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ClockworkZion wrote: I see a lot of unfounded bias on what the dev intent is. While the company wants to make money as a whole, James lays out his job rather clearly: to capture the feel of the lore and the models in the rules. Now we can argue how well they actually do that, but their intent is to the the gameplay to the lore and feel of the models.
If the sole goal was to make money we'd see the new stuff continually creep up in power, but that is mixed bag of stuff that is good and bad for competetive play.
If GW is trying to make new units overpowered they're even more incompetent than I thought. As it is its about random chance whether a new unit is hot (Lord Discordant) or not (Master of Executions).
Honestly its a bit sad now, that with nearly 40 years of game design under their belt, that 40k is still changing *so* rapidly and the balance is *so* bad.
Exemple, introduction of Flyers and certain new and expensive kits.
The studio devs don't set the price of kits, the bean counters do (who'd be employing a formula to account for mold costs, hours of development and other costs that would be recouped by selling a given number of kits....basically look into accounting and how a company factors out cost and how much profit they increase over overhead for a better understanding how this mess works). Complaining that the kits are expensive because the devs make them expensive is a misunderstanding of how businesses set prices on their goods.
Exemple, introduction of Flyers and certain new and expensive kits.
The studio devs don't set the price of kits, the bean counters do (who'd be employing a formula to account for mold costs, hours of development and other costs that would be recouped by selling a given number of kits....basically look into accounting and how a company factors out cost and how much profit they increase over overhead for a better understanding how this mess works). Complaining that the kits are expensive because the devs make them expensive is a misunderstanding of how businesses set prices on their goods.
Sure bud, tell that to Valkyries at introduction, or knights
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/766717.page A Mostly Renegades and Heretics blog.
GW:"Space marines got too many options to balance, therefore we decided to legends HH units." Players: "why?!? Now we finally got decent plastic kits and you cut them?" Chaos marines players: "Since when are Daemonengines 30k models and why do i have NO droppods now?" GW" MONEY.... erm i meant TOO MANY OPTIONS (to resell your army to you again by disalowing former units)! Do you want specific tyranid fighiting Primaris? Even a new sabotage lieutnant!" Chaos players: Guess i stop playing or go to HH.
Trasvi 780073 10568770 wrote:
Yeah, GW balance does need a lot of work. I play mostly competitively and I'll be the first to admit it.
I was responding to ClockworkZion who seems to be of the opinion that GW balance is in a good state, and 40k is an objectively good game, and we can't really expect anything more, without having much experience with other game. Maybe I'm getting his position wrong.
My opinion is that 40k is an objectively *bad* rules system, but survives off the strength of the fluff, quality of the models and indoctrination from GW. There are massive, unresolvable issues with the core rules set, let alone inter unit balance.
That all being said... 40k as a competitive game is probably at the best point it ever has been, with every faction having at least one Tier 1 army build and some factions having dozens.
Although that might say more about how terrible 40k was previously....
Oh I fully agree on that. I think if any other gaming company would put up a new gaming system, and then went LoL guys forge the narrative, because there is no point system for our game, it would be more or less dead on arrival. But GW has a ton of dedicted fans, nothing wrong with that, that seem to be in their 30s or older, which means stable income, and it seems to me, although I could be wrong, that they can buy more or less in to anything GW sells. Card board cut outs for a fringe new game, costing more then some armies for other games? No problem. To have a good army buy one every 6 months, and updated yours every 2-4weeks with new buys. No problem. Want to have a WS and IH army with primaris, well I guess this means your buying 12 boxs of intercessors.
If you have to kill, then kill in the best manner. If you slaughter, then slaughter in the best manner. Let one of you sharpen his knife so his animal feels no pain.
ClockworkZion wrote: I see a lot of unfounded bias on what the dev intent is. While the company wants to make money as a whole, James lays out his job rather clearly: to capture the feel of the lore and the models in the rules. Now we can argue how well they actually do that, but their intent is to the the gameplay to the lore and feel of the models.
If the sole goal was to make money we'd see the new stuff continually creep up in power, but that is mixed bag of stuff that is good and bad for competetive play.
If GW is trying to make new units overpowered they're even more incompetent than I thought. As it is its about random chance whether a new unit is hot (Lord Discordant) or not (Master of Executions).
Honestly its a bit sad now, that with nearly 40 years of game design under their belt, that 40k is still changing *so* rapidly and the balance is *so* bad.
Stop putting words in my mouth. I didn't say that they were -trying- to make things underpowered, but rather that some thingd are underpowered because the studio focuses on trying to capture lore and the feel of the model first and approach finetuning balance second.
A fair point, but it doesn't account for one problem: net listing is a major thing in the game (well in a lot of games) which leads to a sort of ripple effect whenever a new game breaker is found.
It may not get them to the top tables, but it can push mid or bottom table players up a few notches. In the end while net listing doesn't make people into the top tables alone, it has lead to a lot of people exploiting certain combinations in the name of trying to win more games.
And before anyone tries to make any claims: I am not against people wanting to win or getting their enjoyment from winning games, I am merely stating that the abuse of certain mechanics is rather common because of the commonality of net listing.
I agree that net listing is pretty common in the hobby. It is common across other game systems as well as is of course netdecking.
That is only a problem when used in an inappropriate context. Taking a netlist to a FLGS for what you both agree is a tournament practice game is not just acceptable, it is often the ideal of what your opponent wants. Taking a netlist to the same FLGS for a pickup game with a casual player is That Guy behaviour and anyone doing it should be ashamed of themselves.
Taking a net list to a tournament is just a choice. You avoid having to put any thought into having a really solid list with winning potential at the dual costs of having a list that opponents are probably prepared for and which may not be tuned to your personal strengths and weaknesses as a player. It is just a choice, I am not going to judge individual players for it. If certain net lists were to become too popular then tournaments as a whole would become dull and repetitive but we are not in that position right now and GW have processes in place to ensure we do not get too far into that situation.
A fair point, but it doesn't account for one problem: net listing is a major thing in the game (well in a lot of games) which leads to a sort of ripple effect whenever a new game breaker is found.
It may not get them to the top tables, but it can push mid or bottom table players up a few notches. In the end while net listing doesn't make people into the top tables alone, it has lead to a lot of people exploiting certain combinations in the name of trying to win more games.
And before anyone tries to make any claims: I am not against people wanting to win or getting their enjoyment from winning games, I am merely stating that the abuse of certain mechanics is rather common because of the commonality of net listing.
I agree that net listing is pretty common in the hobby. It is common across other game systems as well as is of course netdecking.
That is only a problem when used in an inappropriate context. Taking a netlist to a FLGS for what you both agree is a tournament practice game is not just acceptable, it is often the ideal of what your opponent wants. Taking a netlist to the same FLGS for a pickup game with a casual player is That Guy behaviour and anyone doing it should be ashamed of themselves.
Taking a net list to a tournament is just a choice. You avoid having to put any thought into having a really solid list with winning potential at the dual costs of having a list that opponents are probably prepared for and which may not be tuned to your personal strengths and weaknesses as a player. It is just a choice, I am not going to judge individual players for it. If certain net lists were to become too popular then tournaments as a whole would become dull and repetitive but we are not in that position right now and GW have processes in place to ensure we do not get too far into that situation.
This I agree with. GW's done far better job at curtailing the prevailing meta than it has in the past editions. We were at a pretty dark place when castellans weren't nerfed though. I actually respect the guy that started the smash captain list just to wipe the smirk on castellan + ig brigade list players.
Exemple, introduction of Flyers and certain new and expensive kits.
The studio devs don't set the price of kits, the bean counters do (who'd be employing a formula to account for mold costs, hours of development and other costs that would be recouped by selling a given number of kits....basically look into accounting and how a company factors out cost and how much profit they increase over overhead for a better understanding how this mess works). Complaining that the kits are expensive because the devs make them expensive is a misunderstanding of how businesses set prices on their goods.
Sure bud, tell that to Valkyries at introduction, or knights
Still doesn't mean the devs are the ones who make things expensive. The design studio tries to make cool things for the game, that's their only goal, while the games team tries to take the model design and the design boards that come out of the design team and figure out how it fits into the setting and then writes rules to try and capture that.
And I'll honestly take what the dev's say what they think their job is over what the internet says what they think the devs do.
Stop putting words in my mouth. I didn't say that they were -trying- to make things underpowered, but rather that some thingd are underpowered because the studio focuses on trying to capture lore and the feel of the model first and approach finetuning balance second.
That is not true, they very much do give stuff weak rules on puropose or make it underpowered. In the GK codex article they clearly said that they did exactly that. They gave GK a weaker smite, then they should get based on being psykers. The articles said it clearly that they made the rules underpowered to balanced GK power, now what they maybe didn't know was that after a few changes to some core game rules, GK power was gone, but the under powering stuff survived, all the FAQs and CA changes.
And if the studio tried to capture the feel of GK, then I don't know what they were aiming for. Bad psychic army of psychic dudes? Demon hunter army, which is the worse army to play vs demons? All the flavour sucked out of certain models, and arbitral addition of stuff like GK chaplains or Grand Masters in nemezis armour.
If you have to kill, then kill in the best manner. If you slaughter, then slaughter in the best manner. Let one of you sharpen his knife so his animal feels no pain.
The point people are trying to make is that its difficult to call GW's balance "good" or "bad" without a frame of reference.
But you can compare their own rules to their other rules. If you read the marine codex and the csm codex, then there seem to be a big difference in what GW design team wanted to give each faction. And those are mostly copy factions, with a lot of overlaping unit types. And it doesn't have to be some fringe stuff like comparing WB rules and codex sm +ultramarines supplement.
Yeah, GW balance does need a lot of work. I play mostly competitively and I'll be the first to admit it.
I was responding to ClockworkZion who seems to be of the opinion that GW balance is in a good state, and 40k is an objectively good game, and we can't really expect anything more, without having much experience with other game. Maybe I'm getting his position wrong.
My opinion is that 40k is an objectively *bad* rules system, but survives off the strength of the fluff, quality of the models and indoctrination from GW. There are massive, unresolvable issues with the core rules set, let alone inter unit balance.
That all being said... 40k as a competitive game is probably at the best point it ever has been, with every faction having at least one Tier 1 army build and some factions having dozens.
Although that might say more about how terrible 40k was previously....
I feel like you're over shooting my position. I'd argue the game is functional and reasonably fun as long as both players aren't trying to break the game. The game doesn't really hold up competively, and I have made several posts about how there are things I feel the game could improve on.
So functional, reasonably fun, but far from perfect but equally far from "broken".
I guess the problem is how to define "trying to break the game". All too often it seems to get defined as "when my opponent builds an army more powerful than mine". One of the big reasons I play competitively is that it does away with all of that - we accept that both are trying to break the game, roll with it, and from that meta with a huge variety has opened up. I think the game does much better competitively (where despite its flaws, everyone can reach the same level playing field) rather than casually (where you get bogged down in the muck of trying to do GW's job and balance their game through handicaps or mission design).
And as for what you need to do to break the game... for all the hate it gets, building a competitive list in 40k is a very simple task. Its not some single genius that comes up with the Loyal32, or Triptide or Smashcaptains or Chainlords or <insert witty meta term here>. These things arise independently everywhere because the books guide you in those directions and anyone with high school level math can figure out which units are high performers. Tweaking the list is something that requires experience and knowledge of the local meta, but you can get 95% of the way there with a basic knowledge of the game.
happy_inquisitor wrote: [
I agree that net listing is pretty common in the hobby. It is common across other game systems as well as is of course netdecking.
That is only a problem when used in an inappropriate context. Taking a netlist to a FLGS for what you both agree is a tournament practice game is not just acceptable, it is often the ideal of what your opponent wants. Taking a netlist to the same FLGS for a pickup game with a casual player is That Guy behaviour and anyone doing it should be ashamed of themselves.
Taking a net list to a tournament is just a choice. You avoid having to put any thought into having a really solid list with winning potential at the dual costs of having a list that opponents are probably prepared for and which may not be tuned to your personal strengths and weaknesses as a player. It is just a choice, I am not going to judge individual players for it. If certain net lists were to become too popular then tournaments as a whole would become dull and repetitive but we are not in that position right now and GW have processes in place to ensure we do not get too far into that situation.
I have seen more netlists used for pick up games than fluff lists. I tend to play a bit counter meta since Sisters always sat in a weird place overall, but I remember a lot of a lot of popular netlists dropped on the other side of the table because for a lot of players they build on main list and only iterate on it as the game changes leading to a lot of them building net lists that give the impression that they'll win more games.
Stop putting words in my mouth. I didn't say that they were -trying- to make things underpowered, but rather that some thingd are underpowered because the studio focuses on trying to capture lore and the feel of the model first and approach finetuning balance second.
That is not true, they very much do give stuff weak rules on puropose or make it underpowered. In the GK codex article they clearly said that they did exactly that. They gave GK a weaker smite, then they should get based on being psykers. The articles said it clearly that they made the rules underpowered to balanced GK power, now what they maybe didn't know was that after a few changes to some core game rules, GK power was gone, but the under powering stuff survived, all the FAQs and CA changes.
And if the studio tried to capture the feel of GK, then I don't know what they were aiming for. Bad psychic army of psychic dudes? Demon hunter army, which is the worse army to play vs demons? All the flavour sucked out of certain models, and arbitral addition of stuff like GK chaplains or Grand Masters in nemezis armour.
They were likely swinging the pendulum too far from where GK used to sit in 5th assuming while curtailing a smite spam build they didn't want the army to fall into (while strangely letting the Thousand Sons do that same build, so perhaps they wanted it to be a core tenant of the Thousands Sons army and not the GK).
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/09/12 15:43:36
Karol wrote: And if the studio tried to capture the feel of GK, then I don't know what they were aiming for. Bad psychic army of psychic dudes? Demon hunter army, which is the worse army to play vs demons? All the flavour sucked out of certain models, and arbitral addition of stuff like GK chaplains or Grand Masters in nemezis armour.
Grey Knights are in a tough game design spot vs daemons.
Lets say the ultimate goal is that 2000pts of army A is equal to 2000pts of army B in matched play.
If army A is Grey Knights and army B is daemons, the GK simply can't be allowed to have some advantage over daemons. Otherwise its literally a Rock vs Scissors match. We have enough of those with army build styles without baking it in to the rules.
I honestly think that the current way is actually pretty good. GK are better vs Daemons than they are vs other armies. But to compensate, Daemons get an additional narrative rule that makes them stronger vs GK - to reflect the idea that GKs should only be deployed when there is actually a daemonic incursion going on.
It could quite possibly be balanced by upping the cost of the respawn stratagem to 3CP, or limiting it to once per turn/round.
IIRC the rule Daemons have used to be in the old Daemonhunters book to buff Daemons so they weren't being hard countered by daid Daemonhunters while representing that GK only deploy to the worst daemon incursions.
I think what someone said earlier rings true: GW would lose money if they actually wrote good rules. So they write barely functional gak that can sort of work, and people eat it up. Ergo they don't need to care about improving, because their customers show that good rules aren't as big a concern as pretty models.
Every new release I see hundreds of people on social media gushing about how amazing the models are, how it's the best model(s) GW has made yet, GW is the best company ever and how they can't wait to buy a box (or more) to paint up. Most (not all) of the time, these people are either lifelong GW players (they have only ever played Warhammer, and have never looked at anything outside of Warhammer) or are more painter/collector who once in a while plays a game rather than gamers. There are exceptions of course, but usually, this is due to the popularity of Warhammer rather than it being a good game. I would wager most of the tournament players play Warhammer due to its ubiquity, and if it was another game that afforded the same level of play would probably jump ship. Either that or they stick with Warhammer due to its relatively shallow rules and ability to focus on lists rather than gameplay, while with a different game they would have to focus more on gameplay rather than creating combos.
There is few if any, discussion on the merits of the unit, how it will perform, how it fits into the army, etc. (granted while this might not be known when the figure is shown, there can be speculation an discussion on what it could do). You often see people who show their painted models refer to them strangely: "Such an enjoyable model to paint" and similar statements that are odd for a tabletop game. It's rarely how the rules really fit the fluff or they can see a great combo or use for the model, it's "a fantastic bit of kit" or "loved painting this model" or similar stuff about everything except how the model performs.
That's a big issue to me, but at the same time, it shows that people are not so interested in performance but how "kewl" the model looks. So this tells GW that they don't need to care about design, because having gakky design has made them incredibly profitable in spite of it.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2019/09/12 18:00:31
Wayniac wrote: I think what someone said earlier rings true: GW would lose money if they actually wrote good rules. So they write barely functional gak that can sort of work, and people eat it up. Ergo they don't need to care about improving, because their customers show that good rules aren't as big a concern as pretty models.
Every new release I see hundreds of people on social media gushing about how amazing the models are, how it's the best model(s) GW has made yet, GW is the best company ever and how they can't wait to buy a box (or more) to paint up. Most (not all) of the time, these people are either lifelong GW players (they have only ever played Warhammer, and have never looked at anything outside of Warhammer) or are more painter/collector who once in a while plays a game rather than gamers. There are exceptions of course, but usually, this is due to the popularity of Warhammer rather than it being a good game. I would wager most of the tournament players play Warhammer due to its ubiquity, and if it was another game that afforded the same level of play would probably jump ship. Either that or they stick with Warhammer due to its relatively shallow rules and ability to focus on lists rather than gameplay, while with a different game they would have to focus more on gameplay rather than creating combos.
There is few if any, discussion on the merits of the unit, how it will perform, how it fits into the army, etc. (granted while this might not be known when the figure is shown, there can be speculation an discussion on what it could do). You often see people who show their painted models refer to them strangely: "Such an enjoyable model to paint" and similar statements that are odd for a tabletop game. It's rarely how the rules really fit the fluff or they can see a great combo or use for the model, it's "a fantastic bit of kit" or "loved painting this model" or similar stuff about everything except how the model performs.
That's a big issue to me, but at the same time, it shows that people are not so interested in performance but how "kewl" the model looks. So this tells GW that they don't need to care about design, because having gakky design has made them incredibly profitable in spite of it.
I don't think that's completely true, but before I get into why I feel I should point out that more of your time is spent building and painting a model than actually playing it, so it's not a big shock that people think about that first when talking about stuff.
That aside, GW does care about design, but not in the way you think: they care about making the models "feel" like their lore counter parts. It's no 1:1 representation, no ruleset ever will be, but they've shown (and just outright stated) that their design goal is to make the units "feel" like they do in the lore.
With playtesters throttling them back a bit this has lead to less outright broken gak as we've seen in the past, but between drastically shaking up the rules (meaning they need more time to nail down how to design for the new ruleset versus the twenty plus years of experience built up for the old set) and the fact that the studio still doesn't have a standardized metric for points costing things (much less a universal design document on how to word key rules, something AoS has adopted, not to mention their overcosting of melee in general like it's still bleeding 4th edition) and the game still has a lot of room to grow and improve.
Yes, the design will never move away from that goal of trying to carry the lore onto the table (something that I'd argue is one of the strengths of IP), it has shown that it can and is improving and tightening up it's design. I mean look at how poorly the 8.0 codex for C:SM played versuses the playability of the 8.5 version. If they can keep these up we'll be looking at one of the better balanced editions with more varied builds worth taking for players of all types.
A game that I think does fairly well at translating lore to gameplay, despite not having had a chance to actually play myself yet, is Malifaux. It has a heavy narrative element, with lots of lore, as well as flavorful rules for the models, and each crew must be lead by a named character. (free rules, and a couple decks of playing cards and you're good to go with your existing minis, too) I would LOVE it if GW could represent the fluff on the table that well.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/09/12 18:57:04
Blastaar wrote: A game that I think does fairly well at translating lore to gameplay, despite not having had a chance to actually play myself yet, is Malifaux. It has a heavy narrative element, with lots of lore, as well as flavorful rules for the models, and each crew must be lead by a named character. (free rules, and a couple decks of playing cards and you're good to go with your existing minis, too) I would LOVE it if GW could represent the fluff on the table that well.
I feel like we're getting there again for the first time in -years-. CSM 3.5 and 4th ed C:SM were a good start, but it never quite went far enough. 8th has finally been adding more into the game so every army feels like the sub-faction they're supposed to represent.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
How many of those 100 choices are that much different though that they need a separate entry though? That's part of the reason why Deathwing sucks but regular Terminators suck but less so.
Depends on your (and my!) perspective. I remember back in third when 'space marine veterans' was the unit type. Now it's retconned as sternguard, vanguard, honour guard, champions, and a couple of dozen more elite and elitier elite units. It makes me roll my eyes. I remember the third ed blood angels, dark angels and space wolves supplements (still have them beauties!) and they didn't need a whole codex of blood/wolf/dark-nouns to make the unique chapters unique.
That's my perspective. It's not everyone's. And I'm sure, when I seize power and gut warmachine/hordes and 40k of 80% of what I see as redundant Bloat, you and I will probably cheer, but I'm sure there'll be plenty people screaming away online about me ruining the game.
Which was my point. Balance has a cost. Not everyone realises, or even wants to realise the actual, physical consequences of the balance feature should they want to implement. There's no magic lever to pull.
nou wrote:
@content bloat: quick look at the GWs webstore shows that there are currently ~1300 choices for imperium, ~200 choices for chaos and ~300 choices for xenos armies. But large number of those imperial choices are basic ~100 shop entries multiplied by colors of the rainbow and their subfaction rules, so we should either multiply chaos and xenos options by subfactions which often are differently limited in what they can and cannot inlcude and how they function, resulting in ~4k different choices in 40K; or folding Imperial subfactions the other way around, which is more difficult as there are many unique models for non compliant chapters and I don't want to go one-by-one counting those... But one could say that there are not 4k but 1k options in 40K instead. Plus FW.
Then on top of this are weapon options, wargear and other pointed choices to ballance out.
How many faction/unit/wargear options are there in Infinity or Warmahordes, as I honestly don't know those games well enough to do even a quick count like this?
The infinity n3 core rulebook has something like 550 unique loadout profiles for the various unit types in the game - without going into specifics or huge detail, infinity has a variety of 'set' loadout for each type, e.g. An Ariadna line kazak (basically, a guardsman) trooper with rifle, with hmg, a hacker or recon line trooper with rifle etc. Some unit types have one or two loadout options, some have more than half a dozen. So back of a beer coaster math (because I don't want to go through the rulebook again and count!) call it a hundred 'units' across seven or eight factions ranging from various shades of guardsman with rifles or occasional heavy/special weapons to the occasional crisis suit equivelant. Bear in mind, this does not include models released since n3 was released (so, a few years ago) and it might even be n4 now?
Warmachine has something like fourteen or fifteen factions at this stage. Back of a beer coaster math puts down At least a dozen casters and jacks/beasts for each, and a dozen solos and a dozen unit types on top of that. Plus or minus. In terms of interactions, every caster has a 'feat', a whole bunch of spells etc. That all interact. You are talking about the best part of maybe a thousand rules interactions (need a new beer coaster!)
flandarz wrote:In regards to the 100 vs 20 comment, I'd probably pick the latter, honestly. Because that one gives me far more viable options for play. In "apple" terms, would you rather have 100 apples, but 90 of them are rotten, or 20 apples, but only 5 of them are rotten? The former givea you 10 "good apples" and the latter 15. I'll choose the latter every day of the week.
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That's all well and good, but you've answered a question I didn't ask. What 80 options are you removing is what I asked. And how do you reconcile this with not pissing off the entire community that happens to like the 80 options you dont.
Andykp wrote:
For me the game is as balanced as it needs to be. The narrative and the players balance it themselves. That’s the way we play and it isn’t difficult. We are a group who all know each other. The suggestions I see for achieving “balance” would make the game worse for me and my mates. We enjoy a looser rule set and the opportunities that come with that. At the minute I think GW is getting the balance right regarding matched and casual/narrative play. All the nerds and changes to matched play and faqs haven’t changed the game for me as I ignore most of them and house rule things anyway. What we do have is a good depth of optional rules that make the game as immersive or as fast and fluid as you like.
Here's a beer! I think you are a little bit wrong, but I think you are wrong for all the right reasons. context: I played tournaments for years, but for the last five, I have been more of a narrative player than a tournament player - truth be told, I much can't prefer the freedom of the 'garage scene' rather than 'organised play'.
The most important thing, as you say, is that the narrative and the players balance it themselves. I am completely, one hundred percent in agreement with you here. I also agree with you that gw are providing a good amount of support for both casual/narrative and matched play.
I disagree that a 'looser' rules set provides better opportunities for narrative play, I find gw rules often vague and poorly written. This doesn't help. I like it when rules say what they mean, and where there aren't conflicting interpretations or lopsided interactions (and this is true for all games). Now, they could complexity remove points costs and I wouldn't bat an eyelid - as to you say, the players and the narrative will balance it - I call it 'gamebuilding', and i see it as a feature, not a bug. They could clean up and tidy up the wording, and this would make a better game, if you ask me. What you want isn't a 'looser' game, or maybe what you call 'loose' is different to what I would call 'loose'? What I think is needed is the magic formula of a simpler, yet less technically demanding game which opens things up. I said earlier that I regard infinity as probably the most technically brilliant game out there. I love it, but I don't want to play it all that seriously. It's a headache! If you were to ask me my other most favourite game, the answer might surprise you - gw's lotr sbg. Avoid the movie characters, and it's a brilliant, yet simple, intuitive, and elegant game which has a lot of narrative support through the years. I Seriously regard it as gw's hidden gem.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/09/12 19:24:46
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"Punch your fist in the air and hold your Gameboy aloft like the warrior you are"
nou wrote:
@content bloat: quick look at the GWs webstore shows that there are currently ~1300 choices for imperium, ~200 choices for chaos and ~300 choices for xenos armies. But large number of those imperial choices are basic ~100 shop entries multiplied by colors of the rainbow and their subfaction rules, so we should either multiply chaos and xenos options by subfactions which often are differently limited in what they can and cannot inlcude and how they function, resulting in ~4k different choices in 40K; or folding Imperial subfactions the other way around, which is more difficult as there are many unique models for non compliant chapters and I don't want to go one-by-one counting those... But one could say that there are not 4k but 1k options in 40K instead. Plus FW.
Then on top of this are weapon options, wargear and other pointed choices to ballance out.
How many faction/unit/wargear options are there in Infinity or Warmahordes, as I honestly don't know those games well enough to do even a quick count like this?
The infinity n3 core rulebook has something like 550 unique loadout profiles for the various unit types in the game - without going into specifics or huge detail, infinity has a variety of 'set' loadout for each type, e.g. An Ariadna line kazak (basically, a guardsman) trooper with rifle, with hmg, a hacker or recon line trooper with rifle etc. Some unit types have one or two loadout options, some have more than half a dozen. So back of a beer coaster math (because I don't want to go through the rulebook again and count!) call it a hundred 'units' across seven or eight factions ranging from various shades of guardsman with rifles or occasional heavy/special weapons to the occasional crisis suit equivelant. Bear in mind, this does not include models released since n3 was released (so, a few years ago) and it might even be n4 now?
Warmachine has something like fourteen or fifteen factions at this stage. Back of a beer coaster math puts down At least a dozen casters and jacks/beasts for each, and a dozen solos and a dozen unit types on top of that. Plus or minus. In terms of interactions, every caster has a 'feat', a whole bunch of spells etc. That all interact. You are talking about the best part of maybe a thousand rules interactions (need a new beer coaster!).
Thank you. So it looks like 40K is already at least one or two orders of magnitude larger than it's most direct competition in terms of total interactions volume and it is growing by the day. Even I, a sworn narrative player must admit, that perspective of having ~50 unique Exarch powers after Psychic Awakening is a bit of an overkill
I'm not wasting my time in the deep end of the pool just to try and sort through a couple thousand rulesets just to find something worth looking into. You want to make some recommendations I'll bite, but my time is finite and I don't want to spend it trawling through page after page of games just to try and find something that might pique my interests.
Ok, you said " I don't want to waste my money " that is fine, new games can be expensive. Then you get a list of free rules, it's given and now you want people to spoon feed what things you may like. While the only way you'd know if you'd like them is checking them out for yourself. While saying how important your time is and limited, when you spend so much of it here arguing about utterly pointless things, like defending GW being bad at writing rules and then trying to jazz hand it away by saying they forge the narrative. Ain't life strange sometimes.
So I'm not allowed to have a life and have to spend my free time trying to go through nearly 2k different games to find ones that are outside of GW's wheel house and I'd actually like to play? I'm trying to meet people halfway by actually trying to look at other games, trying to narrow down a massive list to something reasonable to sort through.
Well you are allowed to do whatever you want, which I've said countless times already. However no one better knows what you'd love than you. So you'd need to do some of work to find another system that might float your boat. I mean I see you throw around the word bias a whole lot. You have much of your pro GW bias going on and spout it without shame as you have no well rounded view to speak from when GW is and has been your sole long standing game experience it seems like. Aside from a dabble in WMH. I don't know if I'd keep talking about bias so much.
My comment was more to the fact you say how valuable your time is, yet you spend so much of it here defending GW from seemingly everyone, how is that a good use of your limited and valuable time ? I mean it's not like going through the list is even anything with a time limit on it, you can take your time and glance on through it. Unless you don't want to spend any effort to really expand your horizons at which point just say that as well.
Well you are allowed to do whatever you want, which I've said countless times already. However no one better knows what you'd love than you. So you'd need to do some of work to find another system that might float your boat. I mean I see you throw around the word bias a whole lot. You have much of your pro GW bias going on and spout it without shame as you have no well rounded view to speak from when GW is and has been your sole long standing game experience it seems like. Aside from a dabble in WMH. I don't know if I'd keep talking about bias so much.
My comment was more to the fact you say how valuable your time is, yet you spend so much of it here defending GW from seemingly everyone, how is that a good use of your limited and valuable time ? I mean it's not like going through the list is even anything with a time limit on it, you can take your time and glance on through it. Unless you don't want to spend any effort to really expand your horizons at which point just say that as well.
For my "pro-GW bias" I sure have a lot of opinions on how the game could be better or things I think it fails at.
Just because I don't toss around the word "broken" until it loses meaning doesn't mean I think GW is some untouchable paragon of design. I was just trying to be met half way in a legitimate attempt to hear people out and look at other game systems. I didn't realized that asking to bd shown good faith while ttting to show good faith would apparently be so controversial. I guess no one knows what to do when people are willing to actually try and see what the other side is talking about.
And I started this discussion because I felt there was potential for discussion, and have found most of it pretty decent. I mean the disconnect between player perspective and designer intent alone is pretty interesting and I wouldn't have bothered to even consider looking at other games if it wasn't brought up.
Besides, I read this mostly at work when I have down time for breaks or lunch, or when online working on other projects at the same time.
Well, except when arguing with Peregrine. I admit that was a poor use of my time.
Well you are allowed to do whatever you want, which I've said countless times already. However no one better knows what you'd love than you. So you'd need to do some of work to find another system that might float your boat. I mean I see you throw around the word bias a whole lot. You have much of your pro GW bias going on and spout it without shame as you have no well rounded view to speak from when GW is and has been your sole long standing game experience it seems like. Aside from a dabble in WMH. I don't know if I'd keep talking about bias so much.
My comment was more to the fact you say how valuable your time is, yet you spend so much of it here defending GW from seemingly everyone, how is that a good use of your limited and valuable time ? I mean it's not like going through the list is even anything with a time limit on it, you can take your time and glance on through it. Unless you don't want to spend any effort to really expand your horizons at which point just say that as well.
For my "pro-GW bias" I sure have a lot of opinions on how the game could be better or things I think it fails at.
Just because I don't toss around the word "broken" until it loses meaning doesn't mean I think GW is some untouchable paragon of design. I was just trying to be met half way in a legitimate attempt to hear people out and look at other game systems. I didn't realized that asking to bd shown good faith while ttting to show good faith would apparently be so controversial. I guess no one knows what to do when people are willing to actually try and see what the other side is talking about.
And I started this discussion because I felt there was potential for discussion, and have found most of it pretty decent. I mean the disconnect between player perspective and designer intent alone is pretty interesting and I wouldn't have bothered to even consider looking at other games if it wasn't brought up.
Besides, I read this mostly at work when I have down time for breaks or lunch, or when online working on other projects at the same time.
Well, except when arguing with Peregrine. I admit that was a poor use of my time.
Checking out other games is definitely worth it. I used to hang out at a GW "Hobby Center," and my only non-video game was 40k. Once I'd finally had it with the rules and prices and walked away, I found many other great games out there.
nou wrote:
@content bloat: quick look at the GWs webstore shows that there are currently ~1300 choices for imperium, ~200 choices for chaos and ~300 choices for xenos armies. But large number of those imperial choices are basic ~100 shop entries multiplied by colors of the rainbow and their subfaction rules, so we should either multiply chaos and xenos options by subfactions which often are differently limited in what they can and cannot inlcude and how they function, resulting in ~4k different choices in 40K; or folding Imperial subfactions the other way around, which is more difficult as there are many unique models for non compliant chapters and I don't want to go one-by-one counting those... But one could say that there are not 4k but 1k options in 40K instead. Plus FW.
Then on top of this are weapon options, wargear and other pointed choices to ballance out.
How many faction/unit/wargear options are there in Infinity or Warmahordes, as I honestly don't know those games well enough to do even a quick count like this?
The infinity n3 core rulebook has something like 550 unique loadout profiles for the various unit types in the game - without going into specifics or huge detail, infinity has a variety of 'set' loadout for each type, e.g. An Ariadna line kazak (basically, a guardsman) trooper with rifle, with hmg, a hacker or recon line trooper with rifle etc. Some unit types have one or two loadout options, some have more than half a dozen. So back of a beer coaster math (because I don't want to go through the rulebook again and count!) call it a hundred 'units' across seven or eight factions ranging from various shades of guardsman with rifles or occasional heavy/special weapons to the occasional crisis suit equivelant. Bear in mind, this does not include models released since n3 was released (so, a few years ago) and it might even be n4 now?
Warmachine has something like fourteen or fifteen factions at this stage. Back of a beer coaster math puts down At least a dozen casters and jacks/beasts for each, and a dozen solos and a dozen unit types on top of that. Plus or minus. In terms of interactions, every caster has a 'feat', a whole bunch of spells etc. That all interact. You are talking about the best part of maybe a thousand rules interactions (need a new beer coaster!).
Thank you. So it looks like 40K is already at least one or two orders of magnitude larger than it's most direct competition in terms of total interactions volume and it is growing by the day. Even I, a sworn narrative player must admit, that perspective of having ~50 unique Exarch powers after Psychic Awakening is a bit of an overkill
Not really, WMH would be fairly close to 40k with interactions both available and on a battlefield. They also have 2 mecenery factions split into smaller mini factions that further ad to almost every major faction in the game.
Realistically, if WMH can have clean rules, 40k should at least be able to write there rules as well. Even if the gameplay changed very little from now.
Well you are allowed to do whatever you want, which I've said countless times already. However no one better knows what you'd love than you. So you'd need to do some of work to find another system that might float your boat. I mean I see you throw around the word bias a whole lot. You have much of your pro GW bias going on and spout it without shame as you have no well rounded view to speak from when GW is and has been your sole long standing game experience it seems like. Aside from a dabble in WMH. I don't know if I'd keep talking about bias so much.
My comment was more to the fact you say how valuable your time is, yet you spend so much of it here defending GW from seemingly everyone, how is that a good use of your limited and valuable time ? I mean it's not like going through the list is even anything with a time limit on it, you can take your time and glance on through it. Unless you don't want to spend any effort to really expand your horizons at which point just say that as well.
For my "pro-GW bias" I sure have a lot of opinions on how the game could be better or things I think it fails at.
Just because I don't toss around the word "broken" until it loses meaning doesn't mean I think GW is some untouchable paragon of design. I was just trying to be met half way in a legitimate attempt to hear people out and look at other game systems. I didn't realized that asking to bd shown good faith while ttting to show good faith would apparently be so controversial. I guess no one knows what to do when people are willing to actually try and see what the other side is talking about.
And I started this discussion because I felt there was potential for discussion, and have found most of it pretty decent. I mean the disconnect between player perspective and designer intent alone is pretty interesting and I wouldn't have bothered to even consider looking at other games if it wasn't brought up.
Besides, I read this mostly at work when I have down time for breaks or lunch, or when online working on other projects at the same time.
Well, except when arguing with Peregrine. I admit that was a poor use of my time.
I can get that, but all this topic was going to do is prove what most of us already knew. That the gulf between designers and consumers was pretty vast. Part of that reason is that GW themselves talk out of both sides of their mouth. They say how they love narrative and don't really look at balance the same as we do, yet keep trying to feed the tournament scene all the same because they want that money. They saw from the AoS first launch just how wrong they were on people just want to buy models and toss them around with no competitive element to it, had they stayed on that I have no doubt AoS would have died and stayed pretty dead.
A lot of what they say just is so silly, you'd think they may have accidentally figured out what their customers want by now. Instead they laugh off balance concerns and then prop up narrative as a kind of empty shield from being called out. It ultimately feels a bit like a well known lie and leaves a bad taste in some peoples mouth, mine included. I wasn't surprised at all to know the designers have no real clue what the players think, they prove pretty easily and often how oddly disconnected they are while at the same time having more feedback from the community than ever before.
It would be easier to have positive view on them if they were clear to their intent and intentions. clear beyond just that like maybe drop it in a community round up on their page for everyone to read. They made a fair share of mistakes in the past but at least in some regard I felt they were honest with the AoS release in saying they didn't give a crap what we wanted, it was about what they wanted. Also with 7th edition it was a train wreck but they they stayed true to forging the narrative as their push and not really caring at all what tournaments did.
Now it feels like they want to make it competitive but do so poorly and when they screw up laugh it off as it wasn't what they were driving for the whole time. It gives a confused story and makes them look either like they lie, or they are terrible at what they do. I feel like they never really tell us the truth and just keep feeding us lines. Which makes sense as they want to milk us as long as possible but hey, I'd even respect it if they said they do all this to get as much money from us as they can. I doubt they'll ever be that honest with us though but I can dream and on the day they do give us that brutal honesty, I'd respect them. As is, it feels like most of the time they are trying poorly to play us for fools but with a really nice smile.
dreadnight. That is one of the most sensible and more rounded response I’ve seen on dakka. Thank you. My “fear” of balance does come from, I think, all the wild ideas thrown around on here.
I like 8th. It plays well to me. And gives us what we need. I don’t know enough about maths and game design to start suggesting what needs fixing to improve it. I’m very keen to give apocalypse a go. See how that behaves.
Arguably they may be trying to backpedal on how casual the game is, but since 8th wasn't written from the ground up for competetive play (rather bring written for ease of access with a shorter set of basic rules and the devs taking a lore heavy approach to rules writing) I don't know if any amount of patches will fix the game as well as a full on reboot would.
Karol wrote: And if the studio tried to capture the feel of GK, then I don't know what they were aiming for. Bad psychic army of psychic dudes? Demon hunter army, which is the worse army to play vs demons? All the flavour sucked out of certain models, and arbitral addition of stuff like GK chaplains or Grand Masters in nemezis armour.
Grey Knights are in a tough game design spot vs daemons.
Lets say the ultimate goal is that 2000pts of army A is equal to 2000pts of army B in matched play.
If army A is Grey Knights and army B is daemons, the GK simply can't be allowed to have some advantage over daemons. Otherwise its literally a Rock vs Scissors match. We have enough of those with army build styles without baking it in to the rules.
I honestly think that the current way is actually pretty good. GK are better vs Daemons than they are vs other armies. But to compensate, Daemons get an additional narrative rule that makes them stronger vs GK - to reflect the idea that GKs should only be deployed when there is actually a daemonic incursion going on.
It could quite possibly be balanced by upping the cost of the respawn stratagem to 3CP, or limiting it to once per turn/round.
.
But they aren't better vs demons, then vs other armies. Demons bring back 20 man unit of Plaguebearers on objectives over and over again, making the game unwinable, and the buffs are to stuff which don't really matter, as a GK army is not going to win a smite vs demons, not when GK troops costs more then demons and do not come back for 2CP. Now we could of course say that GK should just soup in stuff, but then demons can soup in stuff too. And if the chaos demon player turns in to a chaos player with a chaos soup, the GK will not win. So it is not only not even, but skewed in favour of demons. Who aren't in a good spot themselfs, which only make it more fun. Also GK do not just deploy when demons are there, they cull whole planets, if it can stop the rise or resuraction or a demon, or to recover an important artefact.
Arguably they may be trying to backpedal on how casual the game is, but since 8th wasn't written from the ground up for competetive play (rather bring written for ease of access with a shorter set of basic rules and the devs taking a lore heavy approach to rules writing) I don't know if any amount of patches will fix the game as well as a full on reboot would.
Wasn't the first codex in 8th ed space marines, that right out of the gate gave people gulliman and razorbacks with stormravens, which ended with everyone geting their nerfed, even if they had no access to gulliman? If yes, then I don't think 8th ed was ever casual. And if there is any back padling then it is up the power curve. It is just that GW does not fix stuff, they break stuff. I don't know if there was a way to make Inari not broken and fun to play at the same time. Maybe they was, but what they did to the army was brutal. Thankfuly the whole faction consisted of one model, and stuff which is okey to good in other armies, so people weren't hurt too much.
If you have to kill, then kill in the best manner. If you slaughter, then slaughter in the best manner. Let one of you sharpen his knife so his animal feels no pain.
Not really, WMH would be fairly close to 40k with interactions both available and on a battlefield. They also have 2 mecenery factions split into smaller mini factions that further ad to almost every major faction in the game.
Realistically, if WMH can have clean rules, 40k should at least be able to write there rules as well. Even if the gameplay changed very little from now.
Well yes but when WMH still had any players it had next to no internal balance. Each faction would have a few competitive builds around the known best casters and that was that - the rest of the stuff may as well never have been produced so far as competitive play was concerned. Now I have no idea what has happened to the game since then, in my part of the world it is as dead as a dodo so its a complete non-issue but I have had a good laugh at the repeated claims in this thread that WMH proves that you can achieve amazing internal and external balance in a complex tabletop game.
I could make the same comment about X-wing which I was still playing more recently. As soon as someone in the group brought a netlist we all realised the game was utterly unbalanced. Yes those first half dozen games were great fun and all was cool when we were just using the models that came in the sets we had but one sniff of a tournament list and we soon realised that the dream of a balanced game had suffered the same fate as Alderaan.
Not really, WMH would be fairly close to 40k with interactions both available and on a battlefield. They also have 2 mecenery factions split into smaller mini factions that further ad to almost every major faction in the game.
Realistically, if WMH can have clean rules, 40k should at least be able to write there rules as well. Even if the gameplay changed very little from now.
Well yes but when WMH still had any players it had next to no internal balance. Each faction would have a few competitive builds around the known best casters and that was that - the rest of the stuff may as well never have been produced so far as competitive play was concerned. Now I have no idea what has happened to the game since then, in my part of the world it is as dead as a dodo so its a complete non-issue but I have had a good laugh at the repeated claims in this thread that WMH proves that you can achieve amazing internal and external balance in a complex tabletop game.
I could make the same comment about X-wing which I was still playing more recently. As soon as someone in the group brought a netlist we all realised the game was utterly unbalanced. Yes those first half dozen games were great fun and all was cool when we were just using the models that came in the sets we had but one sniff of a tournament list and we soon realised that the dream of a balanced game had suffered the same fate as Alderaan.
Tbf moff tarkin reduced unemployment to 0% on alderaan.
Additionally he whiped out a bunch of Monarchists.
Moff tarkin = space Napoléon.
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/766717.page A Mostly Renegades and Heretics blog.
GW:"Space marines got too many options to balance, therefore we decided to legends HH units." Players: "why?!? Now we finally got decent plastic kits and you cut them?" Chaos marines players: "Since when are Daemonengines 30k models and why do i have NO droppods now?" GW" MONEY.... erm i meant TOO MANY OPTIONS (to resell your army to you again by disalowing former units)! Do you want specific tyranid fighiting Primaris? Even a new sabotage lieutnant!" Chaos players: Guess i stop playing or go to HH.
Not really, WMH would be fairly close to 40k with interactions both available and on a battlefield. They also have 2 mecenery factions split into smaller mini factions that further ad to almost every major faction in the game.
Realistically, if WMH can have clean rules, 40k should at least be able to write there rules as well. Even if the gameplay changed very little from now.
Well yes but when WMH still had any players it had next to no internal balance. Each faction would have a few competitive builds around the known best casters and that was that - the rest of the stuff may as well never have been produced so far as competitive play was concerned. Now I have no idea what has happened to the game since then, in my part of the world it is as dead as a dodo so its a complete non-issue but I have had a good laugh at the repeated claims in this thread that WMH proves that you can achieve amazing internal and external balance in a complex tabletop game.
I could make the same comment about X-wing which I was still playing more recently. As soon as someone in the group brought a netlist we all realised the game was utterly unbalanced. Yes those first half dozen games were great fun and all was cool when we were just using the models that came in the sets we had but one sniff of a tournament list and we soon realised that the dream of a balanced game had suffered the same fate as Alderaan.
I was responding to complexity of the games, as well as cleaning up the rules. Consistency and interactions that rarely if ever result in incompatible rules.
But interestingly, 40k is probably fairly dead here. Players are almost entirely shifted over to kill team, or left never to return the last few years :(
But having a good laugh, I would say it’s mostly whoosh over your head then.
In any game where you have choices, there will inevitably be units that take advantage of that, this is what give choices.
Even the devs have stated that some units, just based on how they function will inevitably be more desirable or for some factions a must take.
When taken to 40k, it’s the devs going Gman can change and effect how a entire army is built, we have to account for this and how the marines can work without him. And how to point such units.
I think you are a little bit wrong, but I think you are wrong for all the right reasons.