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So crazy thought, what if the goal of the campaign is actually to get people to volunteer game results so GW can crunch the numbers and adjust points accordingly. The hardest issue with getting balance right is sample size, the more games you observe the more chance there is to find an issue. They might have played a thousand games while playtesting, but with 20 factions, that's only a hundred games per faction. By necessity the number of players involved was small, certainly less than 100, so as to prevent leaks.

The campaign offers some interesting opportunities, it's already up to 3,500 games with likely over a thousand players, and those numbers will both increase as the campaign goes on. I wouldn't be surprised if the campaign eclipses an entire year's worth of ITC data during it's course. Considering the ITC data was very predictive, well before they decided to go and muddy up the waters by combining 7th ed and 8th ed, so I think GW is sitting on a gold mine of balance data. I think they will even have time to crunch the numbers before chapter approved goes gold. I think old GW would never have bothered but nu-GW seems pretty data driven, and to want a good competitive scene. What do you guys think, GW savvy enough to pull it off, or am i reading too much into it?

It's so easy to gather and analyze data these days that I would be surprised if they didn't use it to balance the game.

Maybe? They might be able to get some external-balance data out of it, but we're not reporting with lists and most of the issues I see come out when comparing single units rather than entire Codexes. If I look at a set of ten thousand datapoints that tell me whether Tau or Orks won games against each other that isn't going to offer helpful data about Kroot Carnivores being utter trash compared to Boyz.

How would this gather any data?

Are they using 500 or 1500? PL or points? Allies or no allies. Xeno vs. Xenos means whoever goes as defender is random and cant be balanced and assumptions can't be made.

There's no way to use it to gather data. They've got no vehical for data collection other than a very basic "who got more wins reported?"

Since they're allowing home games, there isn't even any way for them to filter out fake reports.

You can expect most of their balancing to be done based on big tournaments that require list submission because there's a lot more control available.

The simple answer is no. GW has no idea how to balance its units and game beyond a certain point. After a quick look at my codex entries I was easily able to ascertain that every one of my walkers was still trash, I was able to see huge problems with my Mek Gunz/Big Gunz and see numerous other flaws that left the codex open to a butt kicking. It would have been easy to spot these as a game creator to so then the question becomes, why didn't they fix these issues? I'm going to stick with Laziness as the answer.

They are using it to get marketing data and to sell noobz lots of models short-term.

No

Its clear with the hamfisted rollout of 8th, there is no focus on game balance at gw.

The only sort of input the campaign gives is Imperium/Xenos/Chaos and how many points either side won a game.

It doesn't really go in depth as to what army was being used, the units being used, the options being used, how many points something is, total number of points, detachments, which CP strategems are being used more, etc etc.

Hardly a base to make adjustments to a game.

Looking for trends. The human population is even more diverse than our simple game yet statisticians look for trends among surveys and reports to determine a specific course of action. It wouldn't be about looking for who's playing the most OP whatever but instead looking for what side totals are looking like, the win percentage of the world at war, and whether these results fit their expectations of what they thought they would be. I'm sure they have this grand plan to make Imperium 40%, Chaos 40%, and Xenos 20% and this can be a measure to see if they're on track or not. Depending on the results, they may shift around book priorities or release certain models sooner to drum up excitement for the respective sides. GW has done these global campaigns sporadically for many years to get a general idea of the state of the game's popularity and makes actual financial decisions based on them.

Don't see it producing great data. Hopefully GW will notice something though.

I could have been. The Infinity global campaign probably gave some data, CB has an online tournament system that links to their army builder though, so they have data from there too.

Edit: also what Arkaine said.
I doubt anyone runs a campaign primarily for such data though, I would think better data can be gotten from keeping tabs tournaments.

 Arkaine wrote:
Looking for trends. The human population is even more diverse than our simple game yet statisticians look for trends among surveys and reports to determine a specific course of action. It wouldn't be about looking for who's playing the most OP whatever but instead looking for what side totals are looking like, the win percentage of the world at war, and whether these results fit their expectations of what they thought they would be. I'm sure they have this grand plan to make Imperium 40%, Chaos 40%, and Xenos 20% and this can be a measure to see if they're on track or not. Depending on the results, they may shift around book priorities or release certain models sooner to drum up excitement for the respective sides. GW has done these global campaigns sporadically for many years to get a general idea of the state of the game's popularity and makes actual financial decisions based on them.

And you work for them and the chief exec told you? - not being arsey but that last bit is a fairly bold statement.

 NoiseMarine with Tinnitus wrote:
And you work for them and the chief exec told you? - not being arsey but that last bit is a fairly bold statement.

Kind of hard to make bold statements about something stated boldly. GW used to have a regular magazine and wasn't always so closed up. They described that "last bit" in after the 2003 campaign where Chaos won yet the results were overturned, all part of an explanation to their fans, who were rightly miffed about the results.

Sadly I remember the debacle that was the first 13th Black Crusade.

the 13th black crusade is a good lesson of global campaigns. you need to make it count, but at the same time you don't wanna make the stakes in universe so high that one side winning doesn't risk throwing the entire setting aside. the Kronor campaign seems much better, a loss by the IoM'll make a differance, but it won't utterly destablize the setting.