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puree wrote:
That is quite patently hyperbole. Stuff competitive gamers care about can have absolutely no relevance to narrative/casual/whatever gamers, and being bad for competitive gamers does not mean it must be for the other group.

No, it's simple truth. The things that make (and have made) 40k bad for competitive play are the lack of rule clarity, poor balance, and shallow strategic depth. All of these things are bad for everyone else, those casual/narrative/whatever players are just more willing to tolerate poor game design.

What a bizarre statement. If you have little skill then you have little skill no matter what, and if you invest little time in 40k then so what. I know plenty of people who play 40k/AoS and almost all of them play a number of other what we might call more grognard wargames and have done for 30-40 odd years - they have a plenty good enough grasp of strategy and tactics and 40k is hardly some mystical game that you have to play several times a week for years to grasp the strategy and tactics.

A person who has invested heavily in non-40k wargames for 30-40 years and has a significant understanding of general strategy and game design principles is hardly fitting the typical image of a "causal" 40k player. And even that kind of person is going to have a hard time giving accurate feedback on something like whether a unit should receive a 1ppm change. In playtesting there is no substitute for quantity of games played and they just don't have enough experience with the unit to evaluate the subtle differences and separate inherent rules imbalance from lucky dice/player mistakes/etc.

 Peregrine wrote:


Tournament play is hardly "perverting" the game, and all of the things that make and have made 40k a poor competitive game are just as bad for narrative/casual/whatever games. The only thing that has changed is that the popularity of tournament 40k has, to at least some degree, forced GW to stop using "WE ARENT TOURNAMENTS BEER AND PRETZELS" as an excuse for poor game design.

it's only poor game design if it wasnt easy for a new player to learn. Since 8th is a radical departure from previous horrid rule sets it has become much more "everyone" friendly.

It's only poor game design from your "subjective" not objective viewpoint.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

puree wrote:

For obvious reasons, the game is not based around casuals

Since when!

I disagree that GW ignores casual players, because they clearly don't, but they should because casual players tend to be bad at the game and don't provide useful balance information. A player who doesn't invest much time into the game and doesn't have much skill isn't going to have much of a grasp of strategy and the difference between losing because of their own mistakes and losing because of poor balance. And they certainly aren't going to be able to evaluate a metagame and identify the balance issues driving it.

once again, your supreme powers of deduction have concluded that since they " do nothing to improve Peregrines' version of the game"(paraphrasing) their input serves no purpose and should be disregarded in hand.

as proven over & over subjective is being treated as objective.

I want to have more players playing in both the tourney scene and garage/casual flgs scene. ANYTHING that improves how accessible the game is and draws new people into the hobby/game is good. If a clear and concise tournament set is what's (at least appears to be) needed. As evidenced by the constant comparisons between how magic and 40k are treated competitively, something needs to be done.

the "penalty in game" concept sounds great and might mitigate some of the abuses earlier in the tourney where enough "yellow" cards can lead to immediate DQ in later rounds.

Racerguy180 wrote:
once again, your supreme powers of deduction have concluded that since they " do nothing to improve Peregrines' version of the game"(paraphrasing) their input serves no purpose and should be disregarded in hand.

Perhaps, instead of complaining about RAR SUBJECTIVE OPINIONS you could explain just what exactly a player who rarely plays the game and invests little effort into understanding it is going to be able to offer to the balance and playtesting process?

 Peregrine wrote:

Racerguy180 wrote:
once again, your supreme powers of deduction have concluded that since they " do nothing to improve Peregrines' version of the game"(paraphrasing) their input serves no purpose and should be disregarded in hand.

Perhaps, instead of complaining about RAR SUBJECTIVE OPINIONS you could explain just what exactly a player who rarely plays the game and invests little effort into understanding it is going to be able to offer to the balance and playtesting process?

So lemme guess, you play at least 3-4 games a day 5 days a week, with changes to stats and point values every game? so what you're saying is unless you're a professional playtester the opinion of any other player amounts to zip? are you replaying the same exact round of combat 10-15 times taking notes of what was rolled when? are you then taking into account statistical variances in the dice rolling? are you writing a detailed report about how a particular unit behaves against another?

How many people play the game worldwide? How many of those players play open/narrative/matched? Out of those how many play "competitively"? Then further, how many of those play full on tournament cutthroat? what percentage of people, then according to you, should have more valid input than others?

It sounds kinda like you want to be on this elevated pedestal above everyone else and that only the opinions of those whom you deem worthy carry any sway.

I would say that any input is good input, it is what they do with said input that matters.

If GW wants to get into the tournament scene and really fix the issues, it may just make the game better for everyone.

happy_inquisitor wrote:
Which is why I also said that I believe there should be an in-game penalty such as a 1VP deduction for mistake-in-your-own-favour....

I would be perfectly fine with penalties for mistakes in the manner you describe.

What I am not ok with is auto-DQing someone and labeling them a cheater over an accident.

endlesswaltz123 wrote:
Can't believe this is still going and this is still happening.

I'm sure 100m runners don't intend to false start, however they are DQ if they do. Want to know what they should do in that instance? Tighten up their gak so it doesn't happen again.

Runners aren't automatically disqualified after a false start, at least from what little I know about competitive running.

 Peregrine wrote:

Racerguy180 wrote:
once again, your supreme powers of deduction have concluded that since they " do nothing to improve Peregrines' version of the game"(paraphrasing) their input serves no purpose and should be disregarded in hand.

Perhaps, instead of complaining about RAR SUBJECTIVE OPINIONS you could explain just what exactly a player who rarely plays the game and invests little effort into understanding it is going to be able to offer to the balance and playtesting process?

Why do you think casual players rarely play the game? That does not follow at all.

What is true is that most casual players want something rather different from the game - generally something more immersive, possibly more narrative and definitely with more moments you can have a good laugh about. Those things are generally not things that die-hard tournament players are interested in at all.

As most players are not die-hard players GW would be mad to not seek feedback from the less intensely competitive. That would just be ignoring what most of their customers actually want from their product.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

w1zard wrote:

happy_inquisitor wrote:
Which is why I also said that I believe there should be an in-game penalty such as a 1VP deduction for mistake-in-your-own-favour....

I would be perfectly fine with penalties for mistakes in the manner you describe.

What I am not ok with is auto-DQing someone and labeling them a cheater over an accident.

So long as we do not fall into the trap of taking each incident in isolation I agree with you. There comes a point where a number of accidents no longer look like they are very accidental and need to be punished in a more serious way. Take a look at the ETC code of conduct for a pretty strict version of this - their assumption is that if you are representing your country you should know your codex and therefore you get one formal warning before - the next mistake you make gets a team penalty and so on until something like the 4th you get booted IIRC.

For a singles tournament I doubt it needs to be quite as harsh as the ETC but it needs penalties to kick in pretty much immediately to avoid people gaming the whole system by gaining a free unfair advantage and then stopping sort of getting penalised - because the worst offenders know exactly what they are doing and will continue to game any system if it can be gamed. As for innocent mistakes, it is not actually unfair or unreasonable for you to be penalised VP for not knowing your own rules. I reckon the number of supposedly unintentional mistakes will drop steeply if you have a system like that in place, especially nearer the top tables.

happy_inquisitor wrote:
So long as we do not fall into the trap of taking each incident in isolation I agree with you. There comes a point where a number of accidents no longer look like they are very accidental and need to be punished in a more serious way. Take a look at the ETC code of conduct for a pretty strict version of this - their assumption is that if you are representing your country you should know your codex and therefore you get one formal warning before - the next mistake you make gets a team penalty and so on until something like the 4th you get booted IIRC.

While I think I agree that enough "mistakes" over the course of a single game leading to a DQ is perfectly fair, we should avoid labeling that as cheating unless there is clear and indisputable evidence of intentional cheating. And there is the issue of these kinds of things happening a lot in 40k games, even at the professional end. If a system like that is implemented, it would not surprise me in the slightest if 10-25% of the losses over the entire tournament are DQs relating to nudging models, mismeasuring distances or LOS, or forgetting/mis-remembering rules. And I don't see this improving at all, ever. Mistakes by their very nature are unintentional and unpreventable.

However, how far back to you go when you say you treat each incident in isolation? Do we consider "mistakes" made in past games of the same tournaments? What about "mistakes" made in past tournaments?

w1zard wrote:
However, how far back to you go when you say you treat each incident in isolation? Do we consider "mistakes" made in past games of the same tournaments? What about "mistakes" made in past tournaments?

I'd say within the same event - if a judge has had to be called, and hands out a warning, then it should be logged what the reason for it was (this is something I've had to do when helping run MTG events on the data input side).

If, during an event, someone is getting multiple warnings for the same rules infraction, then that should be where the punishment increases.

I'm not sure about what to do about warnings between events - they certainly should be logged to a central database to establish patterns of behaviour, but I don't know how you'd then have any patterns which are discovered affect future events.

w1zard 771506 10365887 wrote:


Runners aren't automatically disqualified after a false start, at least from what little I know about competitive running.

Actually they are , in the past it was DQ after 2 false starts, then you were allowed to start again if someone else also did it. Now if you do it you just get kicked out.

And no one cares if your blocks are set up wrong, something happened to your leg or foot. Or maybe there is 3 of you, you know you will not qualify, but there is someone from another team who may and by trying to false start your trying to bate him or her out ot be DQ alongside of you. Or you think that just because your up encoming start, who everyone sees going to the next olympics, they are going to let it slide for you. The whys are unimportant, only the act is and being caught.

 Dysartes wrote:

w1zard wrote:
However, how far back to you go when you say you treat each incident in isolation? Do we consider "mistakes" made in past games of the same tournaments? What about "mistakes" made in past tournaments?

I'd say within the same event - if a judge has had to be called, and hands out a warning, then it should be logged what the reason for it was (this is something I've had to do when helping run MTG events on the data input side).

If, during an event, someone is getting multiple warnings for the same rules infraction, then that should be where the punishment increases.

I'm not sure about what to do about warnings between events - they certainly should be logged to a central database to establish patterns of behaviour, but I don't know how you'd then have any patterns which are discovered affect future events.

1st mistake in a tournament, Warning
2nd mistake in a tournament, Game Loss.
3 warnings in separate tournaments, Game Loss.
And then have warnings time out after 6 months orso.

No, it's simple truth. The things that make (and have made) 40k bad for competitive play are the lack of rule clarity, poor balance, and shallow strategic depth. All of these things are bad for everyone else, those casual/narrative/whatever players are just more willing to tolerate poor game design.

Rules clarity - yup that is pretty much always good.

Balance. This is not something that is bad for competitive so must be bad for narrative/casual. The competitive crowd have a far different tolerance in the 'good enough' aspect of balance, and balance to that tolerance level is highly specific to the scenario you play. Board size, size of game (max points), terrain, victory conditions are all huge contributors to the value of any unit. Those complaining about balance at something like LVO are complaining about balance for those scenarios and want points to reflect the value of units in those specific scenarios. Those are not the sort of scenarios many narrative/casual players play. Balancing for ITC could indeed make things worse for casual play. The points values that are probably good enough for narrative/casual players are the sort that simply grossly average a wide range of different game types to arrive at value that whilst may not work for any one game is 'good enough' for most of those playing that wide variety of games, even though such a value may well produce something bad for competitive players who only play a very narrow range of scenarios.

Strategic depth: I hear this type of argument a lot, but what exactly is shallow or deep strategy? Can you actually properly describe in non abstract terms? I can play a game where all we do is line up on a somewhat sparse table and kill each other to score victory points, not a lot of strategy, just a fire allocation exercise. I can also create a game with a lot of terrain, multiple objectives and twists etc that present a player with some tough strategic decisions. Game mechanics may feed into strategy, but strategic depth is seldom about the game mechanics; it is about the scenario you create - the problems to solve given the forces and scenario rules. I can do this in 40k or any other of a myriad of DIY style games. 40k is no less strategic depth than other such games - it just requires the sort of player effort that narrative/casual players are more likely to be into than the competitive crowd.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

So long as we do not fall into the trap of taking each incident in isolation I agree with you. There comes a point where a number of accidents no longer look like they are very accidental and need to be punished in a more serious way. Take a look at the ETC code of conduct for a pretty strict version of this - their assumption is that if you are representing your country you should know your codex and therefore you get one formal warning before - the next mistake you make gets a team penalty and so on until something like the 4th you get booted IIRC.

For a singles tournament I doubt it needs to be quite as harsh as the ETC but it needs penalties to kick in pretty much immediately to avoid people gaming the whole system by gaining a free unfair advantage and then stopping sort of getting penalised - because the worst offenders know exactly what they are doing and will continue to game any system if it can be gamed. As for innocent mistakes, it is not actually unfair or unreasonable for you to be penalised VP for not knowing your own rules. I reckon the number of supposedly unintentional mistakes will drop steeply if you have a system like that in place, especially nearer the top tables.

I'm not hugely familiar with ETC, but what I gather is that by the time you are playing in that at the main event then you can be pretty sure that the players are those who are very much seriously competitive and very much understand that mindset and set of rules on mistakes/cheating etc. It isn't an 'open' event where anyone can turn up for a few games over beer.

Docking VP's for bad mistakes seems reasonable to me. I'm casual with 40k, plus my GW gaming goes in cycles between other games but when I am in a cycle of playing 40k/AOS then I like to go to WHW events and I am probably rusty on some rule interactions. I'd be seriously pissed and wanting compensation if I was DQd for some mistake after taking a weekend off to go to an event that was clearly an open invite to all who want a fun weekend no matter their level. But I would have no expectation of being at the winning tables and losing VP is neither here nor there in that regard, I made a mistake that may have skewed the game and probably makes me feel bad, losing some VP is not unreasonable.

puree wrote:
Balance. This is not something that is bad for competitive so must be bad for narrative/casual. The competitive crowd have a far different tolerance in the 'good enough' aspect of balance, and balance to that tolerance level is highly specific to the scenario you play. Board size, size of game (max points), terrain, victory conditions are all huge contributors to the value of any unit. Those complaining about balance at something like LVO are complaining about balance for those scenarios and want points to reflect the value of units in those specific scenarios. Those are not the sort of scenarios many narrative/casual players play. Balancing for ITC could indeed make things worse for casual play. The points values that are probably good enough for narrative/casual players are the sort that simply grossly average a wide range of different game types to arrive at value that whilst may not work for any one game is 'good enough' for most of those playing that wide variety of games, even though such a value may well produce something bad for competitive players who only play a very narrow range of scenarios.

I really don't that leap in logic. How is good balance in competitive bad balance in casual games? If anything, if the players who are playing the best of the best against each other are having balanced games, isn't is more likely for casuals to have a balanced game?
In my group were being very casual when it comes to list building and purchases, and we welcome balance changes with open arms. Not a single change that GW has done to 8th edition has made our games worse.
So I honestly wonder how you come to that conclusion, so please elaborate.

Docking VP's for bad mistakes seems reasonable to me. I'm casual with 40k, plus my GW gaming goes in cycles between other games but when I am in a cycle of playing 40k/AOS then I like to go to WHW events and I am probably rusty on some rule interactions. I'd be seriously pissed and wanting compensation if I was DQd for some mistake after taking a weekend off to go to an event that was clearly an open invite to all who want a fun weekend no matter their level. But I would have no expectation of being at the winning tables and losing VP is neither here nor there in that regard, I made a mistake that may have skewed the game and probably makes me feel bad, losing some VP is not unreasonable.

IMO there should be a threshold you should need to reach before you get penalized. Errors happen, especially after you have already played two games.
But once they stack up, yeah you should be losing VP or games. There are only so many honest rules mistakes you can make when playing the exact same army three or four times in a row. And if you actually pay money to go to an event (plus travel costs), maybe you should give your codex a re-read on the evening before the event. YOU are hampering your opponents' fun when you don't get the rules right, and they have paid to attend the event just like you.

I really don't that leap in logic. How is good balance in competitive bad balance in casual games? If anything, if the players who are playing the best of the best against each other are having balanced games, isn't is more likely for casuals to have a balanced game?
In my group were being very casual when it comes to list building and purchases, and we welcome balance changes with open arms. Not a single change that GW has done to 8th edition has made our games worse.
So I honestly wonder how you come to that conclusion, so please elaborate.

Maybe missing the starting point, most discussion that I see in one way or another centres on points values, either directly or indirectly, and it nearly always seem to be talking about ITC defined scenarios when talking competitive play. Though ITC is not really the point, more that tourneys go for a specific scenario designed for a tournament (or a set of such). There are other interesting discussions but most I see come down to how to 'value' a unit in ITC games or whatever, and the other discussions often feel very tourney specific.

The value of a unit is highly specific to all the parameters of the scenario you play. Board size, size of game (1000pts vs 2000pts), terrain setup, how to win (what gives VPs etc), number of turns, and any other special scenario rules.

A unit with low mobility long range high damage heavy weapon is probably more valuable on an large open board where killing units gains VP - its mobility is not a big issue and long range reduces the issue of a larger board compared to normal range weapons which plus good damage makes it good at killing which is equating directly to VP. It is less valuable on smaller boards with lots of LOS blocking terrain where VPs are from moving to specific locations. Low mobility is now an issue, long range is less value if you can't see, or the board size doesn't need that range, and killing stuff is just a possible means to an end not the end itself. etc etc. For arguments sake we might say the units value in game A = 100pts but in game B it ought to be 50pts.

If what competitive players want is balance in the tourney defined scenario then they are after balance specific to their 'tourney' scenario (e.g. ITC).

If you are playing a variety of other missions/scenarios then balance as represented by unit points values in the tourney games is simply not relevant. For example I am currently playing an urban conquest campaign with a group of people. There is a wide range of mission types, with bizarre setups and a lot of heavy urban terrain. Victory conditions vary widely - e.g. 1 scenario is simply get 1 unit off the map and yet another is who holds the 1 location in the middle (but the defender starts mainly offboard). At other times I will play missions out of CA18, or maelstrom etc over a wide range of boards, (terrain or 6*4 or 4*4 which can play different) and sizes ranging from 500 - 2000 pts. Very few of these bear any great relationship to the ITC games. That is a large variety of missions for which there can be no points value that provides a high degree of balance in each game. However, one can take some form of 'average' value for a unit as it would be across many types of game and use that. You have an average value that for any game is probably wrong, but attempts to keep the value within some tolerable value of what it probably should be per game.

In the earlier example if the range of games was just those 2 we would have a value of 75pts.
If we went with the Tourney game (call it game A) we have 100pts.

For the tourney players who play the one game type and want that 1 game balanced as possible the 25pt difference is probably a big issue (if we used 75pts), it is always OP in their games and will be a factor in a skewed meta. For the casual who play both game types the 25pts is less an issue, it is not clearly going to be better or worse in any random game, over many games it balances out and not being that competitive a 25pt difference may be within their 'good enough'. If we set the value at 100pts then we have the correct value for the competitive tourney player. But making it better for the competitive player did not do the same for the casual/narrative player, they have a unit that can be a lot further from its value (50pts vs 25) or OK. Things do not balance out over many games and 50pts may be outside their 'good enough' when it is not OK. Making it better for the competitive player made it worse for the casual player.

So from at least that angle, what is bad balance wise for competitive is not (of necessity) bad for casual/narrative, and being good for competitive can be worse for casual/narrative.

The original argument was that all factors that were/are bad for competitive play are just as bad for casual/narrative play, this simply isn't true. Both may want balance in the abstract, but you are balancing two different things. Just cos one side doesn't like their apple doesn't mean the other side are best suited with the pear they want.

Balance in tournaments vs balance overall:

Balance in tournaments from what I see and gather is that so long as a faction has a hard counter somewhere, then the balance is good enough. And tournament palyers are often ok with selling stuff on ebay to chase the meta around.

That shatters casual play though because if you aren't playing that hard counter game, which casual play often is not, then you are getting destroyed.

I really don't that leap in logic. How is good balance in competitive bad balance in casual games? If anything, if the players who are playing the best of the best against each other are having balanced games, isn't is more likely for casuals to have a balanced game?

For example the game designers can decide that soup is the only way to play, so if a faction is lagging behind or has no soup options, GW won't fix them. Or because lists with smash captins and 3 units of scouts exist, BA as a faction do not require any fixs. Or an army is dominant, but in tournaments it can face a hard counter, so all is fine. But a casual player is going to face the list with what he has, so unless he plays exactly the hard counter he is not going to have a good time. Balance in general rules is much needed, and if it comes because tournaments ask for it, it is great. But army balance coming from tournaments is not something to be expected. I read some articles form the las vegas event, and they think it was a huge success, with varid lists and ton of representation from different factions.

auticus wrote:
Balance in tournaments vs balance overall:

Balance in tournaments from what I see and gather is that so long as a faction has a hard counter somewhere, then the balance is good enough. And tournament palyers are often ok with selling stuff on ebay to chase the meta around.

That shatters casual play though because if you aren't playing that hard counter game, which casual play often is not, then you are getting destroyed.

This further illustrates the need for GW to figure it out. They should take a long and hard look at how the game ITC plays, really isnt 40k. GW doesnt understand that all of the promotion that's associated with ITC isnt promoting 40k as GW produces it. When was the last time a major tournament used cities of death rules? or Random mission, random deployment? or requiring a certain % of models to be on table turn 1?

Kill Team arena is what I think GW actually wants in a competitive game. Unfortunately, I dont think it would scale up to 40k proper or work on a 3d gameboard.

I have no interest in selling the models that I have collected, assembled and painted. When I buy a unit, #1 thing is I have to like the model & #2 it has to serve a specific function in my army. But then again I am not chasing the meta.

Doesn't sound like "confusion", it sounds like he just didn't know his rules...which I'd argue is worse than cheating.

Not knowing your rules is bad, but cheating is worse. I'd rather someone be ignorant than malevolent.

This is why I don’t go to tournaments. I play for fun, it’s supposed to be a fun game. To say someone not knowing their rules is worse than cheating is wrong. I play with new players all the time. Don’t curb stomp new players and ridicule them for not knowing rules. This attitude encourages people to not get into the hobby. Play nice don’t be jerks to your opponents.

Tournaments are fun. You will run into a occasional TFG at a tournament, but to be honest I think I run into more of them on Dakka than at an event.

 Crimson Devil wrote:
Tournaments are fun. You will run into a occasional TFG at a tournament, but to be honest I think I run into more of them on Dakka than at an event.

100%

Out of the dozen or so tournaments I've played in since 8th launched, I've only run into TFG maybe 2-3 times. (third time was questionable, just had enough of the guy)

A game can be competitive and fun at the same time. If you run into someone who is "hyper competitive" and acts like every dice they roll is relying on major sponsors and will cheat and lie, then you're going to have a bad game regardless if it's a tournament or a game in your garage.

usmcmidn wrote:

Doesn't sound like "confusion", it sounds like he just didn't know his rules...which I'd argue is worse than cheating.

Not knowing your rules is bad, but cheating is worse. I'd rather someone be ignorant than malevolent.

This is why I don’t go to tournaments. I play for fun, it’s supposed to be a fun game. To say someone not knowing their rules is worse than cheating is wrong. I play with new players all the time. Don’t curb stomp new players and ridicule them for not knowing rules. This attitude encourages people to not get into the hobby. Play nice don’t be jerks to your opponents.

No one is going to ridicule you at a tournament for not knowing the rules, No one is going to stand across the table from you and say your worse then a cheater for not knowing every rules.

The internet is not people in real life.

You can very much go to tournaments to play for fun, meet new people who are there to have fun and bond over a game of warhammer.

puree wrote:

I really don't that leap in logic. How is good balance in competitive bad balance in casual games? If anything, if the players who are playing the best of the best against each other are having balanced games, isn't is more likely for casuals to have a balanced game?
In my group were being very casual when it comes to list building and purchases, and we welcome balance changes with open arms. Not a single change that GW has done to 8th edition has made our games worse.
So I honestly wonder how you come to that conclusion, so please elaborate.

Maybe missing the starting point, most discussion that I see in one way or another centres on points values, either directly or indirectly, and it nearly always seem to be talking about ITC defined scenarios when talking competitive play. Though ITC is not really the point, more that tourneys go for a specific scenario designed for a tournament (or a set of such). There are other interesting discussions but most I see come down to how to 'value' a unit in ITC games or whatever, and the other discussions often feel very tourney specific.

The value of a unit is highly specific to all the parameters of the scenario you play. Board size, size of game (1000pts vs 2000pts), terrain setup, how to win (what gives VPs etc), number of turns, and any other special scenario rules.

A unit with low mobility long range high damage heavy weapon is probably more valuable on an large open board where killing units gains VP - its mobility is not a big issue and long range reduces the issue of a larger board compared to normal range weapons which plus good damage makes it good at killing which is equating directly to VP. It is less valuable on smaller boards with lots of LOS blocking terrain where VPs are from moving to specific locations. Low mobility is now an issue, long range is less value if you can't see, or the board size doesn't need that range, and killing stuff is just a possible means to an end not the end itself. etc etc. For arguments sake we might say the units value in game A = 100pts but in game B it ought to be 50pts.

If what competitive players want is balance in the tourney defined scenario then they are after balance specific to their 'tourney' scenario (e.g. ITC).

If you are playing a variety of other missions/scenarios then balance as represented by unit points values in the tourney games is simply not relevant. For example I am currently playing an urban conquest campaign with a group of people. There is a wide range of mission types, with bizarre setups and a lot of heavy urban terrain. Victory conditions vary widely - e.g. 1 scenario is simply get 1 unit off the map and yet another is who holds the 1 location in the middle (but the defender starts mainly offboard). At other times I will play missions out of CA18, or maelstrom etc over a wide range of boards, (terrain or 6*4 or 4*4 which can play different) and sizes ranging from 500 - 2000 pts. Very few of these bear any great relationship to the ITC games. That is a large variety of missions for which there can be no points value that provides a high degree of balance in each game. However, one can take some form of 'average' value for a unit as it would be across many types of game and use that. You have an average value that for any game is probably wrong, but attempts to keep the value within some tolerable value of what it probably should be per game.

In the earlier example if the range of games was just those 2 we would have a value of 75pts.
If we went with the Tourney game (call it game A) we have 100pts.

For the tourney players who play the one game type and want that 1 game balanced as possible the 25pt difference is probably a big issue (if we used 75pts), it is always OP in their games and will be a factor in a skewed meta. For the casual who play both game types the 25pts is less an issue, it is not clearly going to be better or worse in any random game, over many games it balances out and not being that competitive a 25pt difference may be within their 'good enough'. If we set the value at 100pts then we have the correct value for the competitive tourney player. But making it better for the competitive player did not do the same for the casual/narrative player, they have a unit that can be a lot further from its value (50pts vs 25) or OK. Things do not balance out over many games and 50pts may be outside their 'good enough' when it is not OK. Making it better for the competitive player made it worse for the casual player.

So from at least that angle, what is bad balance wise for competitive is not (of necessity) bad for casual/narrative, and being good for competitive can be worse for casual/narrative.

The original argument was that all factors that were/are bad for competitive play are just as bad for casual/narrative play, this simply isn't true. Both may want balance in the abstract, but you are balancing two different things. Just cos one side doesn't like their apple doesn't mean the other side are best suited with the pear they want.

Thank you for answering, but isn't the core issue more that ITC has basically created their own game, rather than competitive balance? Many people seem to agree with that, in any tactics thread I participate in just the ITC closed windows rules has completely changed how certain units operate and whether they work fine or not.


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Karol wrote:

I really don't that leap in logic. How is good balance in competitive bad balance in casual games? If anything, if the players who are playing the best of the best against each other are having balanced games, isn't is more likely for casuals to have a balanced game?

For example the game designers can decide that soup is the only way to play, so if a faction is lagging behind or has no soup options, GW won't fix them. Or because lists with smash captins and 3 units of scouts exist, BA as a faction do not require any fixs. Or an army is dominant, but in tournaments it can face a hard counter, so all is fine. But a casual player is going to face the list with what he has, so unless he plays exactly the hard counter he is not going to have a good time. Balance in general rules is much needed, and if it comes because tournaments ask for it, it is great. But army balance coming from tournaments is not something to be expected. I read some articles form the las vegas event, and they think it was a huge success, with varid lists and ton of representation from different factions.

That wasn't the argument though. Balance changes for competitive games still doesn't hurt the casual gamers.
I agree with you that balancing for competitive games isn't sufficient for casual players, and that additional measures need to be taken to insure their fun. I think riot games is a good example of that - they have nerfed or reworked champions that were a no-show among professional players because there were obvious counters too them, but were absolute terrors for players in more casual games.

puree wrote:
Balance. This is not something that is bad for competitive so must be bad for narrative/casual. The competitive crowd have a far different tolerance in the 'good enough' aspect of balance, and balance to that tolerance level is highly specific to the scenario you play. Board size, size of game (max points), terrain, victory conditions are all huge contributors to the value of any unit. Those complaining about balance at something like LVO are complaining about balance for those scenarios and want points to reflect the value of units in those specific scenarios. Those are not the sort of scenarios many narrative/casual players play. Balancing for ITC could indeed make things worse for casual play. The points values that are probably good enough for narrative/casual players are the sort that simply grossly average a wide range of different game types to arrive at value that whilst may not work for any one game is 'good enough' for most of those playing that wide variety of games, even though such a value may well produce something bad for competitive players who only play a very narrow range of scenarios.

This is one of those "maybe in theory, not in practice" things. Yeah, in theory we could be talking about such subtle balance changes that game size/terrain/etc are relevant factors and a particular set of tournament missions might over-emphasize certain conditions at the expense of narrative play and other tournament mission sets. But GW isn't dealing with that level of fine-tuning balance. They still need to fix massive issues that are going to cause problems across all game conditions. And these changes are going to be positive for everyone, even if it's tournament players that are currently lobbying for them.

Strategic depth: I hear this type of argument a lot, but what exactly is shallow or deep strategy? Can you actually properly describe in non abstract terms? I can play a game where all we do is line up on a somewhat sparse table and kill each other to score victory points, not a lot of strategy, just a fire allocation exercise. I can also create a game with a lot of terrain, multiple objectives and twists etc that present a player with some tough strategic decisions. Game mechanics may feed into strategy, but strategic depth is seldom about the game mechanics; it is about the scenario you create - the problems to solve given the forces and scenario rules. I can do this in 40k or any other of a myriad of DIY style games. 40k is no less strategic depth than other such games - it just requires the sort of player effort that narrative/casual players are more likely to be into than the competitive crowd.

40k has a lack of strategic depth because interesting strategic decisions are few and far between. Most of the time you have very obvious choices to make in executing the game plan you came up with in list construction. Your anti-tank guns shoot the biggest tank threat, your objective campers camp on objectives, your melee death star rushes straight towards the enemy as fast as possible, etc. By far the most important element in deciding the outcome of the game is how much each player was willing to optimize their lists for winning, coming at the expense of fluff/picking cool models/etc. And once you've brought that optimized list, preferably one that has better dice than your opponent's list, most of the game is just basic target priority in removing your opponent's stuff from the table until you can clean up the objectives unopposed.

And no, strategy is not independent of the game mechanics. 40k is full of a long list of mechanics that remove strategic depth and reduce it to an exercise in list optimization. IGOUGO removes the ability to react to what is happening with your opponent's actions and encourages you to just exchange fire until someone runs out of models. Poor LOS and cover rules make most existing terrain do little more than improve the aesthetic value of the game, allowing you to just sit in place and declare shots against model's fingertip as if it was standing out in the open. Lack of unit facings, suppressing fire, etc, eliminate any concept of flanking or positioning beyond getting into range to attack and again encourage mindless exchanges of dice. Random objectives separate the mission goals from the events on the table and often create games where you win or lose based on which random cards you draw instead of how well you executed a coherent strategy. Gunlines have full-table range, close-range shooting can deep strike directly into range with no chance of failure, and melee units are reaching combat on turn 1, turn 2 at the latest, just by moving as fast as possible straight at a target.

Even previous editions had more strategy than 8th. For example, in 5th edition heavy weapons could either move or shoot, not both. So you had to deploy your heavy weapons carefully because the penalty for having to reposition them was high, and you even had to choose whether taking a heavy weapon at all was worth it. In 8th the penalty for having to move is small and a heavy weapon is always going to be better than the basic gun it replaces. So you've replaced a unit that had interesting strategic choices with a unit that acts like any other unit, just with better dice when it shoots. Or, to bring up a current balance issue, consider knights. Originally they had armor facings and ion shields that could only protect one facing at a time, rewarding you for flanking the knight and splitting your threats between two sides. In 8th you just get a 5++ regardless of facing, and instead of having to carefully position your knight to keep all the threats in one direction and maximize your defenses you just spend 1/3 CP every turn to give yourself a 3++ against everything.

 Jidmah wrote:

Thank you for answering, but isn't the core issue more that ITC has basically created their own game, rather than competitive balance? Many people seem to agree with that, in any tactics thread I participate in just the ITC closed windows rules has completely changed how certain units operate and whether they work fine or not.

It's over blown really. If you want to follow that argument. Anytime you don't play using GW terrain built to match the picture on the box, you're not really playing 40k. I guess if I built the GW terrain and blocked off the windows Dakka might allow that to be real 40k, but I doubt it.

 Peregrine wrote:


This is one of those "maybe in theory, not in practice" things. Yeah, in theory we could be talking about such subtle balance changes that game size/terrain/etc are relevant factors and a particular set of tournament missions might over-emphasize certain conditions at the expense of narrative play and other tournament mission sets. But GW isn't dealing with that level of fine-tuning balance. They still need to fix massive issues that are going to cause problems across all game conditions. And these changes are going to be positive for everyone, even if it's tournament players that are currently lobbying for them.

That needs specific examples. What is currently so obviously out of balance that it is dominating competitive games in all metas?

I hear a lot of tournament players lobbying but it is mostly coming from one meta,I do not see any strong evidence of the same specific problems outside that meta which is run with house-rules and a very particular mission set.

I would arguee that balance problems are much worse for casual play than competitive play, because competitive players will take by the most part whatever is more powerfull, it doesn't matter that it is only 5% more powerfull or 30%.

But a casual player will take whatever it finds cool, and then maybe one player makes a veteran imperial guard army with chimeras, and then other player makes a Imperial Knight army supported by admech. And you have a problem when those two friends start fighting each other.

 Crimson Devil wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

Thank you for answering, but isn't the core issue more that ITC has basically created their own game, rather than competitive balance? Many people seem to agree with that, in any tactics thread I participate in just the ITC closed windows rules has completely changed how certain units operate and whether they work fine or not.

It's over blown really. If you want to follow that argument. Anytime you don't play using GW terrain built to match the picture on the box, you're not really playing 40k. I guess if I built the GW terrain and blocked off the windows Dakka might allow that to be real 40k, but I doubt it.

That's nowhere near the same as having your mission pack be the same mission with different objective placement and letting you pick what your secondary objectives are so you can tailor them against your opponent/build your own list to minimize it.

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Please stop comparing the casuals with the top 8. This is an obvious red herring that in no way addresses the actual argument. For obvious reasons, the game is not based around casuals. It's based around the top results of most major tournaments. So when those top results are skewed by obvious cheating, it tends to cause ramifications in the meta.

Thats...false. The "Game" is not even based around gaming but started as a pub event while you drink your beer.
Following your logic you are no DQ'd from all game for the rest of the year.




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 Ordana wrote:

usmcmidn wrote:

Doesn't sound like "confusion", it sounds like he just didn't know his rules...which I'd argue is worse than cheating.

Not knowing your rules is bad, but cheating is worse. I'd rather someone be ignorant than malevolent.

This is why I don’t go to tournaments. I play for fun, it’s supposed to be a fun game. To say someone not knowing their rules is worse than cheating is wrong. I play with new players all the time. Don’t curb stomp new players and ridicule them for not knowing rules. This attitude encourages people to not get into the hobby. Play nice don’t be jerks to your opponents.

No one is going to ridicule you at a tournament for not knowing the rules, No one is going to stand across the table from you and say your worse then a cheater for not knowing every rules.

The internet is not people in real life.

You can very much go to tournaments to play for fun, meet new people who are there to have fun and bond over a game of warhammer.

This, very much. If you go with the intent of having fun by playing against differnt armies and opponents, typically on tables with better terrain, then you will indeed have lots of fun. The uber competitive guys will shake out and play other uber competitive guys. You will have fun playing other guys/gals who also are there with the same goals as yourself.

Wayniac wrote:

Spoiler:

 Crimson Devil wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

Thank you for answering, but isn't the core issue more that ITC has basically created their own game, rather than competitive balance? Many people seem to agree with that, in any tactics thread I participate in just the ITC closed windows rules has completely changed how certain units operate and whether they work fine or not.

It's over blown really. If you want to follow that argument. Anytime you don't play using GW terrain built to match the picture on the box, you're not really playing 40k. I guess if I built the GW terrain and blocked off the windows Dakka might allow that to be real 40k, but I doubt it.

That's nowhere near the same as having your mission pack be the same mission with different objective placement and letting you pick what your secondary objectives are so you can tailor them against your opponent/build your own list to minimize it.

GW seems to disagree with you.

The Basic Rule Book contains nearly 2 dozen missions between Open, Narrative, and Matched Play rules and encourages you to make up your own missions. CA2017 has nearly two dozen more missions between Open, Narrative, and Matched Play rules. And the same is true for CA2018.

So it should be obvious that GW considers it to be Warhammer 40,000 is you are using the ruleset regardless of the missions you use. Perhaps you should thinking of custom missions as not real W40K.

 Crimson Devil wrote:
Tournaments are fun. You will run into a occasional TFG at a tournament, but to be honest I think I run into more of them on Dakka than at an event.

This pretty much. I have yet to run into very few TFG at a tournament. 90% of people are decent people in real life. Funnily enough the on TFG moment I ever played against was in a casual game when I was first starting out and didn't know this particular "gentleman" had a reputation. Not all casual players are saints just like not all competitive tourney players are saints. I would say the TFG moments have been spread pretty evenly among the two.

While I do agree 40k roots are steeped in a beer and pretzels game. I think there has been a pretty major shift in the focus to a more competitive E-sports route. GW is actually listening to feedback, taking major events into account when balancing, and they are offering top players the chance to play test things. There has also been a major push to try and start streaming major events from GW themselves. Whether this is a good thing or not is purely subjective. I personally like that they are focusing more on balance even if there is for all intents and purposes almost 3 different versions of the game in ITC, ETC, and GW book rules.

Anyways back on topic! CHEATERS R BAD RABLE RABLE RABLE TORCHES AND PITCHFORKS!!!!!

 alextroy wrote:

Wayniac wrote:

Spoiler:

 Crimson Devil wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

Thank you for answering, but isn't the core issue more that ITC has basically created their own game, rather than competitive balance? Many people seem to agree with that, in any tactics thread I participate in just the ITC closed windows rules has completely changed how certain units operate and whether they work fine or not.

It's over blown really. If you want to follow that argument. Anytime you don't play using GW terrain built to match the picture on the box, you're not really playing 40k. I guess if I built the GW terrain and blocked off the windows Dakka might allow that to be real 40k, but I doubt it.

That's nowhere near the same as having your mission pack be the same mission with different objective placement and letting you pick what your secondary objectives are so you can tailor them against your opponent/build your own list to minimize it.

GW seems to disagree with you.

The Basic Rule Book contains nearly 2 dozen missions between Open, Narrative, and Matched Play rules and encourages you to make up your own missions. CA2017 has nearly two dozen more missions between Open, Narrative, and Matched Play rules. And the same is true for CA2018.

So it should be obvious that GW considers it to be Warhammer 40,000 is you are using the ruleset regardless of the missions you use. Perhaps you should thinking of custom missions as not real W40K.

ITC missions are custom missions, that was my point. Having an identical mission where you can pick whatever to tailor your list nd do more listbuilding is forking 40k.