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Made in us
Fixture of Dakka





 AnomanderRake wrote:
I define "balance" as follows: there should be a good reason to use every option in the game.


This is actually where I feel a lot of companies and games and players lose sight of what is required to get the kind of balance they want. Points are a great tool, but they don't actually provide what you're talking about here. When two models occupy the same design space, even if the "better one" correctly "costs more" they don't both have a good reason to be used. One is more efficient for some reason; and probably not a reason that's immediately obvious. It might be an incentive of the game engine, it might be a factor of the meta that one is better countered than the other. Half the time, its nothing to do with the units themselves but just that the points saved on one determine whether something else "fits" in the list correctly.

What really matters is that everything does a unique job. That's one of the big driving forces behind the subfaction push in recent years (see Infinity, Warmachine, Malifaux, etc) and a lot of what GW is trying to do with its own version of the concept. Break down these things that have grown to the point where there's not really any design space left and make room to design them with clear, focused, interlocking mechanics.
   
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Orem, Utah

Back on the OT, here are some games I can argue are balanced:


- Hordes/Warmachine. While not every unit or tactic is top tier, each faction is balanced against one another.

This means that every faction is commonly represented in the top tournaments, and the winner is commonly enough something that players thought was not so good.

Privateer Press regularly has open betas for new factions and units, and annually evaluates and updates existing units.

The downside of this is that players need to print their own stat cards a little too regularly, and the game sometimes seems like it is eternally in beta testing and never finished.


- I'd like to make a quick case for Blood Bowl's approach to balance.

Blood Bowl is mostly balanced very well, but some of the teams are clear underdogs. Rather than try to insist that Halflings are just as good as High Elves, the game (and community) embrace the idea that some teams are significantly harder to play.

This leads to a situation where the toughest teams are regularly chosen by top tier players looking for a challenge, and tournaments will give an award for the best performing "Stunty Team."


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Talizvar wrote:

Non-random game wins are determined by experience of the player completely.
.


We like to think that, but the better player doesn't always win the game. That's why Chess Championhips feature a series of games (kind of like Baseball).

Of course, the better player will usually win, and that's more true of games without random elements.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/11/14 20:13:05


 
   
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Canada

 spaceelf wrote:
My question is, what miniature game is really balanced, and in what ways?

The first thing to do in a discussion about this is figure out what "balance" means.
If it means perfectly fair, then no games are balanced, not even chess (white has a slight advantage going first).
If you consider balance as a spectrum, it allows an actual conversation. Some games are more balanced than others.
When I say a game is balanced I mean that stuff you do outside the game (mostly choosing your faction and writing a list) has a small impact on the outcome. The game is decided after it starts.

I am also curious why balance is such a major issue in wargames. In actual historicals wars, balance was never a thing.

The game part of wargame is the operative part here. It's meant to be fun for both players, it's a hobby and meant to be enjoyed.
War is about killing people, it's fething awful and horrific to take part in. Not really comparable in terms of intend and design.

There are two reasons for making a game balanced:
It's more fun. Losing a game that you couldn't win is not fun. I've played more than a few games of Warhammer (either) where I could not win, I simply should have brought a better list or chosen a different army.
I've also brought my usual army and found that it was far more powerful than my opponent's (7th ed daemons vs CSM), winning without trying is not fun either.
Having to have separate lists for competition and casual play sucks too and the casual lists never match up (even if you actually want them to).

Second, donkey-cave proofing. You know that kind of player who wants to win and doesn't care if you have any fun in the process? The kind of player who seems to derive pleasure from others not enjoying the game?
Do you think they would rather have to be good at the game to win or would it be easier to get what they want from a game by bringing a list that will win for them?

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Second, donkey-cave proofing. You know that kind of player who wants to win and doesn't care if you have any fun in the process? The kind of player who seems to derive pleasure from others not enjoying the game?
Do you think they would rather have to be good at the game to win or would it be easier to get what they want from a game by bringing a list that will win for them?


Semi balanced games magically draw them in, i feel.

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 DarkBlack wrote:

When I say a game is balanced I mean that stuff you do outside the game (mostly choosing your faction and writing a list) has a small impact on the outcome. The game is decided after it starts.


I actually think I disagree with you here.


With games, I feel that there are choices that are meant to be strategic/tactical and choices that are meant to not be strategic/tactical. In a balanced game, the player who makes the better tactical and strategic choices should win.



In a tabletop miniatures game, choosing what faction to play is not supposed to be a strategic choice- fans generally feel that all of them should be viable, and we complain if we feel like there are right and wrong factions to play.

Likewise, terrain is not meant to be a strategic choice. You're supposed to set up the terrain in such a way that will make for a fun game and not give either force a significant advantage over the other. Players who try to min-max the terrain setup for their force are usually considered kind of douchy.

On the other hand, crafting your force is ABSOLUTELY a strategic choice. Players are meant to spend quite a lot of time min-maxing and coordinating their forces.


Imagine that one player crafted his force very carefully with a firm battle plan in mind and combat roles for all units. His opponent rolled dice to literally randomize his force selection. In a balanced game, the player who crafted his army list should have a significant advantage going in. Ideally, every unit in the codex should be viable enough that there's a place for them in 'some' top tier force, but that's not to say that it shouldn't matter what you bring.


One of the complaints about Warhammer is that much of the strategy is determined by army selection and plan going into the game (which is a lot like deck building in Magic). But list building is a very important part of playing the game, and a lot of actually playing the game is really kind of testing the army you've fine tuned against your opponent's (again, similar to a CCG or LCG game).

With some other games, there is a greater emphasis on making decisions on the fly and reacting to the situation at hand rather than executing your plan (I find that Blood Bowl and Warmachine both do this quite well).


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Not Online!!! wrote:
Second, donkey-cave proofing. You know that kind of player who wants to win and doesn't care if you have any fun in the process? The kind of player who seems to derive pleasure from others not enjoying the game?
Do you think they would rather have to be good at the game to win or would it be easier to get what they want from a game by bringing a list that will win for them?


Semi balanced games magically draw them in, i feel.



To be fair, not everyone who is accused of being a donkey cave deserves it.

I mean, sometimes a player is actually good at the game, and that's why they won. The donkey cave is the guy who insists that the ethical thing to do is to "play for fun" by not attempting to fulfill the victory conditions within the parameters laid down by the rules set.

I mean, no one in basketball bitched about how Michale Jordon should have let them win more often.


But in GW's main games, there is a long standing tradition of players regulating game balance by bitching at one another about how certain lists are "wrong" to play. This takes the onus of game balance off of the game designer's shoulders and puts it onto the players. Honestly, this ruins some of the fun for me- it kind of sucks if you win a game but players insist that the way you played was akin to cheating.

This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2019/11/15 17:00:11


 
   
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A game designer I follow on Twitter mentioned how he'd prefer to play an interesting than a perfectly balanced game. These aren't necessarily linked; a perfectly balanced but interesting game doesn't seem logically impossible, but I can see how player engagement might be a better metric than balance.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/11/15 16:59:04


 
   
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 odinsgrandson wrote:

Imagine that one player crafted his force very carefully with a firm battle plan in mind and combat roles for all units. His opponent rolled dice to literally randomize his force selection. In a balanced game, the player who crafted his army list should have a significant advantage going in. Ideally, every unit in the codex should be viable enough that there's a place for them in 'some' top tier force, but that's not to say that it shouldn't matter what you bring.


One of the complaints about Warhammer is that much of the strategy is determined by army selection and plan going into the game (which is a lot like deck building in Magic). But list building is a very important part of playing the game, and a lot of actually playing the game is really kind of testing the army you've fine tuned against your opponent's (again, similar to a CCG or LCG game).


Problem is that list building in GW games isn't about smartly crafting a coherent force, it's about spamming units that are underpriced for what they do. GW games aren't nuanced enough for battlefield roles to matter.

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In fairness there's only two things a unit in Warhammer can do: Kill other units, and not be killed. Obviously some units are going to be more optimal for either or both.
   
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Nurglitch wrote:
In fairness there's only two things a unit in Warhammer can do: Kill other units, and not be killed. Obviously some units are going to be more optimal for either or both.


You can say that about literally any game if you ignore half the mechanics, like weapons that are better against some units than others, movement, objective holding, board footprint, buffs, debuffs, healing, deep strike, tying things up with charges, invuln vs armor saves...

I was about to bring up Infinity as a game I recently played that looks pretty solidly balanced from the competitive scene, but hey - all units can do is kill and not die in that game too by your own definition. I'll just go ahead and ignore movement, hacking, alternate deployment, healing, template weapons and ARO and make the game seem shittier.

"Got you, Yugi! Your Rubric Marines can't fall back because I have declared the tertiary kaptaris ka'tah stance two, after the secondary dacatarai ka'tah last turn!"

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"you think it is you who has gotten me, yugi, but it is I who have gotten you! I declare the ever-vigilant stratagem to attack your rubrics with my custodes' ranged weapons, which with the new codex are now DAMAGE 2!!"

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the_scotsman wrote:
Nurglitch wrote:
In fairness there's only two things a unit in Warhammer can do: Kill other units, and not be killed. Obviously some units are going to be more optimal for either or both.


You can say that about literally any game if you ignore half the mechanics, like weapons that are better against some units than others, movement, objective holding, board footprint, buffs, debuffs, healing, deep strike, tying things up with charges, invuln vs armor saves...

I was about to bring up Infinity as a game I recently played that looks pretty solidly balanced from the competitive scene, but hey - all units can do is kill and not die in that game too by your own definition. I'll just go ahead and ignore movement, hacking, alternate deployment, healing, template weapons and ARO and make the game seem shittier.


None of that really matters in AoS/40k because all scenarios are literally about standing on points (= not being killed) and preventing your opponent from standing on points (=killing).

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/11/15 18:26:04


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odinsgrandson wrote:
With games, I feel that there are choices that are meant to be strategic/tactical and choices that are meant to not be strategic/tactical. In a balanced game, the player who makes the better tactical and strategic choices should win.

I like this definition, well put.

In a tabletop miniatures game, choosing what faction to play is not supposed to be a strategic choice- fans generally feel that all of them should be viable, and we complain if we feel like there are right and wrong factions to play.

Likewise, terrain is not meant to be a strategic choice. You're supposed to set up the terrain in such a way that will make for a fun game and not give either force a significant advantage over the other. Players who try to min-max the terrain setup for their force are usually considered kind of douchy.

On the other hand, crafting your force is ABSOLUTELY a strategic choice. Players are meant to spend quite a lot of time min-maxing and coordinating their forces.

Imagine that one player crafted his force very carefully with a firm battle plan in mind and combat roles for all units. His opponent rolled dice to literally randomize his force selection. In a balanced game, the player who crafted his army list should have a significant advantage going in. Ideally, every unit in the codex should be viable enough that there's a place for them in 'some' top tier force, but that's not to say that it shouldn't matter what you bring.

It's a matter of how much. Some lists will always be better than others due to how the list work together and the scenarios the game offers. KoW tries to advantage balanced lists over skew lists, by having list building before determining scenario and a variety of said scenarios.
Units also become more or less valuable depending on what is already in a list. Redundancy becomes a waste of points if overdone, missing combat roles are more valuable than a role that's already filled. A player can also waste points on units that can't be brought to bear or artefacts that have no use (like a shooting attack on a combat hero that never actually gets to shoot).

Tactics and strategy are a thing because there are always better and worse ways to use resources. Ask a financial adviser.

How much though?
I think that list building should not decide the game. Assuming one player doesn't bring a stupid list, both players should have a reasonable chance of winning the game when it star

To be fair, not everyone who is accused of being a donkey cave deserves it.

Those would not be the people I was referring to then.

I mean, sometimes a player is actually good at the game, and that's why they won. The donkey cave is the guy who insists that the ethical thing to do is to "play for fun" by not attempting to fulfill the victory conditions within the parameters laid down by the rules set.

I mean, no one in basketball bitched about how Michale Jordon should have let them win more often.


But in GW's main games, there is a long standing tradition of players regulating game balance by bitching at one another about how certain lists are "wrong" to play. This takes the onus of game balance off of the game designer's shoulders and puts it onto the players. Honestly, this ruins some of the fun for me- it kind of sucks if you win a game but players insist that the way you played was akin to cheating.

Basket ball is not intended to be a hobby. Sports are meant to test which athlete or team is superior, it's the prime example of winning before the game.
The thing about GW games is that the balance is so poor that bringing a competitive list against someone who just want to put something cool on the table makes a horrifically one sided game that isn't fun.
The onus of balance is put onto the players because the game designers have failed so miserably.

Some players always blame a loss on something other than themselves though, they are also donkey-caves, but not the kind I was referring to.

lord_blackfang wrote:
 odinsgrandson wrote:

Imagine that one player crafted his force very carefully with a firm battle plan in mind and combat roles for all units. His opponent rolled dice to literally randomize his force selection. In a balanced game, the player who crafted his army list should have a significant advantage going in. Ideally, every unit in the codex should be viable enough that there's a place for them in 'some' top tier force, but that's not to say that it shouldn't matter what you bring.


One of the complaints about Warhammer is that much of the strategy is determined by army selection and plan going into the game (which is a lot like deck building in Magic). But list building is a very important part of playing the game, and a lot of actually playing the game is really kind of testing the army you've fine tuned against your opponent's (again, similar to a CCG or LCG game).


Problem is that list building in GW games isn't about smartly crafting a coherent force, it's about spamming units that are underpriced for what they do. GW games aren't nuanced enough for battlefield roles to matter.

This is well said.
the_scotsman wrote:
Nurglitch wrote:
In fairness there's only two things a unit in Warhammer can do: Kill other units, and not be killed. Obviously some units are going to be more optimal for either or both.


You can say that about literally any game if you ignore half the mechanics, like weapons that are better against some units than others, movement, objective holding, board footprint, buffs, debuffs, healing, deep strike, tying things up with charges, invuln vs armor saves...

I was about to bring up Infinity as a game I recently played that looks pretty solidly balanced from the competitive scene, but hey - all units can do is kill and not die in that game too by your own definition. I'll just go ahead and ignore movement, hacking, alternate deployment, healing, template weapons and ARO and make the game seem shittier.

Which definition are your referring to? It seems obvious to me that Nurglitch criticizing 40k, specifically saying that it is not like Infinity in that other factors don't affect the outcome. The "other stuff" in Warhammer boils down to those two things, while things like "ability to take objectives" is an important consideration in other games.

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Our local group had some pretty hideous experiences with accidental brokenness with GW's games. We had this escalation league going and one of the most narrative based players who picks their stuff based on what miniatures he likes accidentally assembled an army that no one else had any chance against. The league utterly collapsed. Everyone had been slowly adding to their forces and to have any chance we all would have to start over in what we were including and painting.

Some of us ending up switching to the free rules from OnePageRules.com like Grimdark Future and it was shocking that a single guy doing a labour of love got balance better than this huge company.
   
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We had similar at our club. One chap assembled a list based on the new Necron releases purely because he liked the models. He was a good player and always tough to beat, but nobody could have accused him of bringing anything overtly broken, and his list was clearly a product of enthusiasm not gaming the system.

Then 6th happened and all those Necron skimmers got turned into Necron flyers and the passion project overnight turned into the Necron Flying Bakery. Poor chap switched factions after that as he felt bad cleaning everyone's clocks.

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 spaceelf wrote:

People mentioned wanting an equal chance of winning. I agree that it would be good in many senses. However, there do not seem to be many such games. So should we be satisfied with a game in which we get to make decisions and try to optimise our choices towards SOME end, even if that end is not necessarily 'winning'?


What I'm reading here is less "an equal chance of winning" and more "not losing before the game actually begins". . . . Its been a fair bit since I've thrown dice with friends, but, even though all of us are capable of great lists/strategies and hyper-meta-gaming things, we found that tiresome and that it sucked a lot of fun out. In many ways, it was because we'd deploy and say, "well gak, unless the dice are REALLY favorable to me, I don't see how I'll win this". Or, we'd have a group game and say "well, if Jim and Jerry are on the same team, they will automatically win due to the factions they are bringing, so lets split them up", which again, goes to show that, at least with GW games, there is a severe lack of balance going on both internally and externally, and I think that as long as they can sell models, not much will be done to change that.


A now long defunct game that I always found entertaining, had pretty good models, and seemed on the surface to have decent balance (I only played a half dozen games or so, and only bought a handful of models so had to play mostly proxies), was Helldorado. Due to its rules setup, we typically didn't see much in the way of alpha strikes, and much of the first 1-1.5 turns/game rounds was spent maneuvering. There was internal balance between factions (ie, a heavily armored model was tough, hit pretty hard, but also had a mid-high cost, and had a low initiative compared to other melee options in the same faction), and while each faction sort of specialized in a theme/feeling, they werent automatically neutralized by another faction. . . There were soft counters for most situations.
   
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GW hasn't been known for rules balance for years and years. There is only the Meta-Chase, and the Great Rules Bloat that every game quickly turns into.

One page Fantasy is a less detailed (in some ways wonderfully so) but more balanced way to push 40K models around the table, whether it's Army- or Skirmish-scale you are interested in. I also love the Fantasy battles Skirmish rules, too. They push games that I can teach anyone (not just those who are going to go whole-hog into the game), which is not in any way how I would describe either 40k or AoS as they stand right now. Especially 40K, which is falling back into old habits that 8th was supposed to be a new start away from.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/11/17 20:30:09




"By this point I'm convinced 100% that every single race in the 40k universe have somehow tapped into the ork ability to just have their tech work because they think it should."  
   
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Codex+Chapter Supplement+Campaign Supplement does seem like its hitting a tipping point in bloat and nonsense. I'll be curious to see how the next year goes.
   
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I'd have to say that I find both Grimdark Future and Age of Fantasy pretty damn well balanced, with a pretty healthy development as well.



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I don't think I much care about balance in games, but I think that stems from not really enjoying competitive style games from the get-go. Even less so the 40K styled "build an army to a points value" game...of which there are many, perhaps too many.

For me, it's more about the story that develops during the game. Balance has little to do with that. I've always enjoyed historical wargames which provide a historical event/battle. You fight it out on the table top and compare your performance to what actually happened. Did you fare better or worse? Were you able to pull of the historical upset that occurred? Did you flip history on its head. These games almost never feature balanced armies...quite the opposite. The objective might be "hold this road junction as long as you can...bonus points if you can stall the tanks from reaching it", etc.

Here's an example of the simple ASL (Advanced Squad Leader) style of scenarios, which come in a pack (this one appears to be a fan-made one, but they're all the same style/layout):

Spoiler:


They give you the boards to use, their orientation, the orders of battle for each side, and an objective. They offer a small "BALANCE" section if you want to minimize the difficulty. Then they have a lovely little Aftermath section which is always fun to read after the fact. You may have done something COMPLETELY different and won, or lost. Or you might read it and realize you had a similar plan to what unfolded, etc.

Now, have the scenarios been tested to be a suitable game? Sure. But a scenario might be very much designed so that 90% of the time the defender does not succeed. It's a matter of how "well" they failed, lol. If I trusted GW's competence to make a non-sales-gimmick related game, I'd be all over a series of fake historical 40K engagements - similar to some of the older Imperial Armour books. I'd much rather play a scenario with a set army list and see how I fared in the end.

Part of the appeal of any wargame to me is the "simulation" aspect, as silly as that may seem in a futuristic 40K setting. A simulation would never have two equally balanced armies meeting on common ground both with the same goal of standing in certain spots on a grassy field to "win". I'm always far more intrigued by the lopsided contests, the surprise actions, the "against all odds" engagements - after all those are the ones that make the history books. Some of the historical games will give you additional components or limitations. For instance, some of the ASL scenarios might tell you to place a tank on hex "Y", and it's immobilized, or certain vehicles are out of their main gun ammunition, etc. I'd love to see this kind of scenario/fake-history be brought to a game like 40K, but I just don't see how that generates sales for GW. That is obviously their prime motivation.

In short, give me a cool, thematic lopsided game any day of the week. You can keep the build-and-battle tournament style games.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2019/11/19 01:17:50


 
   
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Infinity is more balanced than most games, but it requires you to know what you're doing with your units and make smart decisions- and the dice can betray you, no matter what- even if a big beast TAG is up against a wimp with a pistol, things can go horribly wrong.

For some people, "balance" means that there's an array of choices to offset weaknesses, to minimize another faction's strong points, etc.

For a lot of people, "balance" means "performs the same but with different words and requires me to do no thinking".

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the_scotsman wrote:
Nurglitch wrote:
In fairness there's only two things a unit in Warhammer can do: Kill other units, and not be killed. Obviously some units are going to be more optimal for either or both.


You can say that about literally any game if you ignore half the mechanics, like weapons that are better against some units than others, movement, objective holding, board footprint, buffs, debuffs, healing, deep strike, tying things up with charges, invuln vs armor saves...

I was about to bring up Infinity as a game I recently played that looks pretty solidly balanced from the competitive scene, but hey - all units can do is kill and not die in that game too by your own definition. I'll just go ahead and ignore movement, hacking, alternate deployment, healing, template weapons and ARO and make the game seem shittier.

I think it is a problem in many wargames that killing the other guy first tends to be the dominant strategy. Even when it's purely a matter of holding objectives you need to kill the other guy's stuff so it can't hold objectives, and make sure your stuff holding objectives isn't killed. I'm not saying that's bad, or trying to be reductionist. That's just what stuff in Warhammer 40,000 can do, complications included. Certainly there's plenty of times in games where you need to run for the objectives instead of finding an optimal target and killing it, and it would be cool to have more of those, but in those situations you're not so much taking a risk as not just throwing the game for the excuse to kill a few models. I don't know how to tweak Warhammer to engineer more of that in the game than anyone else.

But consider, if you will, how some of the stuff you mentioned is suddenly going to become so much more important if you play a game where you can't kill enemy models. It's not just a matter of all those points wasted on valuating weapons, armour, and abilities models won't be able to use, but about how the goals and decisions constituting the game are played out. Warhammer and Infinity and such are very different from work placement or area control games, despite having some similarities, and a big difference seems to be the logistics of defeating an opponent's capabilities as much as competing with those capabilities.
   
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Well.... yes.... wargames are about combat. Scenarios are generally a way to force engagement. Its worth noting that plenty of euros result in you killing your opponents resources. It's actually very common in worker placement games to take a spot to deny someone something they need to take something from you.

One of the dangers extreme pursuits of balance can create is a tendency to confuse being in a winning position with an unbalanced game state. It's very easy to try so hard to make sure both players have a chance to the bitter end that you make everything but the bitter end irrelevant.

There's a few games out there that play with being unable to kill models. Either via respawn mechanics or just relying more on the ability to reposition opposing models. The funny thing is they don't often feel that different once you're really in game. Once the opposing player has acted in a way that removes your current win route, it feels largely the same as if the piece had "died".
   
Made in us
Clousseau




Balanced games are not about being a 50/50 knife edge of balance. When people talk about balance they generally are saying that they don't want the game to be over before the opening die roll. If you feel you at least have a sporting chance of good play enforcing an outcome, that is generally good enough. Good play coming AFTER the lists are deployed, not during the excel spreadsheet phase in your home prepping for the game.

GW games are often decided before you even throw the first die based on how important list building is.

The more balanced the game, the more viable every unit within a faction is on the table.

The less balanced the game, the more obvious the must-haves are and the never-takes.

AOS and 40k are the poster children for horrible balance because the lists tend to write themselves.

Many people don't care about that kind of thing.

For me, showing up to a game and knowing i'm going to lose before I even had a chance to deploy is not a fun use of my time because I happen to like the models that are garbage and my opponent understands middle school math enough to know how to min/max.

Historical battles and war in general is not about sporting chance to your enemy. Its about killing them. Games are not real war. Games are there to be enjoyed. No one would play chess if white won 75% of the time because they had rules that made them far superior. No one would want to play a board game where the little dog piece gave you a huge advantage over your opponents. Because those things aren't generally seen as fun or sporting.

That forces me to field a certain force based off of min/max math, and not only that but to constantly buy and paint new models every 6-8 months as new FAQs and books are released to keep the game interesting.

That is the opposite of fun for me.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/11/19 15:05:49


 
   
Made in us
Decrepit Dakkanaut





Nurglitch wrote:

I think it is a problem in many wargames that killing the other guy first tends to be the dominant strategy. Even when it's purely a matter of holding objectives you need to kill the other guy's stuff so it can't hold objectives, and make sure your stuff holding objectives isn't killed. I'm not saying that's bad, or trying to be reductionist. That's just what stuff in Warhammer 40,000 can do, complications included. Certainly there's plenty of times in games where you need to run for the objectives instead of finding an optimal target and killing it, and it would be cool to have more of those, but in those situations you're not so much taking a risk as not just throwing the game for the excuse to kill a few models. I don't know how to tweak Warhammer to engineer more of that in the game than anyone else.

But consider, if you will, how some of the stuff you mentioned is suddenly going to become so much more important if you play a game where you can't kill enemy models. It's not just a matter of all those points wasted on valuating weapons, armour, and abilities models won't be able to use, but about how the goals and decisions constituting the game are played out. Warhammer and Infinity and such are very different from work placement or area control games, despite having some similarities, and a big difference seems to be the logistics of defeating an opponent's capabilities as much as competing with those capabilities.


I think one of the core rules that leads to the "kill everything first, hold objectives second" mindset is that, at least in GW games, if your opponent has 0 models on the table, they automatically lose the game. I don't know if its changed, but when I tried out Malifaux 1e, I quickly noticed a line saying to the effect of "even if you table your opponent, that does not guarantee victory" . . . ie, you NEED to accomplish your objectives before your opponent, tabling them has little effect on winning (unless that is an objective you draw)
   
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Longtime Dakkanaut





 auticus wrote:
No one would play chess if white won 75% of the time because they had rules that made them far superior.
White wins 53%-56% because of the first turn advantage. If Chess were played by Warhammer players, they would fight over who got to play White (blood has been shed over much less than a 6% advantage), and would immediately concede the game if they were forced to play Black.

The problem is not the balance, it is not the game, it is the players. They have a diseased mindset that poisons the experience.
   
Made in at
Second Story Man





Austria

If Chess would be like a GW game, White would have first turn, but Black would be allowed to have up to 4 additional Queens all tournament players would take while the Fluff-Players would just take 1 or 2

Harry, bring this ring to Narnia or the Sith will take the Enterprise 
   
Made in us
Decrepit Dakkanaut





Maybe? Years ago something I loved about the 2nd edition Tyranids was not only the awesome Scream-Killer model, but also the way they tried to represent the impact of a Tyranid attack on the opposing side's logistics. Which makes me think that Warhammer 40k is really well set up to take advantage of some light logistics in designing armies now that we have choices from super-elites down to sub-PDF grade conscripts. Where my favourite part of 40k is the combat phase, it seems like a great way of both balancing out the inherent lethality/toughness matrix in Warhammer and making the experience interesting. Something like the old 'Mission' cards for each detachment, where the harder a unit is, the harder its mission is.

Aside from balancing out whether one army can fight another to a nigh-standstill, it would be interesting to see if scenarios could be designed where stuff ranging from Knights to Grots could do something interesting.

In terms of interesting, there's a fantastic wargame/ttrpg out there called "Pulp Alley" which is an equivalent to Kill Team and Necromunda. Part of setting up a game is having these little plot-points floating around like hybrid objective/game-pieces that do a great job of shaping the action in the game. It also has this really neat initiative system where the player with the initiative gets to choose which model activates next, regardless of which player controls it. They can lose the initiative by losing a close-combat, or failing a roll with a plot-point.

Another thought I had came from the notion of engagements in Epic Armageddon. In Epic Armageddon you have detachments like players have units in Warhammer 40,000. These detachments can 'engage', which is to say make a single move within 5cm of one or more enemy detachments, and then you resolve attacks from all units the attacking and defending detachments within 15cm of a target. Stuff in base-to-base gets to use its Close Combat (CC) value, and stuff up to 15 cm away gets to use its Firefight (FF); skimmers get to use their FF even if in base-to-base. The neat thing was that not only did the attacking and defending unit get to attack, but all detachments with a unit within 15cm of an attacking or defending attachment. It lead to tiny SM detachments mopping up larger Ork and AM detachments through careful, staggered engagements that let them maximize the number of units attacking in each engagement.

My thought was that it would be something for players to be able to declare engagements in Warhammer 40k, combining shooting and close combat, and a move. Kind of like wrapping a charge into picking a unit to fight in the Close Combat phase. So a player might pick a Knight and have it engage two squads of SM and a tank, just like a Titan might engage two detachments of SM and a super-heavy in E:A. The player declaring the engagement then moves their unit, and piles in, the defenders pile-in, everyone attacks, shooting and combat (fancy Aeldari attack-first rules go first...dastards), everyone accrues blast markers, and the side with more blast markers 'loses' and either gets pushed back a distance or loses models/wounds/etc.

This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2019/11/19 17:39:41


 
   
Made in ca
Grumpy Longbeard





Canada

Sqorgar wrote:
 auticus wrote:
No one would play chess if white won 75% of the time because they had rules that made them far superior.
White wins 53%-56% because of the first turn advantage. If Chess were played by Warhammer players, they would fight over who got to play White (blood has been shed over much less than a 6% advantage), and would immediately concede the game if they were forced to play Black.

The problem is not the balance, it is not the game, it is the players. They have a diseased mindset that poisons the experience.

Where does that mindset come from and why don't other game have the same?

Nightstalkers Dwarfs
GASLANDS!
Holy Roman Empire  
   
Made in us
Fixture of Dakka





White doesn't get anything black doesn't. It's advantage is entirely one of tempo and board state. Most people that complain about balance do so when faced with pretty standard decision making because they see something their opponent can do and don't think of a way to counter it. The chess comparison is someone moving their Bishop to threaten a Rook and their opponent complaining because they have no way to take the Bishop with the Rook in response. These are the kind of issues that in a symmetrical game have obvious solutions because you can just do what your opponent did, but in games greater asymmetry lead to players not trusting the game and, due to standard hubris, cannot accept their own faults. One of the reasons I usually start a game with tournament lists is simply because when I lose with them I have no one to blame but myself. Once I'm convinced I'm just bad at the game, I can have a lot more fun losing with other options too.
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut





 DarkBlack wrote:
Where does that mindset come from and why don't other game have the same?
Some other games do have that mindset, particularly customizable card games. Magic the Gathering is probably worse than 40k is. Some video games have that attitude. Fortnite and Overwatch can definitely be like that.

Honestly, I'm not sure where it comes from, but looking at the games that feature the worst of this kind of attitude, it definitely seems like tournaments and competitive play are a contributing factor.

That being said, lots of people play Fortnite who aren't really competitive, and yet that mindset seeps into their game experience. My daughter has basically no chance of being competitive at Fortnite, but she picks it up from the Fortnite streamers, so she calls everybody try-hards and says "lol. just build". She tries to do build battles, but is way out of her league and often ends up losing easy kills by trying to play in this manner.

So maybe it isn't whether the games themselves are competitive. Maybe it is whether the game's most respected players are. Maybe we need to praise less the tournament winners and more the people who build cool tables and scenarios for their friends. We should reward winning less than sportsmanship, and stop seeing tournament winners as the only people who truly understand how to play the game. In my opinion, the best miniature gamers are the ones who are willing to intentionally lose to create a better game experience.

And we should stop giving a crap about "balance", because it doesn't exist. Well, it does, but the balance you think you want isn't the game experience you actually want. Perfect balance is a uptopic ideal - it is good in theory, but you can't achieve it... and if you could, the resulting experience would be extremely unpleasant. It is worth taking a moment to realize that the best experiences of 40k are the ones where winning doesn't matter.
   
Made in ca
Grumpy Longbeard





Canada

 Sqorgar wrote:
 DarkBlack wrote:
Where does that mindset come from and why don't other game have the same?
Some other games do have that mindset, particularly customizable card games. Magic the Gathering is probably worse than 40k is. Some video games have that attitude. Fortnite and Overwatch can definitely be like that.

Honestly, I'm not sure where it comes from, but looking at the games that feature the worst of this kind of attitude, it definitely seems like tournaments and competitive play are a contributing factor.

That being said, lots of people play Fortnite who aren't really competitive, and yet that mindset seeps into their game experience. My daughter has basically no chance of being competitive at Fortnite, but she picks it up from the Fortnite streamers, so she calls everybody try-hards and says "lol. just build". She tries to do build battles, but is way out of her league and often ends up losing easy kills by trying to play in this manner.

So maybe it isn't whether the games themselves are competitive. Maybe it is whether the game's most respected players are. Maybe we need to praise less the tournament winners and more the people who build cool tables and scenarios for their friends. We should reward winning less than sportsmanship, and stop seeing tournament winners as the only people who truly understand how to play the game. In my opinion, the best miniature gamers are the ones who are willing to intentionally lose to create a better game experience.

And we should stop giving a crap about "balance", because it doesn't exist. Well, it does, but the balance you think you want isn't the game experience you actually want. Perfect balance is a uptopic ideal - it is good in theory, but you can't achieve it... and if you could, the resulting experience would be extremely unpleasant. It is worth taking a moment to realize that the best experiences of 40k are the ones where winning doesn't matter.

I meant other wargames. I'm curious, how many non-GW wargames have you played?
In card games, like Magic, deck building is a large part of the game. It's part of the design, so it's not comparable in terms of this discussion.
I'm not familiar enough with online gaming to discuss it. I recall Uncle Atom did a video about it though. Designed to achieve something different too though, so this discussion is not really applicable there either.

Have you read the thread?
No one asks for perfect balance, the consensus seems to be that perfect balance is impossible, but "good enough" balance is desirable. Why would perfect balance be extremely unpleasant though?

I would argue that the game and how it is designed has an impact on the players who are attracted to the game and how the community acts. If a game is poorly balanced then it attracts the kind of players who would abuse that. Once the cheese starts (even if unintentional) even normally good players get tired of losing and getting their own cheese gets more tempting and the community gets into the mindset you describe more and more.

Nightstalkers Dwarfs
GASLANDS!
Holy Roman Empire  
   
 
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