not of their own volition?

to reiterate since you avoid answereing it.

I didn’t avoid answering anything, you posted while I was typing quite clearly.

That being said I’m not sure how to answer it because I genuinely have no idea what you’re trying to say. Can you rephrase this?

Ok,

Why are carb and copy tables and preknown conditions, handed out like candy, making certain factions pick or just discard options, /respectivley HAVE TO, due to these circumstances clearly favouring certain factions and army setups?
And is this not happening out of their own volition, respectively the organizers own volition?

That is selfwished and made imbalance, is it not?
It also exemplifies certain broken units and structures, does it not?

The idea with those things is actually to improve balance mate, that’s why it exists in the first place. There’s an argument to be made that things like ITC didn’t do a very good job of this, but that’s exactly what people COMPLAINED about and requested improved. These were designed for the opposite of what you say, this goes AGAINST the idea that competitive players don’t want balance. The last thing TOs are doing when they host a 40k tournament is saying “nah, this isn’t unbalanced enough, we need to make it MORE imbalanced”, these rules exist to try and make a balanced playing field.

and yet they don't because they pull everything back into listbuilding forcing certain archetypes inherently due to their known manner, facilitating more skew.

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

Spoiler:

Martel732 wrote:

Spoletta wrote:

Snugiraffe wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

 auticus wrote:


Here's a good one. Address how competitive players do seek imbalance actively. They seek to make a 2000 point army list into a 5000 point army list. Thats one of my key tenants after all. You quoted it. So address it. Address how that is wrong and why its wrong.

Debate over lol.

Nobody ever denied this. We take the most OP units to make the most OP army. That does not mean "most competitive players want the game to be imbalanced", lul wut. This is your problem. You take ANYTHING even remotely related, and just say "this! This supports my stance!" when it in no way does.

(Emphasis mine)

But in a really well balanced game, you wouldn't be able to squeeze an inordinately greater value of points into any given list than the points limit actually allows. In other words, there would not be any OP units (disregarding circumstantial issues, which would ideally be taken care of by being so random as to be beyond either players' control). Therefore, doesn't 'We take the most OP units to make the most OP army.' mean that you need a certain measure of imbalance in the first place? Which is what auticus is saying many players want, assuming I get what he's driving at.

Hmm, my reading on that is that competitive players will do what they must to stay competitive, not that they like doing it.

I hate tripoint. But GW forces me to do it because of fallback. Yes this is spot on.

Exactly this. Competitive players exploit imbalance because you’d be making your list worse by not doing it. That doesn’t mean we wouldn’t prefer a balanced game to compete within, where the winner was decided by skill at list building and gameplay rather than who’s faction was most OP. At the very least, BETTER balance as flawless balance is no doubt impossible

I think that might be the issue. If all units and factions were truly balanced, no "good" or "garbage" options, then list building wouldn't be as important. Many competitive players (not necessarily you) want to decide the game in the list building aspect. If the ability to recognize the most OP choices is made less important because there are no OP choices, then list building becomes far less important. These players would oppose a truly balanced game.

This is also why many prefer pre decided tables. It's easier to plan a list if you already know the battlefield the game will be played on.

List building is less important in a balanced game. Those who want to win based primarily or in part on their list building skills therefore don't want true balance. Perhaps balance between factions, but not balance amongst the various units of those factions.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
It's pretty damning that GW is still in business after 8 editions of failure. That alone says to me players care more about the setting and less about balance. Also, there is a subset that just wants to exploit the imbalance.

I think most, including GW, will agree that the setting is of the utmost importance. GW sees its average customer and target market as someone who pops in for a year because they like the IP and the models are cool and needs something to do with them so GW provides game rules, but they've always been of tertiary importance to the setting and models. Nobody gets into 40k because of the rules and gameplay in and of itself.

I think that was more true under Kirby than Roundtree. For one, at least in the past, Roundtree actually had a personal investment in the game itself, which puts the game being good at a higher priority than it was under Kirby who clearly wanted to pump customers for money. I don't know if that still holds true, but I don't think GW would look at how improving the game has lead to growing the customer base and go "well, the game isn't really important". The models are cool don't get me wrong, I've snagged a couple Underworld sets just for the models, but the game is what keeps people engaged in the setting, engaged in the community, engaged in actually buying things.

And now that they've seemed to gotten that figured out they're putting more emphasis on making the game easier to access, more fun to play and trying to balance the size of the game around smaller model counts that lower the bar for people to jump into a new army, or just jump into the game itself.

I was getting curious about the Splintermind podcast since it's come up on here a few times, and they pointed something out about Crusade I think they got very right: it makes escalation of a new army easier and directly rewards you for playing the game (especially since you have to play the game to grow your army) and if GW really is trying to lower the bar for entry and make it easier to build stuff over time so they can make a sustainable customer base over one that churns armies every quarter, then we're going to be in a pretty good place in the future.

Rountree wants to pump customers for money as much as kirby did. He just knows how to do it better than Kirby did because he understands the market GW is in better than Kirby did.

You don't become a CEO of a large corporation not agreeing with the general principle of trying to pump as much money from people as possible for as little effort as possible,

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
I think that might be the issue. If all units and factions were truly balanced, no "good" or "garbage" options, then list building wouldn't be as important. Many competitive players (not necessarily you) want to decide the game in the list building aspect. If the ability to recognize the most OP choices is made less important because there are no OP choices, then list building becomes far less important. These players would oppose a truly balanced game.

I would much rather have listbuilding be less important because it becomes about building a list that synergizes well and executes a coherent strategy, with lots of different equally-viable strategies to choose from, rather than more important because you have to fish out the good units to make the one viable list the army is capable of and discard all the crap. I would also wager most players agree with this.

It's not a binary choice between 'game is balanced' and 'lists matter'. I want to be able to choose whether I'm running an artillery gunline or a mechanized smash-and-grab infantry list or an airborne insertion, and I don't need the game to have deliberate unit-by-unit imbalance to achieve that. On the contrary, if the designers have decided ahead of time that they're going to make transports the sucky element this edition, then two of those builds are right out. Good balance allows for listbuilding to be more about expressing a player's skills as a general than about finding the hottest netlist.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

Spoiler:

Martel732 wrote:

Spoletta wrote:

Snugiraffe wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

 auticus wrote:


Here's a good one. Address how competitive players do seek imbalance actively. They seek to make a 2000 point army list into a 5000 point army list. Thats one of my key tenants after all. You quoted it. So address it. Address how that is wrong and why its wrong.

Debate over lol.

Nobody ever denied this. We take the most OP units to make the most OP army. That does not mean "most competitive players want the game to be imbalanced", lul wut. This is your problem. You take ANYTHING even remotely related, and just say "this! This supports my stance!" when it in no way does.

(Emphasis mine)

But in a really well balanced game, you wouldn't be able to squeeze an inordinately greater value of points into any given list than the points limit actually allows. In other words, there would not be any OP units (disregarding circumstantial issues, which would ideally be taken care of by being so random as to be beyond either players' control). Therefore, doesn't 'We take the most OP units to make the most OP army.' mean that you need a certain measure of imbalance in the first place? Which is what auticus is saying many players want, assuming I get what he's driving at.

Hmm, my reading on that is that competitive players will do what they must to stay competitive, not that they like doing it.

I hate tripoint. But GW forces me to do it because of fallback. Yes this is spot on.

Exactly this. Competitive players exploit imbalance because you’d be making your list worse by not doing it. That doesn’t mean we wouldn’t prefer a balanced game to compete within, where the winner was decided by skill at list building and gameplay rather than who’s faction was most OP. At the very least, BETTER balance as flawless balance is no doubt impossible

I think that might be the issue. If all units and factions were truly balanced, no "good" or "garbage" options, then list building wouldn't be as important. Many competitive players (not necessarily you) want to decide the game in the list building aspect. If the ability to recognize the most OP choices is made less important because there are no OP choices, then list building becomes far less important. These players would oppose a truly balanced game.

This is also why many prefer pre decided tables. It's easier to plan a list if you already know the battlefield the game will be played on.

List building is less important in a balanced game. Those who want to win based primarily or in part on their list building skills therefore don't want true balance. Perhaps balance between factions, but not balance amongst the various units of those factions.

i wouldn't say the list building skill would go down lower, infact, if choices of OP units wouldn't be determining tactics, then tactics would determine choices of units instead. Making synergistic , complementing approach of a list more important then facilitating the broken unit. The only thing changing would be the paradigm for your choices.

stratigo wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
It's pretty damning that GW is still in business after 8 editions of failure. That alone says to me players care more about the setting and less about balance. Also, there is a subset that just wants to exploit the imbalance.

I think most, including GW, will agree that the setting is of the utmost importance. GW sees its average customer and target market as someone who pops in for a year because they like the IP and the models are cool and needs something to do with them so GW provides game rules, but they've always been of tertiary importance to the setting and models. Nobody gets into 40k because of the rules and gameplay in and of itself.

I think that was more true under Kirby than Roundtree. For one, at least in the past, Roundtree actually had a personal investment in the game itself, which puts the game being good at a higher priority than it was under Kirby who clearly wanted to pump customers for money. I don't know if that still holds true, but I don't think GW would look at how improving the game has lead to growing the customer base and go "well, the game isn't really important". The models are cool don't get me wrong, I've snagged a couple Underworld sets just for the models, but the game is what keeps people engaged in the setting, engaged in the community, engaged in actually buying things.

And now that they've seemed to gotten that figured out they're putting more emphasis on making the game easier to access, more fun to play and trying to balance the size of the game around smaller model counts that lower the bar for people to jump into a new army, or just jump into the game itself.

I was getting curious about the Splintermind podcast since it's come up on here a few times, and they pointed something out about Crusade I think they got very right: it makes escalation of a new army easier and directly rewards you for playing the game (especially since you have to play the game to grow your army) and if GW really is trying to lower the bar for entry and make it easier to build stuff over time so they can make a sustainable customer base over one that churns armies every quarter, then we're going to be in a pretty good place in the future.

Rountree wants to pump customers for money as much as kirby did. He just knows how to do it better than Kirby did because he understands the market GW is in better than Kirby did.

You don't become a CEO of a large corporation not agreeing with the general principle of trying to pump as much money from people as possible for as little effort as possible,

Making a profit, especially a sustainable one, is par and course for every business, but pump and dump business models don't lead to sustainable buisiness. Again, look at what happened with WHFB. Every greedy thing people accuse 40k of it did by the end and it died for it.

The company has to have learned something from that since they've since gone on to churn out record profits and people are generally happier about the company than ever.

Take all the competitive units that see play from the Space Marine dex. Your opponent can build any list he wants from these units, kitted however he wants, to do whatever he likes with in forming a gameplan.

You on the other hand, have your list built by an RNG that just selects competitive units until you have a legal 1999-2000 pt list.

Which side of the table would you rather be on?






List building is MORE important in a balanced game, because the ways to leverage strength aren’t as obvious, and they now take thought and consideration to your gameplan, rather than leaning heavily on overtuned units.

I understand the argument that there’s a slice of people don’t want this. The argument that MOST people don’t want this is another thing. But the idea that we can just claim this and throw out statistics with absolutely no source, coming straight from our imagination and act as though it’s infallible information than everyone else just isn’t “knowledgeable” enough to understand, and that it’s “shifting the goalposts” to ask for a source in an argument that you’ve had no involvement in, is what I’m gonna go ahead and say is absolute nonsense.

To whom are you talking to Nitro?

I’m responding to gadzilla, but referring to statements made by auticus in my final paragraph, to be clear.

Not Online!!! wrote:

Spoiler:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:
[

Martel732 wrote:

Spoletta wrote:

Snugiraffe wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

 auticus wrote:


Here's a good one. Address how competitive players do seek imbalance actively. They seek to make a 2000 point army list into a 5000 point army list. Thats one of my key tenants after all. You quoted it. So address it. Address how that is wrong and why its wrong.

Debate over lol.

Nobody ever denied this. We take the most OP units to make the most OP army. That does not mean "most competitive players want the game to be imbalanced", lul wut. This is your problem. You take ANYTHING even remotely related, and just say "this! This supports my stance!" when it in no way does.

(Emphasis mine)

But in a really well balanced game, you wouldn't be able to squeeze an inordinately greater value of points into any given list than the points limit actually allows. In other words, there would not be any OP units (disregarding circumstantial issues, which would ideally be taken care of by being so random as to be beyond either players' control). Therefore, doesn't 'We take the most OP units to make the most OP army.' mean that you need a certain measure of imbalance in the first place? Which is what auticus is saying many players want, assuming I get what he's driving at.

Hmm, my reading on that is that competitive players will do what they must to stay competitive, not that they like doing it.

I hate tripoint. But GW forces me to do it because of fallback. Yes this is spot on.

Exactly this. Competitive players exploit imbalance because you’d be making your list worse by not doing it. That doesn’t mean we wouldn’t prefer a balanced game to compete within, where the winner was decided by skill at list building and gameplay rather than who’s faction was most OP. At the very least, BETTER balance as flawless balance is no doubt impossible

I think that might be the issue. If all units and factions were truly balanced, no "good" or "garbage" options, then list building wouldn't be as important. Many competitive players (not necessarily you) want to decide the game in the list building aspect. If the ability to recognize the most OP choices is made less important because there are no OP choices, then list building becomes far less important. These players would oppose a truly balanced game.

This is also why many prefer pre decided tables. It's easier to plan a list if you already know the battlefield the game will be played on.

List building is less important in a balanced game. Those who want to win based primarily or in part on their list building skills therefore don't want true balance. Perhaps balance between factions, but not balance amongst the various units of those factions.

i wouldn't say the list building skill would go down lower, infact, if choices of OP units wouldn't be determining tactics, then tactics would determine choices of units instead. Making synergistic , complementing approach of a list more important then facilitating the broken unit. The only thing changing would be the paradigm for your choices.

Which is how it should be. Many, however prefer having broken things to take advantage of. Those are the players who oppose a truly balanced game. List building should matter, but your preferred playstyle should affect the units you select, instead of your playstyle being created by the viable options that are available in a given faction. Catbarf says it better than me:

catbarf wrote:I would much rather have listbuilding be less important because it becomes about building a list that synergizes well and executes a coherent strategy, with lots of different equally-viable strategies to choose from, rather than more important because you have to fish out the good units to make the one viable list the army is capable of and discard all the crap. I would also wager most players agree with this.

It's not a binary choice between 'game is balanced' and 'lists matter'. I want to be able to choose whether I'm running an artillery gunline or a mechanized smash-and-grab infantry list or an airborne insertion, and I don't need the game to have deliberate unit-by-unit imbalance to achieve that. On the contrary, if the designers have decided ahead of time that they're going to make transports the sucky element this edition, then two of those builds are right out. Good balance allows for listbuilding to be more about expressing a player's skills as a general than about finding the hottest netlist.

^^^^This is what a balance should be. And I agree it's what most players want.

 Nitro Zeus wrote:
List building is MORE important in a balanced game, because the ways to leverage strength aren’t as obvious, and they now take thought and consideration to your gameplan, rather than leaning heavily on overtuned units.

I feel like part of the reason so many 40K players don't seem to grasp this, and repeat the idea that 'if the game were balanced, listbuilding doesn't matter', is just because the unit-to-unit imbalance is so significant that it overshadows the idea of synergies in army design. There have been some very strong, meta lists that don't rely on synergy so much as beating the opponent into submission with undercosted units, and conversely plenty of fluffy, synergistic builds that just don't work because their net power is so far behind the curve- so of course players gravitate to objectively strong units and work from there, rather than start with units that complement one another but can't be made to work competitively.

Which is to say that there may be people who genuinely want an engaging experience where their army choice matters, but don't realize that they can have this and actual game balance at the same time.

 Nitro Zeus wrote:
I’m responding to gadzilla, but referring to statements made by auticus in my final paragraph, to be clear.

Sorry. Perhaps I wasn't clear. I agree that good balance makes list building choices more important in order to make the army you want work well. I was referring to those who actually like finding the most broken units and combos, those are the players who would oppose good balance. And I agree that they are the minority.

Hmm, my reading on that is that competitive players will do what they must to stay competitive, not that they like doing it.

I would counter that if a person continually shells out a ton of money to a company for a ruleset that is poorly balanced, that that indicates they like whats going on or they wouldn't be spending that kind of money in the first place. If they didn't like doing it, they wouldn't spend the kind of money people spend on 40k.

Either that or they have more money than sense.

I understand the argument that there’s a slice of people don’t want this. The argument that MOST people don’t want this is another thing. But the idea that we can just claim this and throw out statistics with absolutely no source, coming straight from our imagination and act as though it’s infallible information than everyone else just isn’t “knowledgeable” enough to understand, and that it’s “shifting the goalposts” to ask for a source in an argument that you’ve had no involvement in, is what I’m gonna go ahead and say is absolute nonsense.

If in virtually every poll taken on the subject matter comes in at 25% don't care about balance much at all, 50% care a little but its not the most important thing, then that is 75% of the gw fanverse that doesn't treat balance as that big a thing overall.

Yes that means I consider that to be most people don't really want balance. Becauase if you really wanted balance and that was a top priority for you, you wouldn't be dumping money on the game to keep on in the direction it has been in for 20 - 30 years.

When I say "shifting the goal posts" that is very clearly (to me) when someone asks me for something, knowing its a trap and they don't really want what is being asked.

Like "show me that someone said they don't want balance". Thats not really whats being asked. And if I show 10 instances of it, its still not enough. Thats shifting goal posts. THat has happened to me in this forums more time than I can count, which is why I don't indulge you.

Even after people came on and said that they also experienced the same thing I did, it was disregarded and ignored. Thats shifting the goal posts. Because you and everyone else that asked weren't really interested in seeing that someone had said balance is boring. You know it was true.

Your REAL issue is that I think most people don't care about balance, and yeah I do believe most of you in here don't really care about balance that much for it to really stop you from supporting the company from producing yet another imbalanced ruleset.

And that you're banging on about how I haven't shown proof when others have stepped up and said they saw the same thing I did (in the azyr comp which is what you are referring to) means you don't really care if proof is produced because I don't really think you're after proof that someone said that, because I think you know, and everyone reading this knows, that some people do say that because you all see it every day in social media 40k forums to know better.

Demanding the proof is just a way to shut down the discussion, because if proof is given you'll "yeah but" it, if someone corroborates the story as several have, you "yeah but" it which has already happened several times in here. You're not after any "proof" you're after trying to disprove my notion that the majority don't care about balance.

Its so much easier to just cut to the chase.

I'll point out one thing, you see I said that the #1 complaint about azyr was that it was too balanced and therefore boring and listbuilding didn't matter. That doesn't mean the majority of all gamers hated it for that, that was the main complaint that was levied against it. Overall it did very well and had a very successful run that everyone involved was pretty proud of. I think some people took that and ran it to mean that that made up some majority figure. I have plainly stated many times in this thread that the people that actively DISLIKE balance hover around 20-25%. That isn't a MAJORITY that dislike balance, and if I said something that hinted that a majority DISLIKE balance, then I apologize because I mispoke. That has never been remotely on my mind. I said that competitive players DO seek imbalance beause they seek actively to bust the game open and get 5000 points out of 2000 points to imbalance the game in their favor. I challenge anyone to disprove that.

The azyr thing opened my eyes up to a large number of people not caring about balance at all and disliking balance, to which I have said in this thread was to the tune of 20-25%. One in four or one in five of the general population, be it competitive or casual, will tell you typically that balance is not their concern at all and that if you want balance to go play chess. You can walk through our biggest competitive store today as they practice for their next ITC superbowl and a bunch will tell you balance isn't important, just git gud and build the strong list and you don't have to worry about it.

Obviously there is no global poll to prove that substantially on planet earth 20-25% people feel that way, but in every poll I have seen taken on the subject in gw games it always usually lands on that number, so I believe that number to be true.

Now we can discuss what that other 50% in those polls mean when they say balance means something to them but isn't their prime concern and its not concerning enough to stop them from blowing a grand on an army or books every year.

To me if someone is going to say balance is important to them in the same breath as they are handing a couple 100 dollar bills to the gw store manager to play a game that is mostly universally accepted to be very poorly balanced, I think that that is some pretty heavy cognitive dissonance.

Now for me I demand decent balance in a game, or I don't support it. That means list building is important as some of you have mentioned in that more viable options exist and where table skill starts to matter much more than bringing the ITC list against your casual buddy that only has a couple starter boxes to go off.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

I think that might be the issue. If all units and factions were truly balanced, no "good" or "garbage" options, then list building wouldn't be as important. Many competitive players (not necessarily you) want to decide the game in the list building aspect. If the ability to recognize the most OP choices is made less important because there are no OP choices, then list building becomes far less important. These players would oppose a truly balanced game.

This is also why many prefer pre decided tables. It's easier to plan a list if you already know the battlefield the game will be played on.

List building is less important in a balanced game. Those who want to win based primarily or in part on their list building skills therefore don't want true balance. Perhaps balance between factions, but not balance amongst the various units of those factions.

I disagree. In a balanced game, list building would actually be more important as you would be able to build a list for a more varied list of possible strategies, where different units would better suit different strategies.

Currently, most armies have a very limited number of "competitive" builds which use a limited number of units to try and carry out a limited variety of battle strategies. By increasing balance you increase the number of competitive builds, each of which can be trying to use different units to facilitate different strategies.

To use Tau as an example of different lists which would each play very differently:
1) Utilises low mobility but high firepower units to take out the opponents forces before trying to push forward. Sacrifices board control in the early game to try and secure dominance in the late game.
2) Makes use of high-mobility mechanised infantry and vehicle support to push forward into rapid fire range early. This tries to establish board control early but can be left vulnerable if it cannot hold that control, leaving it over-committed in the late game.
3) Makes use of infiltrating Stealth teams to secure board presence outside your deployment zone and lure the enemy close before using homing beacons to allow for devastating close-range deep strikes to decimate the enemy forces. This relies on the infiltrating units being able to survive until the optimal time to commence the deep strike, else your deep striking units might be left vulnerable and out of position. Furthermore holding so much of your forces in reserve leaves you vulnerable to a strong aggressive playstyle early as you might lose too much board control.
and so on.

EDIT: Ninja'd multiple times but throwing my support to this idea anyway

Atticus, it's not a binary decision, it's scaled. Just because it's not top priority for some people doesn't automatically mean people don't want it.

Again - I voted for miniatures on that poll, yet I obviously do want balance. Your interpretation has me written up as someone who would rather the game be unbalanced - see how damn stupid that is? The poll is asking what the #1 priority should be, for all you know balance is literally priority #2 for every one of those 75%, absolutely nothing in that poll says that they don’t want balance, that’s such a reach.


You’ve had this explained to you like 6 different times by multiple posters now. Last time you just ignored it ALL and said “sigh, see I knew you would dismiss the poll”, because you don’t have any desire to be honest with your bad faith argument, and because there’s no part of your argument that is based off anything other than the hyperbole of an anecdote to begin with. Are you going to actually listen to what people are saying this time, or are you going to keep pretending that poll agrees with you when it doesn’t?

I really think you are both saying close to the same thing, just arguing semantics and percentages.

I will say, what Auticus says mirrors everything I have seen and heard here, on blogs, on TMP and in person when WHFB players discuss Kings of War. Too balanced. List building isn't important enough. Too bland. Not enough war gear choices, which is a whole different can of worms but does have balance implications.

For my own selfishness, I wish people did want a good 40K wargame, but I don't think they really do. And perhaps that is a subject for another thread.

 Platuan4th wrote:
Atticus, it's not a binary decision, it's scaled. Just because it's not top priority for some people doesn't automatically mean people don't want it.

I realize its not a binary decision. Thats part of the actual discussion that could be had. Every game has imbalance, there is a tolerance threshold that each individual has that gets to a point where you say "thanks I'll pass." I find that bar just very low with 40k players (and AOS players) compared with other games.

Just last week I believe it was I was getting tore up and dogpiled on in one of the recent threads because I said gw points aren't about balance, they are about structure. And then this thread came about where we have a playtester basically confirming a lot of that, that GW is not using the points to fully enforce balance but to guide how they think your army should be built (structure).

So my question to you that claim to want balance, why doesn't something like that bother you? Why do you continue to shell out for the new editions and new armies? At what point would gw have to go with 40k to get you to not play anymore? Does such a point exist for you?

 Nitro Zeus wrote:
Again - I voted for miniatures on that poll, yet I obviously do want balance. Your interpretation has me written up as someone who would rather the game be unbalanced - see how damn stupid that is? The poll is asking what the #1 priority should be, for all you know balance is literally priority #2 for every one of those 75%, absolutely nothing in that poll says that they don’t want balance, that’s such a reach.


You’ve had this explained to you like 6 different times by multiple posters now. Last time you just ignored it ALL and said “sigh, see I knew you would dismiss the poll”, because you don’t have any desire to be honest with your bad faith argument, and because there’s no part of your argument that is based off anything other than the hyperbole of an anecdote to begin with. Are you going to actually listen to what people are saying this time, or are you going to keep pretending that poll agrees with you when it doesn’t?

But you do not want balance so much that you do not buy GW products, reinforcing the poor balance of the game. If balance is priority #2, buying minis is priority #1, therefore people buy minis despite the poor balance. It naturally follows that people don't want better balance more than they want more minis. Meaning nothing changes.

You're awfully invested in Auticas being wrong, and yourself being right. Why? Why is it so difficult to say "I want better balance, but not if achieving that means no longer buying GW minis, paints, and books?" If anything, your deliberate misunderstanding of Auticus' points, over-emotional reaction, and your desperation to avoid the the main point- that people don't want good balance enough to stop behavior that perpetuates poor balance- is itself in bad faith.

Autcius is spot on. Since Rountree came onboard, what has changed? SC sets appeared, to sell kits for around what they should be normally, and GW revs up their marketing. NEW GW!!!! Here's our empty promises for 8th edition- the 40k YOU asked for!!!!! (I certainly didn't.) And a much faster release schedule. Balance is still horrible. Gameplay is still shallow. But profits exploded. If balance was important to a majority of GW customers, their products wouldn't sell.

Thank you. That is exactly the direction I have been sailing the entire time. Thank you.

From 3rd the force org was intended to control army composition in a way that points alone couldn't, and now GW just lets people almost play with whatever they want. Its as if GW knows better than to allow an 75% heavy support army to run wild, but that's exactly what the players want. People aren't going to care about balance as much as they say they do, so why should GW care about points?

Most players want choice, and a fair number of competetive players prefer the game in a state where it can be "solved" as it lets them control the game state and win the game more often.

Neither of those things lend themselves to balance. Limiting army composition and funneling them towards a specific way to play each faction with a limited number of options would give us the most tactical and balanced game.

It's also piss off most of the player base as it takes away options and leaves people nothing to "solve". Neither group would really argue they don't want a more balanced game, but when you get down to it most people don't want to give up things to make the game more balanced.

And that has always made the devs deal with a major issue of how to balance a game with a community that doesn't want anything removed.

Now there are ways to still balance the game, and I feel 9th is pushing the game towards being more balanced with how it scores the game and with how it gives you an incentive for using patrol, battalion or brigade detachments over the specialist detachments (via refunding CP). Points are only on facet of balance and I think GW has started to look at other levers they can pull to shift the game to a more balanced state without just slapping on a points bump or nerfing the rules.

Blastaar wrote:
If balance is priority #2, buying minis is priority #1, therefore people buy minis despite the poor balance. It naturally follows that people don't want better balance more than they want more minis.

Blastaar wrote:
"I want better balance, but not if achieving that means no longer buying GW minis, paints, and books?"

...Yeah? That's pretty much how I feel, seeing as I'm in this hobby? Balance is not my #1 priority (I'm more of a painter than anything else), but I would like to see better balance.

I cannot for the life of me understand how you and auticus interpret 'priority #2' to mean 'actively unwanted, disliked, and rejected'.

Paying my mortgage and providing basic essentials for me, my wife, and our pets is priority #1. Spending on toys is a lower priority. I pay my mortgage despite wanting to buy toys. Does it naturally follow that I don't actually want minis? Explain that to me.

Blastaar wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:
Again - I voted for miniatures on that poll, yet I obviously do want balance. Your interpretation has me written up as someone who would rather the game be unbalanced - see how damn stupid that is? The poll is asking what the #1 priority should be, for all you know balance is literally priority #2 for every one of those 75%, absolutely nothing in that poll says that they don’t want balance, that’s such a reach.


You’ve had this explained to you like 6 different times by multiple posters now. Last time you just ignored it ALL and said “sigh, see I knew you would dismiss the poll”, because you don’t have any desire to be honest with your bad faith argument, and because there’s no part of your argument that is based off anything other than the hyperbole of an anecdote to begin with. Are you going to actually listen to what people are saying this time, or are you going to keep pretending that poll agrees with you when it doesn’t?

But you do not want balance so much that you do not buy GW products, reinforcing the poor balance of the game. If balance is priority #2, buying minis is priority #1, therefore people buy minis despite the poor balance. It naturally follows that people don't want better balance more than they want more minis. Meaning nothing changes.

So? My argument was never that I wanted balance more than a good hobby, and auticus's statement that I disagreed was not that competitive players don't want balance because they prefer hobby, it was that competitive players don't want balance because "we'd all say that its boring and list building would take no skill!".

This is the problem. Auticus just says so many different things, some in DIRECT conflict with each other, and when we disagree with one of the core points (that he consistently re-established), sidelining shirkers like yourself want to jump in and point at all this OTHER nonsense that he threw at the dartboard like it's some trump card we missed. No, it's got absolutely nothing to do with the foolish remarks that were made.

I want good models first, it grows the playerbase, makes the setting fun, and comes before balance because without it there would be nothing worth balancing. That doesn't mean I don't also strongly want balance, as is being claimed, that's absurd.

Blastaar wrote:
Why? Why is it so difficult to say "I want better balance, but not if achieving that means no longer buying GW minis, paints, and books?"

I... LITERALLY just said that.


Why is it so difficult to read the conversation you're throwing yourself into, or to address the actual argument being made?


Here:

 auticus wrote:
competitive players (of which I used to belong to that group so I am speaking from my own desires and experience as one) want the opposite of balance. They actively seek imbalance, they build lists to skew balance so hard in their favor that they win by virtue of their list. Thats the goal of listbuilding and a game that reinforces listbuilding. To skew the game as hard as you can in your favor. To actively IMBALANCE the game as hard as you can.

Let's stop pretending that the point we are disagreeing with is that "we actually want balance less than good models!" because that was never the argument.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

Spoiler:

Martel732 wrote:

Spoletta wrote:

Snugiraffe wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

 auticus wrote:


Here's a good one. Address how competitive players do seek imbalance actively. They seek to make a 2000 point army list into a 5000 point army list. Thats one of my key tenants after all. You quoted it. So address it. Address how that is wrong and why its wrong.

Debate over lol.

Nobody ever denied this. We take the most OP units to make the most OP army. That does not mean "most competitive players want the game to be imbalanced", lul wut. This is your problem. You take ANYTHING even remotely related, and just say "this! This supports my stance!" when it in no way does.

(Emphasis mine)

But in a really well balanced game, you wouldn't be able to squeeze an inordinately greater value of points into any given list than the points limit actually allows. In other words, there would not be any OP units (disregarding circumstantial issues, which would ideally be taken care of by being so random as to be beyond either players' control). Therefore, doesn't 'We take the most OP units to make the most OP army.' mean that you need a certain measure of imbalance in the first place? Which is what auticus is saying many players want, assuming I get what he's driving at.

Hmm, my reading on that is that competitive players will do what they must to stay competitive, not that they like doing it.

I hate tripoint. But GW forces me to do it because of fallback. Yes this is spot on.

Exactly this. Competitive players exploit imbalance because you’d be making your list worse by not doing it. That doesn’t mean we wouldn’t prefer a balanced game to compete within, where the winner was decided by skill at list building and gameplay rather than who’s faction was most OP. At the very least, BETTER balance as flawless balance is no doubt impossible

I think that might be the issue. If all units and factions were truly balanced, no "good" or "garbage" options, then list building wouldn't be as important. Many competitive players (not necessarily you) want to decide the game in the list building aspect. If the ability to recognize the most OP choices is made less important because there are no OP choices, then list building becomes far less important. These players would oppose a truly balanced game.

This is also why many prefer pre decided tables. It's easier to plan a list if you already know the battlefield the game will be played on.

List building is less important in a balanced game. Those who want to win based primarily or in part on their list building skills therefore don't want true balance. Perhaps balance between factions, but not balance amongst the various units of those factions.

This is more a issue with the idea of perfect balance in the harshest sense, Even if we hit a near perfect ballance where points on every 40k unit was Perfect. There would still be list building involved, as people would not take Close Combat buffs with all long range units.
It would still involve thought to where the units would work and work together on the table.
as 40k flattens out there game, list building becomes harder to balance and becomes more. Why it becomes more important to just pick the right units. Its not getting more important to think about those units.
Games i play with more ballance i find much more enjoyable to build and think about lists, as there is simply far less of what i can take pushed aside in one thats all bad sweep.

Then you have factions that are just left out cold with tools. So even as you open this up more the poor design holds it back.

I will tolerate high imbalance levels if they just make the rules better. A crunchy ruleset with layers and decision making. Doesn't even have to be that fair as long as I have some chance.

I cannot understand how anyone thinks 40k is a good contest between two people unless they've never played anything else, balanced 40k would still be brainless. It seems to me that "competitives" primarily want either the hobby/models, the social aspect, or that shot of dopamine from easy point and click wins.

I admitted to seeing that some people actively wanting imbalance, I'd just stuffed it in the back of my head when I first replied to you @Auticus. Then when I thought some more on it and I thought back I remembered a few of the narrative players that want to play 2000 vs 4000 pts. I actively sought out information trying to support what you said and was unable to find it, I don't think that's disingenuous, you won that argument and several people backed you up on that point. Another discussion is whether it's okay for people that want balance to ask for a balanced system or whether they should just shut up and enjoy a bad system for what it's worth or whether they should go play chess. I did not buy CA17, 18 or 19 because Monoliths were bad, I'm advocating GW get their stuff in order so I can support their writing team.

What proves that competitive players don't want to play 4000 vs 2000 pts? When they scale down the competitiveness of their list for casual games, I do it, Nick Nanavati does it, Skari does it as well. Skari's battle reports are some of the only ones I can stand to watch and I've only seen one Nanavati battle report and in that one, he brought a deliberately weak army to give his opponent a chance and to show how good he was at the game. There is a large movement within the competitive community to keep a high standard of sportsmanship and to me that includes not trouncing a noob list with a competitive list.

What makes more sense is that competitive players want to play 4000 vs 4000 and maybe they stick to playing one faction and that faction is bad so they end up playing 3000 vs 4000, but the people that play the most competitive option are for the most part picking that 4000 pt list not to stomp 2000 pt lists, but to have a chance against 4000 pt lists. Take the last winner at the LVO, he claimed he just wanted a faction that was able to compete because his current faction was far weaker than the strongest faction and he didn't feel it was fair to lose just because he brought a weaker faction. He brought an absolutely broken list, but so did the majority of participants at the LVO, if the winner of the last LVO just wanted to beat up on 2000 pt lists he could have brought his 3000 pt Tau list instead of his 4000 pt Iron Hands list.

Lots of people don't want to smash Timmy at his first tournament attendance because he doesn't know how to put together a list and many people will actively help Timmy to get up to their level in list-building and tactical skill if they face him in a gaming shop. Another point is that more list building and trying things out happens at the start of a new pts format, nobody wants to experiment in a solved system. More balanced pts stay unsolved for longer and are therefore more fun to play around in.

All numbers used in this post are arbitrary. Edit: referring to this literal post made by vict0988

All numbers used in this post come from the typical poll results given in polls on the subject. No they are not arbitrary or random.

Tourney players not wanting to smash timmy was not an argument point of mine. That doesnt indicate they want to smash timmy because they seek to imbalance the game. That means they will be good sports to timmy with their imbalanced filth skew and they might be more helpful to timmy during the game, but their own victory is self assured.

Im not advocating that powerlisters seeking to break the game with imbslance are also bad sports trying to club baby seals with impunity and grind their soul into the nether. But their imbalance assures them the win regardless against that opponent whether also employing good or bad sportsmanship. The desire to break the balance changes not at all regardless of how sporting someone is. It has nothing to do with my main argument which remains horrible balance doesnt stop most of you from gleefully dropping hundreds every year despite paying lip service to how you want balance.

I dont feel there are any contradictions in anything ive said. I have hsd to clarify things which people then scream contradiction. The number of times someone has asked for a clarification is zero, indicating bad faith and emotional responses.

To the poster that said ive said ALL people actively dislike balance, ive said about eight times in this thread that it usually comes out at 20-25% of people polled, and that it was the primary complaint of a comp system i wrote for aos in 2015. That is not all people. A quarter isnt even close to half, indicating you are just skimming and emotionally responding off of what youre skimming.

My stance had not shifted at all. Most of you dont care enough about balance to stop sending those $100 bills gw’s way, and im betting a quarter of you would drop if they actually did balance the system.

To date none of you have answered any of the questions i have asked you either several times in the thread. Its just more skimming, angry responses and rinse and repeat.

As such there is no discussion to be had since discussion requires good faith, non emotional non ad hominem and actually reading and providing solid counter points to your arguments.

Quoting me and then saying thats contradictory or that im a “hypocrite” is both unhelpful and you havent even expounded on that conclusion, only that you strongly emotionally disagree with it. Failing to answer the questions i have asked you time and time again indicates the only interest you have is in screaming at each other back and forth.

But that makes sense since unless its two people agreeing on something thats really all you can expect these days.

Peace out <3