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 BBAP wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
In those examples, sure, the issues are pretty minimal and I'd take sniper rifles over mortars most of the time, but when we get into things like Wyverns, Thunderfire Cannons, Thudd Guns, artillery batteries, etc vs entire squads of snipers, the issues become very noticeable indeed, which kinda dovetails into the whole scale issue 40k has going on as well.

... but again, the overall effect on the game system is negligible. Nobody's complaining about OP Wyverns sniping their characters or lamenting the obsolescence of snipers.

FireSkullz2 wrote:
I actually think MOST Forgeworld isn't too bad. But things like the Tau Super Suits or Eldar Anything are of course broken. But none of my Necron stuff is, and you don't see anyone running most Forgeworld stuff but when I do run into it, it's almost always the most broken things.

Most of the Forgeworld stuff I've seen isn't broken. Almost all of it was designed by a prurient fanboy munchkin trying to wishlist up the most "ossom" unit ever. They're largely noobhammers - but the thing about noobhammers is they're very powerful when people aren't prepared to face them or don't know what they can do, which brings us to the real problem I have with Forgeworld stuff in the core game. It costs something like 250 quid to buy all the supplementary FW materials, which you need to do if you want to get a handle on how FW units operate. If you don't, then someone can drop a FW unit on you and smash you with it purely because you never seen it before, and now the gak is game-legal there's nothing you can do about it except refuse to play against that person in the first place. Given that so few people play this game, turning down challenges to avoid ass-pull bs seems like a bad place to be at.

I take it you've never been in the receiving end of Eldar Warp Hunters.... they're meta defining, forgeworld D barrage.

Fireskullz is right. The vast majority of Imperial Forgeworld is meh. The Eldar (corsair bikes, hornets and warp hunters) & Tau (supersuits) and renegades stuff is bonkers.

 GreaterGood? wrote:
So, a close friend of mine just started 40k, he tells me he's been watching GW for a while, and they have made vast improvements over the last year, in terms of more customer friendly policies, and better balance. I'm highly skeptical, GW was Riding the nuke down waving their cowboy hat when I last checked. Has anything actually changed?

i hear the CEO was replaced by an actual gamer, and that balance is better, and that GW has acknowledged thier problems and are starting to correct them, bringing back tournaments, etc.. Is this all wishful thinking? Is balance still decided by dart board and codex creep? Do they still intentionally churn and burn new customers just to get cash? Still invalidate armies and army options in order to force you to buy new versions? etc?

Is there any hope?

Who's on top balance wise? Are there any actual tactics to the game now? or still just throw buckets of dice with shooting and hope to go first?

If they have made improvements, what have they- are they doing?

Don't its all smoke and mirrors the rules they have been putting out are half assed in the case of every army except you know which one. The models are high quality and that is it. Your big clue will be when 8th drops because im pretty sure that is when the other shoe will drop anything good CSM recently got will be made useless or so expensive points wise it wont be worth taking or have special rules gutted.

Trasvi wrote:
I take it you've never been in the receiving end of Eldar Warp Hunters.... they're meta defining, forgeworld D barrage.

How's that more broken than a Shadowsword? If they're "meta defining" then why are there so few in the BoK list repository? They're not carrying the Eldar to victory after victory, and there's no easy answer to a D-blast in the base game. Even in those lisst where they do appear they're hardly providing a decisive advantage.

I'm not sold.

 Marmatag wrote:
I know this goes against the competitive landscape, but I like psychic powers being random.

You have tools in your bag that you might not always take. It is built in variance. If you could pick them, wouldn't you get tired of seeing invisibility, gate, etc every game?

Not so random when you have a bunch of psychers for getting the power you need 98% of the time and manifesting on 2+ with re-rolls.

 Marmatag wrote:


2. There will always be imbalances in any game. After doing some research I found a way to create a nigh-invincible captain for very cheap, which would be a fantastic human shield for my most powerful units. I'm not running it. Why? Because that's broken. Just because something is broken doesn't mean you should use it. Do you have people you like, that you can play with, where playing is more important than winning? That right there means the balance doesn't matter.

4. If you're a competitive, tournament style player, and you want a totally balanced game, learn chess, and bring painted miniatures as the chess pieces. 40k is not balanced, and it never will be. There will *always* be a most efficient way to spend your points. That is the nature of these games. Generally games like these are only as good as the people you play with, anyway.

This is not an excuse. Even chess are imbalanced - externally, because White always starts first, and internally, because the Queen is clearly OP

But there is a MEASURE of imbalance that is tolerated (I get a weaker, perhaps fluffy list, I have an uphill battle that is potentially rewarding) and an intolerable imbalance (entire army shot out of the board turn 2). Nobody askes a chess level balance, but say "learn chess" is disingenuous, at best, because other producers of similar hobby/games put better effort into balancing their games because the design team is not composed by buffoons.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BBAP wrote:


So what? It's easier to kill a huge tank in CC than it is with shooting. Unrealistic doesn't mean bad.

If a system fails to simulate the gameworld, is bad. Fullstop.

Don't see a problem with Salvo myself.

Salvo is crippling if used as intended and used only by relentless platform that ignore its limitations. How can be this good game design, I ask.

The increased prominence of psykers is also horses for courses; I don't mind it, partly because there are counters and partly because it's random.

They introduced the problems with magic in WHFB into 40k. Was unneeded and unnecessary. Furthermore, psyker now is go big or go home, helps to build armies more on stupid gimmicks, adds roll and time consumptions, adds random. Is a design disaster and frankly if is ok for you I can understand why you don't see problems. If this is for you good game design, anything is.

Charge and Run distances, Warlord traits, psychic powers and Warp dice pools are the only random rolls in the core rules. Move distance rolls I could live without but they hardly ruin the game, Warlord traits are irrelevant 90% of the time, and the psychic stuff being random is fine.

There are more outside the core: Kelly built CSM originally thinking that his random boon table was the new hotness. Now, ignoring the delusions of Phil Kelly about being an actual game designer and not a fraudulent hack, the mere fact that run and charge are random rolls adds up to th fatc that models are moved several time during the game. On paper, rolling here and there does look innocuous, but the final, cumulative effect is a lot of agency removed from the players and a lot of time consumed.

How this is not obvious, is beyond me.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 koooaei wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
I know this goes against the competitive landscape, but I like psychic powers being random.

You have tools in your bag that you might not always take. It is built in variance. If you could pick them, wouldn't you get tired of seeing invisibility, gate, etc every game?

Not so random when you have a bunch of psychers for getting the power you need 98% of the time and manifesting on 2+ with re-rolls.

That's the ridiculousness. They added a LOLRANDOM system, that is time consuming and forces you to go big or go home. THEN they added rules and rules to make it work for specific special snowflakes because the core rules of such system are garbage.

You should either decide, as a designer:

A) Psychic is unreliable for everybody
B) Psychic is reliable, but at this point instead of designing a system that is unreliable and then add fixes, you just keep the good old Leadeshipt test, and call it a day.

But no. What they did was to add combos, rules and bookeping to correct their stupid system they added to fix what was not broken.
Is pathetic. They are not even able to stick with one design principle in a given edition. These people are severely incoherent and unprofessional.

Balance is better than ever, we've enjoyed a state of top dog + 4 competitive armies for a long while now, compared to older days where it was top dog, second and then garbage.

From 6th edition Eldar to now, there has been a strong Eldar 1st position, which at times weakened, and since the new Space Marines Powers, it's Space Marines all the way.

What I call balance however, is the fact that the other 4 of the 5 superfriends (Tau, Necron, Eldar (or SM) and Daemons) have had win ratios against each other of about 50% on average most of the time.

Some codices are still a bit weak, the only really terrible one would be Dark Eldar.

Don't listen to the whiners, and come back to the game, it's better than ever - 8th will probably be even better, just as 7th was much better than 6th.

morgoth wrote:

Don't listen to the whiners, and come back to the game, it's better than ever - 8th will probably be even better, just as 7th was much better than 6th.

Damn straight. Empty forums make for excellent echo chambers...

morgoth wrote:
Balance is better than ever, we've enjoyed a state of top dog + 4 competitive armies for a long while now, compared to older days where it was top dog, second and then garbage.

From 6th edition Eldar to now, there has been a strong Eldar 1st position, which at times weakened, and since the new Space Marines Powers, it's Space Marines all the way.

What I call balance however, is the fact that the other 4 of the 5 superfriends (Tau, Necron, Eldar (or SM) and Daemons) have had win ratios against each other of about 50% on average most of the time.

Some codices are still a bit weak, the only really terrible one would be Dark Eldar.

Don't listen to the whiners, and come back to the game, it's better than ever - 8th will probably be even better, just as 7th was much better than 6th.

5th edition had some serious issues, but it was a lot more balanced than what you suggest.

By the end of its run, you had IG armored division/alpha strike/mechvets/valkvets, BA mech, Spacewolves longfang spam (and just about everything else in the book, really), DA mech, GK mechanized purifier spam, and Necron gimmicky bs all as top tier contenders. Orkz, Eldar, DA and SM were all viable as well, if outclassed. Things only started to get really stupid once flyers became a thing (back to that Necron gimmicky bs again). Internal codex balance may have always been crap, but the centralization of power to a specific has definitely become much more condensed. Contained within its own generation (in addition to Orkz and Daemons, which were written with 5th edition in mind), 5th edition saw probably the best balance in the game's history, with the main issue being the outdated codecies of previous editions.

While I've yet to play a game of 7th, focusing on researching the massive glut of information and painting right now, that research has me already seeing some very easily identifiable problems that end up crushing any potential attempts at balance. With all the new flashy weaponry, models are taken off of the table sooner and sooner (while the process of actually doing it is taking longer and longer, thanks to the glut of super special rules). Really, things should be moving in the exact opposite direction. Turns should move faster, with the games themselves being paced over a longer period of turns as the focus for development. Nothing should have ever come to surpass plasma in general purpose killy-ness, it just makes everything die far too quickly.

Trasvi wrote:
Fireskullz is right. The vast majority of Imperial Forgeworld is meh. The Eldar (corsair bikes, hornets and warp hunters) & Tau (supersuits) and renegades stuff is bonkers.

But is it more broken than GW proper?

Put in tournament where ONLY FW stuff is allowed. Is it more broken than GW only?

With crap GW puts out there's hardly need for FW models if you want to game it. Hyper expensive alternative. Very bad price/worth ratio at the best of times.

 GreaterGood? wrote:
So, a close friend of mine just started 40k, he tells me he's been watching GW for a while, and they have made vast improvements over the last year, in terms of more customer friendly policies, and better balance. I'm highly skeptical, GW was Riding the nuke down waving their cowboy hat when I last checked. Has anything actually changed?

i hear the CEO was replaced by an actual gamer, and that balance is better, and that GW has acknowledged thier problems and are starting to correct them, bringing back tournaments, etc.. Is this all wishful thinking? Is balance still decided by dart board and codex creep? Do they still intentionally churn and burn new customers just to get cash? Still invalidate armies and army options in order to force you to buy new versions? etc?

Is there any hope?

Who's on top balance wise? Are there any actual tactics to the game now? or still just throw buckets of dice with shooting and hope to go first?

If they have made improvements, what have they- are they doing?

Check out the price of the new Khorne model, check out how many books you need to play a chaos space marine army and read the latest Eldar codex...

...

...and I think that you'll understand everything that you need to know.

Yes, 40k is still terrible.

check out how many books you need to play a chaos space marine army

Exactly one.

Just because Chaos now has many possible sources to build armies from (which was something players wanted forever by the way) doesn't mean you have to buy and use them all. But if you want to be negative about this kind of stuff you can make up some ridiculous scenarios for sure.

Now is a pretty good time to start again, there are tons of starter boxes and army deals with big discounts that make it quite cheap to build up an army, especially if you play <1500 points. If you like 40k aesthetic the new models are amazing, and building army lists is more fun than ever.

I like to think of psychic powers like pulling cards from a deck. In MTG you could fill your deck with some spells, more useful than others. For instance, in counter-burn I ran four Force of Wills for a 0mana or turn0 counter. But, if I never drew them, I didn't have that ability. It's like it wasn't even in my deck.

I do understand that it's nice to be able to plan in advance to what you'll have. And, I will concede that some psychic powers are lolbad. But that doesn't mean that the random system is inherently flawed. Psychic powers should be strong - because they're a) risky and b) potentially countered by anyone even those without psykers in their army - but not game breaking.

If they made it so you could pay points to pick a psychic power, what point total would be fair for such an ability?

On a totally different note I really like the psychic phase of the game. I think it is well designed.

 Marmatag wrote:

If they made it so you could pay points to pick a psychic power, what point total would be fair for such an ability?

Alternatively, each psychic power could have a points cost associated with it specifically reflecting how useful/powerful it is. You want Invisibility, you can shell out the points for it.

Invis would have to be 200 pts as written. Immortality is expensive.

biggest problem is pricing, in my opinion, any new player is almost immediately shut down if you have dreams of playing a tau army, be ready to pay 40 dollars for a fire squad, and dont get me STARTED on the skitarii, 36 usd for one guy?! its simply too expensive for anyone that just wants to play casually

(however I am a relatively new player so maybe it's just me)

 Kaiyanwang wrote:
If a system fails to simulate the gameworld, is bad. Fullstop.

For a given value of "bad". It's not a faithful representation of the capabilities of real-world rifles and mortars - but the "game world" has malign entities that crawl through holes in reality and a galaxy-spanning steampunk empire that runs on prayers. I can forgive a few inconsistencies, provided they don't unduly shaft the game. This one doesn't. it is a non-issue.

Salvo is crippling if used as intended and used only by relentless platform that ignore its limitations. How can be this good game design, I ask.

You'd rather they just did away with the first profile and made them all Assault X weapons, so everyone can use them to full effect? They could make them all Heavy X, but that wouldn't fix the issue of Relentless platforms using Salvo weapons to full effect and would instead cark the ability of non-Relentless models to get any value out of them. Would that be good game design?

They introduced the problems with magic in WHFB into 40k. Was unneeded and unnecessary.

I don't disagree that it was unneeded and unnecessary, but that doesn't mean it's detrimental. I don't think it is.

Furthermore, psyker now is go big or go home,

... or don't bother. Lots of armies manage fine without them. Lots of armies win plenty without them too.

helps to build armies more on stupid gimmicks

Bad ones.

adds roll and time consumptions

If you play with indecisive, claw-fingered mutants I suppose it does. Maybe I'm just lucky.

adds random.

A tolerable amount.

Is a design disaster and frankly if is ok for you I can understand why you don't see problems. If this is for you good game design, anything is.

I'm not saying it couldn't be better - I'm saying it's not as bad as whiners like you make it out to be.

There are more outside the core:

I know that. I said as much in my reply. I'm not interested in "outside the core" here.

How this is not obvious, is beyond me.

It is. Read for comprehension.

Ushtarador wrote:

check out how many books you need to play a chaos space marine army

Exactly one.

Just because Chaos now has many possible sources to build armies from (which was something players wanted forever by the way) doesn't mean you have to buy and use them all. But if you want to be negative about this kind of stuff you can make up some ridiculous scenarios for sure.

Now is a pretty good time to start again, there are tons of starter boxes and army deals with big discounts that make it quite cheap to build up an army, especially if you play <1500 points. If you like 40k aesthetic the new models are amazing, and building army lists is more fun than ever.

That feels a bit pedantic to me. For example, If I want to play Eldar I want to know what all of my options are, where would I find that out? what books and non books have the eldar rules? It's reasonable to want to know what your options are.

Martel732 wrote:
Invis would have to be 200 pts as written. Immortality is expensive.

This post should make it plain to see why it's difficult to balance a game like this... 200 points is absolutely insane.

No offense, that's just a crazy amount of points for one power that can be denied every time, and also can flat out kill your psyker.

 Marmatag wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Invis would have to be 200 pts as written. Immortality is expensive.

This post should make it plain to see why it's difficult to balance a game like this... 200 points is absolutely insane.

No offense, that's just a crazy amount of points for one power that can be denied every time, and also can flat out kill your psyker.

50 points seemed fairer to me. With other powers being less than that (haven't really followed the SM powers).

I do like the concept of paying for powers though. Just...not obscene. Should a Librarian with Invisibility cost 30 points less than a Wraithknight?

...probably not.

 Marmatag wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Invis would have to be 200 pts as written. Immortality is expensive.

This post should make it plain to see why it's difficult to balance a game like this... 200 points is absolutely insane.

No offense, that's just a crazy amount of points for one power that can be denied every time, and also can flat out kill your psyker.

But it does reflect on the exact problem with invisibility:it's value depends on the target.

If Apoc players were donkey-caves, we'd all be rocking one invisibility caster per titan, because being immune to blasts in a game where every single D-shot is a blast or almost... sort of helps.



Basically, spells like invisibility can *never* be balanced, because all it takes is a bigger and better target to make them more powerful.

 Marmatag wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Invis would have to be 200 pts as written. Immortality is expensive.

This post should make it plain to see why it's difficult to balance a game like this... 200 points is absolutely insane.

No offense, that's just a crazy amount of points for one power that can be denied every time, and also can flat out kill your psyker.

It's insane until you realize what it can be cast upon. Unkillable super friends that wreck everything they touch? Totally worth 200 pts.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Frozocrone wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Invis would have to be 200 pts as written. Immortality is expensive.

This post should make it plain to see why it's difficult to balance a game like this... 200 points is absolutely insane.

No offense, that's just a crazy amount of points for one power that can be denied every time, and also can flat out kill your psyker.

50 points seemed fairer to me. With other powers being less than that (haven't really followed the SM powers).

I do like the concept of paying for powers though. Just...not obscene. Should a Librarian with Invisibility cost 30 points less than a Wraithknight?

...probably not.

Wraithknights are 400+ pt models. Maybe 500. Not 295. They make IKs look like a bad joke.

That is not how you balance a game. knee jerk reactions would be the worst thing GW could do.

 Marmatag wrote:
That is not how you balance a game. knee jerk reactions would be the worst thing GW could do.

It's closer to being balanced than what GW vomits forth. I've seen WKs a LOT. They are totally worth 400+ pts.

Martel732 wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
That is not how you balance a game. knee jerk reactions would be the worst thing GW could do.

It's closer to being balanced than what GW vomits forth. I've seen WKs a LOT. They are totally worth 400+ pts.

You need a better argument than this to merit a 50+% increase in points.

Martel732 wrote:
Wraithknights are 400+ pt models. Maybe 500. Not 295. They make IKs look like a bad joke.

Maybe. But that's not what the current rules say.

I'm for making them more expensive or decreasing their stats to be balanced but right now they're 295pts. Making Psykers get within that boundary is ludicrous, since all it does it paint an even bigger target on their back, except they don't have the luxury of the Wraithknight's defensive stats to survive.

Of course, another option is just changing how Invisibility works, or removing it all together.

 Marmatag wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
That is not how you balance a game. knee jerk reactions would be the worst thing GW could do.

It's closer to being balanced than what GW vomits forth. I've seen WKs a LOT. They are totally worth 400+ pts.

You need a better argument than this to merit a 50+% increase in points.

They can suck up an entire 1850 pt army's worth of shooting and live. That's worth more than 295 pts. They can also one shot any vehicle or MC in the game from 36" away. Worth more than 295 pts. Can out punch nearly any CC unit in the game. Worth more than 295 pts. Did that need to be spelled out?

 GreaterGood? wrote:

Ushtarador wrote:

check out how many books you need to play a chaos space marine army

Exactly one.

Just because Chaos now has many possible sources to build armies from (which was something players wanted forever by the way) doesn't mean you have to buy and use them all. But if you want to be negative about this kind of stuff you can make up some ridiculous scenarios for sure.

Now is a pretty good time to start again, there are tons of starter boxes and army deals with big discounts that make it quite cheap to build up an army, especially if you play <1500 points. If you like 40k aesthetic the new models are amazing, and building army lists is more fun than ever.

That feels a bit pedantic to me. For example, If I want to play Eldar I want to know what all of my options are, where would I find that out? what books and non books have the eldar rules? It's reasonable to want to know what your options are.

To put it in another light however, would you prefer that GW didn't release supplements? To me that's a little tricky, as I feel that a more continuous stream of updates for any given army is preferable to getting a new codex every 4-6 years instead. It's easy to want a single source and just stick with that, but keeping an army "live" with extras definitely has its merits too.

Or to put yet another spin on it, if you wanted to play Space Marines, which books do you want? There are 6+? of them for all the ranging chapters, right? Some of the Chaos books fall into the same category, Khorne Daemonkin is a completely stand alone book, not unlike the current Blood Angles and Grey Knights codexes. Crimson Slaughter is more like the old expansion format, when Space Wolves etc. were essentially a supplement book to the basic Space Marine book in 3rd Edition. You need both books to play.

To play Chaos you can get by on one book, depending on how you want to play it. For most people however, I think the Legions book has become a must-have supplement. Personally I have three books, the two I just mentioned and then the Daemons book, which is itself another stand-alone army. It's only used by my Chaos Space Marine army if I take a Sorcerer and start summoning daemons, so it's pretty optional. So far I haven't used it as an adjunct to my CSM since the Legions book came out.

 Frozocrone wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Wraithknights are 400+ pt models. Maybe 500. Not 295. They make IKs look like a bad joke.

Maybe. But that's not what the current rules say.

I'm for making them more expensive or decreasing their stats to be balanced but right now they're 295pts. Making Psykers get within that boundary is ludicrous, since all it does it paint an even bigger target on their back, except they don't have the luxury of the Wraithknight's defensive stats to survive.

Of course, another option is just changing how Invisibility works, or removing it all together.

I'd be fine with that too.

 BBAP wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
In those examples, sure, the issues are pretty minimal and I'd take sniper rifles over mortars most of the time, but when we get into things like Wyverns, Thunderfire Cannons, Thudd Guns, artillery batteries, etc vs entire squads of snipers, the issues become very noticeable indeed, which kinda dovetails into the whole scale issue 40k has going on as well.

... but again, the overall effect on the game system is negligible. Nobody's complaining about OP Wyverns sniping their characters or lamenting the obsolescence of snipers.

well, not right now, mostly because other stuff has gotten even worse. There was mighty gnashing of teeth a couple years ago in 6th over IG Thudd Gun lists sniping characters and over the Wyvern until Necrons came out in 7E and reversed the power leveling that 2014 had been pushing kicked the whole power paradigm up 6 notches

And, to be fair, I cannot recall the last time I saw stuff like Ratlings on a table or Scouts/Rangers used as anything but minimum sized backfield scoring units, and nobody is taking sniper rifles as options when available elsewhere generally. Theyre pretty forgotten in my experience.

Commissar Benny wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Essentially they don't see themselves as a game company, the see themselves as a company that makes high end models for hobby enthusiasts, not a game development studio, and they say as much in their yearly shareholder reports. They're in it for making expensive models, not for making games.

I've never understood this logic. Its entirely in Games Workshop's best interest to make the rules for the tabletop as balanced/competitive as possible, yet they keep acting as if it has no impact on sales. Perhaps my inner circle and community isn't indicative of the 40k community at large but the power creep has gotten so out of control that pickup games are basically impossible at this point. 1/2 the armies aren't even viable in a competitive format. Point cost disparities between codices have been ignored entirely while there has been a push towards "formations" which have not resolved any of the balance issues but in most cases have made them worse.

I've said this for years but...I don't understand why they can't just hire an outside gaming company or elite players within the community and come up with a balanced/competitive ruleset. I'm not talking about AoSing 40k, but just going through the main rulebook eliminating redundancy/bloat and then going through every single codex, creating some sort of formula for point costs and then plugging in every unit into said formula to determine what everything should cost.

One might think, but its just not a concern of theirs apparently. They make pretty models, rules are just a vehicle to move sales, and there still seem to be people who trip over themselves to spend money on awful rules, therr are many who think 40k is just fine, and GW has no immediate and painful incentive to change even if it might otherwise improve future endeavors.

Commissar Benny wrote:
I don't understand why they can't just hire an outside gaming company or elite players within the community and come up with a balanced/competitive ruleset.

They are not that reliable. Just look at how a lot of people still complain about ITC or the old Dakka FAQs. While they did a lot of good, they still had a bit bad. So hiring a community is not reliable. If they were, they would have made a ruleset by now. Since the "community" didn't make a rule set that everyone can agree to, they will never make a rule set that the community will agree too.

Also look at the Generals Handbook. It was made by a "community of gamers" and while it's been applauded a lot, there are still a lot of people who will not accept it either. So again, the community is not the answer.