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Vaktathi wrote: I think a huge part of the issue is that 40k tries to be too many things, it covers too many different scales normally broken into distinct different game systems, and too many forces operating in too many wildly differing fashions.
Trying to balance a game that's fundamentally played out as a pitched frontal firefight on a soccer field, while also trying to make tank companies, underground guerilla forces, entire batallions of conventional infantry, titan maniples and Knight lances, infiltration specialists, etc all work on the same ruleset, is basically impossible.
Half the factions in the game really have no business fighting each other or engaging in the way the game sets up, but it does it anyway. Why on earth do we have Dark Eldar raiding forces or Genestealer guerilla fighting Guard tank companies in frontal attacks, or why do we have Space Marine infiltration forces fighting battles with Chaos Knights? Trying to balance that while maintaining a flavor of what each force is intended to be, is mind bogglingly awkward, particularly when half those matchups have no business being balanced in any fluff/realistic sense.
This.
Currently, 40k has 3 (official) modes of play - two of which are basically pointless.
Rather than splitting it into nonsense like Matched Play vs. Narrative vs. Unbound, it would make much more sense to split it into different scales of game - with models like fliers, baneblades, primarchs and knights being Apocalypse-only.
As it is, the 40k rules are still ultimately based on those of a skirmish game. And trying to include super-tanks and mechas causes no end of issues for balance and design.
One thing that could help account for the insanely disparate power levels of Knights vs infantry (as an example) is to add some sort of friendly fire mechanic. As it stands, the massively powerful weapons on TITANIC units can still be used with surgical accuracy. When you bring a Knight or super-heavy tank to the 'soccer field', it should become really hard to use effectively as most enemy units would essentially already be inside its minimum effective range and hailstorms of missiles should be dangerous to use to all units on the field. [/bandying about random ideas]
Amishprn86 wrote: I think you are thinking about it the wrong way, you are not talking about real balance, you are still talking about netlists that has a clear winning list, that is still not balanced.
We havent seen true balance in 40k, and we never will, its impossible. But look at other games like Chess and Go, their are what some masters call "Life time knowledge of strategy" and they still study other players b.c each person has a different way of playing, and yet those games are as balance as you can make a game.
So no, i completely disagree with that you are saying and a perfectly balance game will make MORE fun and viable lists, it will make even more meaning full list building, especially when a player can make his army literally HIS WAY, if he wants all bikes, its viable, if they want all flyers, its viable, etc...
And rooting for the underdog units might be a few peoples idea of fun, but thats still not the same thing, that is making the game more challenging or being know as "that guy that won with the bad units" i dont agree that is part of list building fun, ut more for social recognition. If someone truly wanted to be challenged in a balanced game they would go after better players like what all sports do.
Yes, but auticus's point is precisely that - if you have a huge variety of viable lists, you won't be able to make accurate predictions of your chances at winning a game simply by building a list and comparing it on paper with the various viable lists an opponent might bring. And that's what a fair share of players seem to want listbuilding to be: a means to produce as much control over the game as possible before the armies have even hit the table. If list A is viable as lists B through P, your impact on the game doesn't really start until you're actually deploying units.
skchsan wrote: While I understand the argument regarding the "fun" of list building, I fail to see the validity of this argument.
This is like saying "The most fun thing about starcraft/warcraft/any other RTS is base building and max unit accrual. Actually going to battle is not as fun because I can already determine my chances of defeating my opponent solely based on how I've created the best possible army composition."
As I noted above I think its because many gamers understand list building but not the game itself. The community feeds this by focsuing on list building more and more. There is loads of talk on it but so little of actually how to make those lists work on the table. So they build toward power-lists where you put down a combination or unit that is so overpowered that it requires no finesse or control to use. You just point it forward and win. I think if the community had a flipover and focused away from lists and into game tactics the "demand" would shift as more people would be able to get the puzzle solving in the game itself.
Rightnow they see it as boring because they don't understand the potential to do stuff on the table. Of course tables with almost no terrain and no line of sight blocking terrain directly feed into this "lack of choices/thinking" in the tabletop side of things.
Regarding the underlined - the issue is that these "overpowered" units generally tends to ignore all the core mechanics of the game (i.e. firing heavy weapon after moving, moving through other units, shoot while within 1" of enemy unit, fall back and shoot). In this aspect, I do agree with the OP in that the creators aren't truly thinking about how these cool, shiny new toys fit into the given sets of rules (apart from the fact they outright ignore them) and instead are provided as "IWIN" buttons until sales start to decline (or they've reached the required margin of return and don't care about pushing sales for that particular item any longer).
Within a balanced set of rules, each individual units need to have their strong suit and intrinsic weakness. Balance is unattainable if select few units are strong in all aspects and weak to none.
basically build an armored colon and forgetting AA and get punished.
But at least an 'armored colon' would make getting shafted less painful
Funny, happens when you are multilingual and had to talk french for 3 hours.
Also shouldn't you have learned by now that slapping armor on something does not make it better? Especially not against aircraft?
I regularly have to speak French for considerable lengths of time to my mother-in-law. Which is when I most ardently wish for both armour and aircraft. Now, there's a lack of balance if ever I saw one...
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/09/04 21:52:37
