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Made in in
[MOD]
Otiose in a Niche






Hyderabad, India

This first hit me a while ago, looking at the starters for Warzone, then again looking at the ships for both Dystopian Wars and for Dropfleet Commander. Each box had the same number of models and basically the same types.

Even if factions have different skins, even if it's zombies or giant space insects or post human cyborgs, they tend to follow the same structure.

In a science fiction game everyone will have infantry, mecha, tanks.

In naval games everyone will have battleships, carriers, cruisers, destroyers, frigates/corvettes.

In fantasy it'll be infantry, cavalry, maybe a monster or two.

They might look different, they will have different rules but will follow the same structure. They'll even have a similar number of models on the board.

Now in a historical or even historialish game like Dystopian this sort of makes sense since everyone will be more or less at the same level of technology. Maybe my battleships are better than yours but we're all building battleships.

But if you're making a game with a fictional setting there's no need for that. You can have a faction that builds nothing but battleships vs one that do nothing but fast light ships (a parallel to the Spanish Armada vs Francis Drake). You could make a game where one army is nothing but dragons, or a sci fi army of nothing but puppy-sized robots.

GW actually is pretty good at this. While they never quite got to the level of 10 marines=100 orks, generally marine armies were smaller and ork armies larger. Generally each army had some exclusive options (though as GW's inventory of kits has grown this isn't really a factor anymore).

Of course game makers have certain incentives to keep factions the samish, they fear that if you have one faction of cannon fodder and another of Ninja-Jedi-Cyborgs no one will play the fodder army. So everyone gets some cannon fodder and everyone gets some Batman-Chuck Norris-SEALs too.

But it's frustrating looking at something like Dropfleet and OK sure, the Earth dudes and the Post Humans might follow traditional naval logic, but the giant bugs? And it's less fun if the giant bug ships play just like historical warships.

In Warzone I remember reading that the fluff for each faction said they had the most elite troops! Which is funny in a way since I'm sure they each say that, but it makes for a less interesting game. Surely the zombies should throw down 100+ models against the Space American's 10 special forces guys.

So my plea, to miniature game makers out there, diversity is good. Have hoards, monsters, elites, glass cannons and keep each faction pure. There's lots of ways to write rules for big giants, or riflemen or mounted knights so don't give everything to everyone.

 
   
Made in us
Powerful Phoenix Lord





I agree, but I don't know if you'll ever see this. Remember, most games and miniatures developers are on tiny margins (and most companies fail or close shop eventually) so "risk" and new designs and ideas are even fewer and farther between.

Also, look at the 40K community and how much they whine about X having something when Y doesn't.
   
Made in au
Incorporating Wet-Blending






Australia

 Elbows wrote:
I agree, but I don't know if you'll ever see this. Remember, most games and miniatures developers are on tiny margins (and most companies fail or close shop eventually) so "risk" and new designs and ideas are even fewer and farther between.

Kyoto's suggestion is that companies invest less into their product lines, not more. If your fleet battle game has a faction that's all about air superiority with heavy carriers, light carriers and escort destroyers, that requires less sculpting and less shelf space than a faction with battleships, heavy carriers, cruisers, light carriers, frigates and destroyers.

"When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."
-C.S. Lewis 
   
Made in in
[MOD]
Otiose in a Niche






Hyderabad, India

I think the concern is that one faction will be pegged as the loser army.

If I say that the Steampunk Spanish only have big slow galleons they might end up warming shelves as people stock up on Steampunk British Corvettes. If I say the Space SEALs army only needs 10 guys while the Space Cultists need 100, well who has that much time and money?

OK, some people do, I mean I have multiple IG armies. But I can see the concern.


 
   
Made in gb
Decrepit Dakkanaut




UK

I think one of the big problems is the people playing the games,

if they see their opponent getting a new thing they get jealous and want it too, even if it doesn't fit the theme of their force

or especially if it doesn't fit as that tends to mean more tactical options as you'll have something that will fill in a previous weakness (eg a battle ship in your fast small easy to sink faction)

Just look at the introduction of Primeris marines into 40K,

initially many assumed they would be Ultra Marines only, and moaned about

then it became clear all the chapters could have them but they have to travel in bespoke vehicles and there was much more bitching and moaning.

Clearly the game maker has a vison for them to be something specific and different, and clearly the players disagree and want them to become ubiquitous and general

 
   
Made in us
Heroic Senior Officer





Western Kentucky

The problem is many gamers don't want that. Just look at any time something gets released in 40k.

Heck I've lost track of how many IG players complain that we don't have an elite infantry unit in our army like space marines, or that we lack fast skimmers, when the entire point of our army is that we lack those things. Or other people will complain that IG outmumber most armies on the table in infantry and tanks like that's not our bit.

I recently watched an admech codex review that complained that admech, and I quote "only really seemed good at walking up the board and shooting things"

'I've played Guard for years, and the best piece of advice is to always utilize the Guard's best special rule: "we roll more dice than you" ' - stormleader

"Sector Imperialis: 25mm and 40mm Round Bases (40+20) 26€ (Including 32 skulls for basing) " GW design philosophy in a nutshell  
   
Made in us
Decrepit Dakkanaut






SoCal, USA!

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
So my plea, to miniature game makers out there, diversity is good. Have hoards, monsters, elites, glass cannons and keep each faction pure. There's lots of ways to write rules for big giants, or riflemen or mounted knights so don't give everything to everyone.


The problem is that a purist approach may easily results in Rock-Scissors-Paper games, or gross imbalances. While the metagame may be fine, because each faction wins a fair number of games, the individual games could be awful.

   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut






Los Angeles

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
This first hit me a while ago, looking at the starters for Warzone, then again looking at the ships for both Dystopian Wars and for Dropfleet Commander. Each box had the same number of models and basically the same types.

Even if factions have different skins, even if it's zombies or giant space insects or post human cyborgs, they tend to follow the same structure.

In a science fiction game everyone will have infantry, mecha, tanks.

In naval games everyone will have battleships, carriers, cruisers, destroyers, frigates/corvettes.

In fantasy it'll be infantry, cavalry, maybe a monster or two.

They might look different, they will have different rules but will follow the same structure. They'll even have a similar number of models on the board.

Now in a historical or even historialish game like Dystopian this sort of makes sense since everyone will be more or less at the same level of technology. Maybe my battleships are better than yours but we're all building battleships.

But if you're making a game with a fictional setting there's no need for that. You can have a faction that builds nothing but battleships vs one that do nothing but fast light ships (a parallel to the Spanish Armada vs Francis Drake). You could make a game where one army is nothing but dragons, or a sci fi army of nothing but puppy-sized robots.

GW actually is pretty good at this. While they never quite got to the level of 10 marines=100 orks, generally marine armies were smaller and ork armies larger. Generally each army had some exclusive options (though as GW's inventory of kits has grown this isn't really a factor anymore).

Of course game makers have certain incentives to keep factions the samish, they fear that if you have one faction of cannon fodder and another of Ninja-Jedi-Cyborgs no one will play the fodder army. So everyone gets some cannon fodder and everyone gets some Batman-Chuck Norris-SEALs too.

But it's frustrating looking at something like Dropfleet and OK sure, the Earth dudes and the Post Humans might follow traditional naval logic, but the giant bugs? And it's less fun if the giant bug ships play just like historical warships.

In Warzone I remember reading that the fluff for each faction said they had the most elite troops! Which is funny in a way since I'm sure they each say that, but it makes for a less interesting game. Surely the zombies should throw down 100+ models against the Space American's 10 special forces guys.

So my plea, to miniature game makers out there, diversity is good. Have hoards, monsters, elites, glass cannons and keep each faction pure. There's lots of ways to write rules for big giants, or riflemen or mounted knights so don't give everything to everyone.


I think I understand your complaint, but ultimately it sounds like the solution is not with game makers necessarily, but how you play your games. You want adherence to fluff/setting/history and diversity of factions while also having all those diverse options remaining competitive and balanced. That is a big ask!

As others have mentioned, and was even indicated yourself, there are inherent problems with that request.

1. Players want to feel like they have enough tools in their faction's tool belt to be competitive, and that often means giving each faction at least some equivalent of what everyone else has. When factions have exceptions to that rule players often complain ("Why don't we have monstrous creatures?!" "Why do we ONLY have monstrous creatures?!" "Why don't we have light `jacks?!" "Why don't we have arc nodes?!" Etc.). Certainly, game designers could attempt rules that mitigate those limitations, but there is still a matter of the "grass is always greener" mentality with players.

2. If game designers mitigate those faction limitations by playing up each faction's strong point, you run into the Rock-Paper-Scissors issue JohnHwang mentions above. There will be bad match ups and hard counters that just make game play a chore, and you wouldn't have the fall back excuse of "that player is min/maxing and breaking the system" because the system is designed with those limitations in place. Which just leaves players feeling angry and disappointed.

3. Horde vs Elite armies sound great on paper but are a chore in practice. As you acknowledge the costs involved for the players are very different. Even if figures were priced based on their points values (and we know players generally hate that) to create "balance" between an elite army and a horde army, there is still the time investment of building and assembling a 100-body horde versus a 10-man super squad. You are right, most people wouldn't want to play the horde, so you'd end up with battles of 10-man squads vs 10-man squads, and you'd likely be breaking the fluff behind the setting by doing that. Also, that is assuming models are priced according to point value/effectiveness on the table which is almost never the case. In actuality you'd have the horde player spending way, way more than the super squad player because the figures would be similarly priced, but one sucker would have to buy 10 times as many.

4. Horde vs Elite armies also require vastly different resources to create from the company's perspective. Unless you are doing modular models in HIPS, that horde army is going to require a lot of individual sculpts if it doesn't want to be a sea of sameness. That is a substantial financial layout for a company. and one that may not pay off if players aren't interested in the faction. So, as Elbows pointed out, from the company's perspective why take the risk?

Ultimately, it seems like you want to take a game you enjoy already, and tweak it to fit your style of play. That is my best suggestion based on your complaints above. Find like-minded players who share your vision of how game X should be played, and adjust and house-rule the system to perform the way you want it to. Want the bug ship faction to fight like a swarm? Go for it! Want an all battleship or all cavalry faction? Hell yes! Sounds great, but while that would appeal to you and a few others, it probably wouldn't appeal to enough people to make financial sense to produce commercially.


 JohnHwangDD wrote:
 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
So my plea, to miniature game makers out there, diversity is good. Have hoards, monsters, elites, glass cannons and keep each faction pure. There's lots of ways to write rules for big giants, or riflemen or mounted knights so don't give everything to everyone.


The problem is that a purist approach may easily results in Rock-Scissors-Paper games, or gross imbalances. While the metagame may be fine, because each faction wins a fair number of games, the individual games could be awful.


I agree with this. It is especially problematic if an edition change alters the way a game mechanic works, adding further imbalance. Case in point is Dark Eldar, and specifically Wyches. In 5th edition when the new DE came out Wyches were awesome. 6th edition comes out and assault/melee armies are in trouble and shooty armies nearly always win the day. Now what is the Wych player to do?

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/09/19 23:30:11


 
   
Made in in
[MOD]
Otiose in a Niche






Hyderabad, India

Lots of good points in the replies thanks.

But the sameness of all these different games really frustrates me. I don't mean to pick on Hawk Wargames, their Drop Fleet sets are some of my favorites around. But look at their factions:

Humans




Post Humans




Brain squid zombie organic tech dudes




Spikey high tech warrior dudes




Guerilla guys who don't get space ships


Each one, 3 cruisers and 4 destroyers, or 3 fliers, a few light vehicles and a couple of infantry.

Sure you can handwave some of this, maybe the human ships have 1000 crew members, the post-humans only 100 and the zombies 10,000. And certainly the post human mecha are more advanced than the guerilla technicals. But still...

Same types of vehicles in the same number for each faction. Which makes me wonder how balanced they can be since one would expect that if numbers are equal the more advanced armies ought to stomp the less advanced ones.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/09/20 04:12:09


 
   
Made in us
Decrepit Dakkanaut






SoCal, USA!

@KK - There's nothing inherently wrong with black/white game balance or red/blue game balance.

Consider something like this for a game:
* all armies share nearly identical mandatory core forces;
* each has a few fancy elites semi-specialists for distinction, some shared across multiple armies; and
* each has a unique hyper-specialist unit or two.
Can you think of any games that could be balanced like that?

The catch is that each step away from the baseline introduces risks of imbalance, especially if applying special rules that produce synergistic force multipliers.

   
Made in au
Norn Queen






The biggest problem for me, at least regarding varying army sizes, is one person inevitably needs to pay more than the other players. Not to mention being very bunched up at deployment when you're facing long ranged template weapons. Also, simply looking at models in a box is ignoring the gameplay mechanics.

The person playing the horde army is going to need more models, so their army is going to be more expensive. There's not many ways around this. Horde armies by definition use more models. So that right there is unfair to the horde player. They're then buying more storage for their army, as they have more models to store and transport.

Then, they're spending more time unpacking and repacking. When I played 40k, my opponents would go get a drink or something to eat as I unpacked my Tyranids, when they unpacked much less and then got bored waiting. Then I got into the habit of putting models directly back into my miniatures case, because they take up so much room on an unoccupied table and so much time to pack away after a game. This has the flow on affect of taking longer to remove the models as they die, and also meaning if I get time for a second game, I have to unpack them all over again.

Then, their army is going to have a much larger footprint. Squads closer together, models in squads closer together, making their opponents job easier when they launch a few ranged templates at them.

Then, they are going to take a lot longer to move around the table. This is primarily a concern in 40k, where models are all individually based and some armies can be obscenely large in model count. Moving a 30 model Hormagaunt squad regularly resulted in my opponent and I coming up with a house rule for leapfrogging - measure 6" forward, and move the back half of the squad. This is prone to error and moving too many or too few models, but it was better than the alternative of moving them all individually.

This is why I like the implementation of a horde army in The Other Side. The games horde army deploys roughly the same amount of models as the opponent, and gains the ability to 'respawn' squads that entirely die at the start of the next turn. It also sidesteps the issue of people just leaving a few models left so it can't respawn, since every unit in the game can reinforce. If it's not wiped out, it can easily gain back models. If it is wiped out, it gets to come back at 1/3 or 1/2 model count, depending on the unit, make a double move, but can't take objectives. Respawning also takes a resource that is used for other things, so it's not an automatic no brainer to always respawn squads.

This way the horde player is buying the same amount of models as any other player, deploying the same amount of models as any other player, and removing the same amount of models as any other player. They just get the added option of respawning squads to give them that endless horde feeling.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/09/20 04:39:40


 
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut




In regards to DZC and DFC, you are comparing the starters, which necessitate some level of uniformity for cost.

I'll note that the DZC starters do have a bit of variety in them. The PHR one is the "smaller" faction with less models right out of the gate. Resistance uses less dropships, relying on hovercraft and slower heavier tanks. As players expand their faction, differences do become more apparent:

UCM tends to expand into gunships, fighters, drone bases, artillery, and specialized infantry.
Resistance can expand into swarms of light vehicles and infantry.
Scourge tends to run a lot of grav tanks backed up with some exceptionally tough heavy infantry.
Shaltari has a few build options, their major difference is the usage of gates which changes up how their list is built and how they play on the tabletop.
PHR tends to (currently) rely on small packs of fast moving light walkers backed up by fast infantry and/or super heavy walkers

DFC does tend to rely heavily on a uniform list building mechanic, however the differences in ships lead to variety between factions. For example, PHR tends to end up running multiple troopships and at least one pack of corvettes backed up by a battleship, while Scourge will run maybe one troopship, and instead runs CAW frigates/cruisers and try to alpha strike important ships. DFC isn't as spammy as some other games (admittedly, there was an incident where a Shaltari player spammed 18 of their corvettes in a tournament...)
   
Made in gb
Regular Dakkanaut




There are 3 problems with the asymmetrical approach to factions.

Firstly it's hard to build multiple unique factions all with different unit 'classes' and their requisite rules and abilities while keeping them interesting on the tabletop. It's much easier to use templates (1x light infantry, 2 x medium infantry,1 x light vehicle etc) with some fairly minor variation

Secondly it would be very hard to balance a game with highly asymmetrical armies

Thirdly it's quite a financial risk. If you produce a line of models for a particular unique faction that few people are interested in it could be a crippling loss for your company.

   
 
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