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whats the actual reason behind the over all point increase?

First of all there seems to be little incentive to do any kind of small 500 point battles. I know 500 isnt really the norm any way but it could be nice to do a small last battle that doesnt take too long. but with these point changes you can barely even make an army that makes sense.


But over all, what is the reason? did GW think battles took too long? I never thought it was a problem personally.

Without new points people wouldn't be very willing to buy new books. I don't think that a codex with same rules and same point costs, but new art or lore would sell very well. Same with other rule books.

Karol wrote:
Without new points people wouldn't be very willing to buy new books. I don't think that a codex with same rules and same point costs, but new art or lore would sell very well. Same with other rule books.

Thats not what i mean.

Im not asking why they werent updated point wise, im asking why over 90% of all units got an actual point increase.


From 7th to 8th, some units cost less, some cost more. From 8th to 9th, basically every unit got an increase in point. sure, some more than others, but over all, all armies can now field less units.

I think the backdrop of the pts changes are the changes to map size.

"Of course, these are only the minimum size requirements for your battlefields, so whether you’re using a 6′x4′ table with a Realm of Battle board, linking two, four or six 22″x30″ Killzone boards together according to the battle size you’re playing, or just using a dining room table, you’re good to go. In fact, most dining room tables should be able to accommodate a Strike Force game!"

Smaller map, possibly made out of four Kill Team maps, what I am reading is that GW wants to convert more Kill Team players into 40k players. Not to mention that many tournament games went over time and not too long ago someone won a major GW tournament through slow play. So the game should be easier to get into because you can place your four KT maps on the kitchen table and play with smaller armies and hosting tournaments will be easier.

Whatever the reason, it was a dumb reason, GW could have just changed the recommended pts to 450/900/1750.

Karol wrote:
Without new points people wouldn't be very willing to buy new books. I don't think that a codex with same rules and same point costs, but new art or lore would sell very well. Same with other rule books.

According to some of your other posts you would have to buy the updated pts (whether they were updated or not) or you'd be thrown out of your store right? I think your hypothesis that people will buy the new field manual or codexes extra much because GW changed a lot of pts is weird, most people would get it regardless or would never get it anyway because they use Battlescribe or GW's new app. Consider the people that have posted through 8th that they didn't bother buying CA.

Considering the amount of rage going on with 9th pts I feel like GW could have gotten away much easier with a half-assed pts update that just touched a couple of units from each faction instead of this total trollerhaul. I think releasing a new edition with such poorly balanced pts is going to do major damage to the player base, just like we saw with 6th and 7th, people don't like being taken for a ride with their 2000+ dollar 40k collections.

From a marketing perspective, changing points costs shifts the emphasis to different units to boost sales. An established player might be incentivised to buy something they didn't already have. This isn't a reason for making all units more expensive as such, but is a reason for why they might alter the points at all.

From a balance perspective, increasing costs across the board means you can have greater granularity. It also allows them to fit games onto their new, smaller table sizes more easily.

From a psychological perspective, it always "feels good" when your units get cheaper. They did this a lot in 8th, and avoided making too many things much more expensive (Forgeworld aside), but I don't think things could get much cheaper without everything sort of blending together. A new edition is the perfect time to hit the reset button so the "feel bads" are overshadowed by all the mechanical changes to the game, and then they can begin the cycle again.

It's important to remember that GW has no incentive to create a perfectly balanced game. They want you to feel like things are always improving, or are never complete. Points feel a bit "off" right now, and things feel a little chaotic, and I think that's by design.

The points increase is really odd and hamfisted.

I get the argument that it's indended to drive sales, but for some smaller Codexes I can't see it really doing that. In the case of Drukhari, the only thing that did well out of the exercise was Taloi, but you can only field 9 anyway.

Some people have argued that the new values are meant to represent the utility of the units/weapons with the new rules.

The rounding of things to the nearest 5 is simplifying the maths, perhaps as a precursor to moving to Power Level.

The official reason mentioned on a couple of streams was to create more granularity. I suspect reducing the game size was also a consideration. Sadly, the points were handled pretty badly so they haven't really increased granularity much, especially when you consider lots of equipment now costs a multiple of 5 points, even when that means you have multiple pieces of equipment all at the same cost when some are clearly better than the others.

The points update is probably the biggest screw-up I've seen from GW in a while. Given that 9th is an evolution of 8th I would have hoped they would have been able to come up with properly balanced points even while resetting everything to a new, slightly higher baseline. At the very least they shouldn't be charging for them and I think the changes are bad enough that GW should be seriously considering releasing a free points update document in the next month or two.

Actually, GW should probably stop charging for these kind of updates in general, but that's just wishful thinking.

Well, the rule changes dictated some point changes.
Imagine a tank with a heavy weapon.
Moving and shooting in the 9th gives no penalty for ''to hit'', while in the 8th it did.

Points have been lowering steadily over time for several editions, to the point that they were running out of granularity in the lower point ranges. This turned back some of that points creep effect. Lots of things are now pretty much back to what they cost in 5th ed.

I thought they made this pretty clear.
the points increases are arbitrary not intended for balance across the game but rather internally for each army. the intent is to FORCE players to play the way the design team wants with smaller armies at the standard points levels just like the recommended "minimum" sized tables. one of the justification for this was "faster gameplay"


The problems with this argument, and there are many,

.the game drag in 8th really came from the re-roll auras. as you were literally doing your attacks and then doing them over again for every unit near a bubble maker. some stratagems also added to this.
THIS HAS NOT CHANGED MUCH, so it is still a problem.

.just like the initial streamlining in 8th they have countered all this "speed" by adding in more convoluted rules that slow the game down in other ways like the new terrain, scoring and phases rules.

The idea that more points/smaller armies speed up the game is actually a fallacy

Horus heresy has far cheaper points per unit compared to what they are in 40K and thus ends up with far larger armies ( i can take up to a 20 man jump assault squads as standard troops for example) in a standard game like 2K points but the game play is actually faster than 8th was even with the larger model count. .

Mostly because it is based on the 3rd-7th ed game mechanics where there were far less wounds on every unit (most only have 1 ) there is instant kills, ignoring the number of wounds a model has, and there are far less shots as it is basically 7th edition that has been "fixed" in a good way by the FW design team.

This isn't the first time they did something like this

Take for example the tyranids. back about half way through 5th they released the new codex, up to that point the only really big bug other than the tyrant was the carnifex, and it had loads of options, but GW decided to add new models to the line including bringing over the FW trygon into the plastic line as the trygon/mawloc kit in order to boost sales they purposely re-pointed everything making the carnifex more expensive and removing most of it's options while making the trygon cheaper with new/better rules. knowing full well they had already sold a ton of carnifexes and they needed an incentive for the veteran players to drop more money on their existing armies.

Beardedragon wrote:

Karol wrote:
Without new points people wouldn't be very willing to buy new books. I don't think that a codex with same rules and same point costs, but new art or lore would sell very well. Same with other rule books.

Thats not what i mean.

Im not asking why they werent updated point wise, im asking why over 90% of all units got an actual point increase.


From 7th to 8th, some units cost less, some cost more. From 8th to 9th, basically every unit got an increase in point. sure, some more than others, but over all, all armies can now field less units.

well GW has to change stuff. If they put out new terrain and mission rules in one book, and told people that they think everyone should play at less then 2000pts CA or the army books wouldn't sell as well.
the more changes the higher chance for a meta shift too, Who knows what is going to be the normal army size in 9th. Here it is going to be 2250, so people can play with their old 2000pts armies, but at leat sfrom what people are saying here, in other places are going to be played at less then old 2000pts. A lot of the build were very tight on what they had to run to be efficient, so unless someone already has an army like that, people are going to play different stuff. And different stuff means more sales.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 vict0988 wrote:

Karol wrote:
Without new points people wouldn't be very willing to buy new books. I don't think that a codex with same rules and same point costs, but new art or lore would sell very well. Same with other rule books.

According to some of your other posts you would have to buy the updated pts (whether they were updated or not) or you'd be thrown out of your store right? I think your hypothesis that people will buy the new field manual or codexes extra much because GW changed a lot of pts is weird, most people would get it regardless or would never get it anyway because they use Battlescribe or GW's new app. Consider the people that have posted through 8th that they didn't bother buying CA.

Considering the amount of rage going on with 9th pts I feel like GW could have gotten away much easier with a half-assed pts update that just touched a couple of units from each faction instead of this total trollerhaul. I think releasing a new edition with such poorly balanced pts is going to do major damage to the player base, just like we saw with 6th and 7th, people don't like being taken for a ride with their 2000+ dollar 40k collections.

No one would throw you out, you just wouldn't be allowed to rent a table. I don't think anyone sane is going to buy the GW app, I stopped carrying about over all game balance, when I realised that GW does not want to balance the game, so as long as my army is okey, I don't care what happens to other stuff. And right now, in relative terms, my army is okey, some of the models I use actualy got cheaper.

And while I understand that people playing at home may not want to buy a book, those people wouldn't buy them anyway. I am talking about the part of the GW customers that do buy their books. If a CA or codex came out that was a strickt reprint rules wise, and only had new pictures in it, the number of buyers would be smaller then if the same book had new rules.

Beardedragon wrote:
whats the actual reason behind the over all point increase?

Why to sell you the next book that fixes/lowers them of course. Isn't that obvious?

To increase granularity and to reduce the number of minis on the table, making it easier for newcomers to join the game.
Nothing stops you and your group of just playing with more points - you even get to use more detachments and CPs!

And for granality increase 1-2 pts on lower end is really bad way of doing it. Had they wanted that they would have like doubled all points including base game size. If they want to reduce models then add further X% increase. Then start working on balance changes.

Instead GW went for: <10 pts, 1 pts increase, 11-20=2 pts, wargear to dividable by 5 with exception of few exceptions, minimum point cost 5 regardless of rules of said model and then do couple manual tweaks(necron warriors only 1 pts, immortals 3 pts). Simple excel job.

Then zero input from playtesters.

tneva82 wrote:
And for granality increase 1-2 pts on lower end is really bad way of doing it. Had they wanted that they would have like doubled all points including base game size. If they want to reduce models then add further X% increase. Then start working on balance changes.

Instead GW went for: <10 pts, 1 pts increase, 11-20=2 pts, wargear to dividable by 5 with exception of few exceptions, minimum point cost 5 regardless of rules of said model and then do couple manual tweaks(necron warriors only 1 pts, immortals 3 pts). Simple excel job.

Then zero input from playtesters.

You could've also gone hammer method, double pts but only grant an additional 50%.

500pts games would become 750 etc.

Not only would the model count be lowered, the granularity would be easier achievable and it would allow to further use the pts allready better balanced from 8th rather then this drunk intern job they done now.

tneva82 wrote:
And for granality increase 1-2 pts on lower end is really bad way of doing it. Had they wanted that they would have like doubled all points including base game size. If they want to reduce models then add further X% increase. Then start working on balance changes.

Instead GW went for: <10 pts, 1 pts increase, 11-20=2 pts, wargear to dividable by 5 with exception of few exceptions, minimum point cost 5 regardless of rules of said model and then do couple manual tweaks(necron warriors only 1 pts, immortals 3 pts). Simple excel job.

Then zero input from playtesters.

That’s not even close to what they did. Many units in the 6-9 range when up 2 points and you forgot the 5 PPM minimum.

To the OP, GW adjusted points up for several reasons:
* To account for the value of a model existing (5 PPM minimum)
* To return unit values to closer to 8th edition starting point
* To reduce the number of models on the board, thus speeding gameplay
* To increase points granularity for future adjustments
* To adjust for new rules interactions, like Heavy on non-Infantry and Big Guns Never Tire
* A few balance adjustments

Did they do a perfect job? No. But we now have a new starting point for adjustments after actual gameplay feedback. I’m sure at some point they will decide whether Infantry Squads should be 6PPM or the floor should be dropped to 4 for all those units that are clearly worst than them.

Beardedragon wrote:

Karol wrote:
Without new points people wouldn't be very willing to buy new books. I don't think that a codex with same rules and same point costs, but new art or lore would sell very well. Same with other rule books.

Thats not what i mean.

Im not asking why they werent updated point wise, im asking why over 90% of all units got an actual point increase.


From 7th to 8th, some units cost less, some cost more. From 8th to 9th, basically every unit got an increase in point. sure, some more than others, but over all, all armies can now field less units.

here's a concept I'm going to introduce you to:

To Games Workshop, the company that makes Warhammer, the game being BETTER is not the positive outcome of the change. The game being a more marketable product is.

In order to convert a Kill Team player into a Warhammer 40,000 player, you need to do two things.

1) Encourage them to expand their collection.
2) Make the full game easily accessible
3) allow them to use what they already have in a full game.

in late 8th, there were several factors that made getting from a collection made for kill team to a collection made for normal 40k way too wide of a gap. The points adjustments, the board sizes, and the pushing of several new game modes that involve starting from 500 points (and incidentally using power level rather than points that makes the loadouts you used for your models for Kill Team much more palatable) allows GW to push players more smoothly from KT to full 40k.

I thought they made this pretty clear.
the points increases are arbitrary not intended for balance across the game but rather internally for each army. the intent is to FORCE players to play the way the design team wants with smaller armies at the standard points levels just like the recommended "minimum" sized tables. one of the justification for this was "faster gameplay"

The original reason stated by GW was to have fewer models on the table in order to make game play go faster. It was a odd choice as dropping an army by1-200 points was NEVER going to have that impact. The problem was the core rules are what was taking longer, but they did not want to touch those, so ... band aid.

The problem is, the very clearly did not even attempt to balance the increases in any logical way. They also literally never said they would. I know most would say "well of course it's implied that you would ALSO look to balance", but it's GW and they tend to be pretty literal. This was literally about reducing miniatures on the table but it didn't even really have THAT intended effect.

I truly think they felt like "Well, we've worked hard on balancing points as 8th has gone on, so these are as balanced as they're gonna get for now. So if we take these points and try to apply an algorithm that increases things by a consistent level ... balance will be maintained." Obviously it doesn't quite work like that, but that's clearly what happened. And any other thing they've said since has been an attempt at damage control. You know it's bad when a lot of their play testers come out publicly and say they don't agree with the points.

2 simple reasons

Smaller tables means need less stuff

More granularity in points means better balance

the_scotsman 790516 10883171 wrote:
in late 8th, there were several factors that made getting from a collection made for kill team to a collection made for normal 40k way too wide of a gap. The points adjustments, the board sizes, and the pushing of several new game modes that involve starting from 500 points (and incidentally using power level rather than points that makes the loadouts you used for your models for Kill Team much more palatable) allows GW to push players more smoothly from KT to full 40k.

I think there could be something like that. I don't know how they gather data, but maybe they noticed that there are people joing to play kill team, buy 2-3 box, but when they see w40k requirements of models and books, they do not make the transition. So GW decided that they would cut the number of books, probably just initialy in 9th, and make the armies seem artificialy smaller. They even changed the table sizes fit the size of two KT boards.

Maybe GW hope that with those changes more people are going to make the transit in to actual w40k. Now if people actualy going to play new 1500pts games on new table sizes is of course something to be seen, but new players in 9th may not know that this is how GW runs. That sometimes they do stuff, thinking people will act in a certain way, and then act suprised when they don't.

Shrinks the size of the game since people didn't go for 1850. Also gives them room to cut points in the CA.

Every wargame has a two sided battle when it comes to models.

Look at Infinity, Warmachine, Malifaux etc... Pretty much all of those games started life as small skirmish games. Throw down a handful of models and you've got an "army/force". GW was much the same - go back in time and look at some earlier armies and a handful of models counts as an army.

However as a game matures two things happen side by side.

1) The company releases more and more models for each army/force within the range. Diversifying options, creating new choices and new niches and features. Sometimes its subtle shifts, other times whole new classes of models are added - eg when GW went for dedicated air units or super heavies.

2) The gamers who are long term supporting customers continually grow their armies. Gaining more and and more models


So you often see games gradually grow the "base" game size because both the customer and the company benefit from it.


However at some point you get a problem because the bigger the standard armies get, the harder it is to get new people into the game. Especially in regions with smaller hobby groups where new people might come in ones and twos - rather than big active areas that might get a small handful in bunches.
Now at this point companies can push investment into alternative game options - splitting the community a bit, but creating diverse options.

Eg Warmachine introduced an unbound option for big games; meanwhile GW has recently pushed modes like Killteam and Warcry.


However sometimes you also have to push lowering the diversity and restructuring the core game to lower the costs of getting a "full army" for standard play.

Yes having a bigger target means customers are encouraged to spend more, but you have to reign it in against the perceived buy-in cost for new customers. Make it too high and, along with other factors, you can end up with one of the major reasons that Old World fantasy struggled for years to recruit and retain new customers/gamers

Beardedragon wrote:
whats the actual reason behind the over all point increase?

GW: "thank you for buying the chapter approved and codex books"
*arbitrarily feths up all the points values*
GW: "look, a whole new edition chapter approved and codex books!"

The smaller game stuff in nonsense, if that is what players/tournaments wanted to do they'd have played with less points. Similarly granularity - which is not achieved by rounding all your points to multiples of 5, and i'd put money on the table size change being primarily/entirely motivated by a new range of scenery.

alextroy wrote:

Spoiler:

tneva82 wrote:
And for granality increase 1-2 pts on lower end is really bad way of doing it. Had they wanted that they would have like doubled all points including base game size. If they want to reduce models then add further X% increase. Then start working on balance changes.

Instead GW went for: <10 pts, 1 pts increase, 11-20=2 pts, wargear to dividable by 5 with exception of few exceptions, minimum point cost 5 regardless of rules of said model and then do couple manual tweaks(necron warriors only 1 pts, immortals 3 pts). Simple excel job.

Then zero input from playtesters.

That’s not even close to what they did. Many units in the 6-9 range when up 2 points and you forgot the 5 PPM minimum.

To the OP, GW adjusted points up for several reasons:
* To account for the value of a model existing (5 PPM minimum)
* To return unit values to closer to 8th edition starting point
* To reduce the number of models on the board, thus speeding gameplay
* To increase points granularity for future adjustments
* To adjust for new rules interactions, like Heavy on non-Infantry and Big Guns Never Tire
* A few balance adjustments

Did they do a perfect job? No. But we now have a new starting point for adjustments after actual gameplay feedback. I’m sure at some point they will decide whether Infantry Squads should be 6PPM or the floor should be dropped to 4 for all those units that are clearly worst than them.

While I agree that's what they attempted to do, the actual implementation is for lots of reasons already pointed out since the points were released. Those goals could have been met without wrecking the balance of the game. A lot of the changes were just lazy, the equal points given to all the various models of contemptors being a hallmark, others were obvious bias: intercessors up 17% vs csm up 27%, storm cannon arrays same as in 8th vs butcher cannon arrays up 87%. It's a mess.

LunarSol wrote:Shrinks the size of the game since people didn't go for 1850. Also gives them room to cut points in the CA.

If they do the latter doesn't that render the former null and void?

The biggest problem isn't points didn't go up *enough* to compensate for the smaller board size. The board size is 75% went it was, but armies are only about 13% smaller. When you add in greater recommended terrain density, and that deployment zones have been reduced by even more than the overall board size, the 9th edition boards end up massively cluttered, at least until the extraordinary lethality of the game removes half of each army by the beginning of T3.

Well it is only a minimum recommendation

8th ed Chapter Approveds were a constant "race to the bottom" with most units getting decreases and just a few OP units getting increases.

But doing a game wide points reset with most lower end models going up, it creates more breathing room for units to be decreased in later Chapter Approveds.

It's all about proportion IMO. A 1ppm decrease on a 5pt model is a bigger deal than a 1ppm decrease on a 15pt model.
Having larger base points on even 1W INFANTRY models allows there to be granularity between them.

A good example IMO is the difference between Tactical Marines, Dire Avengers and Necron Warriors. I believe they were all 12ppm just before 9th but are now 15, 13 & 12 respectively.
You could argue that those could be swapped around but the point is that by having a larger "scale" of points, you are able to make them differ as those 3 units are indeed very different from each other.

-

While the point of a new edition is to sell new stuff, the idea that they've bumped up simply to sell decreases in later books doesn't hold up - they had already been selling a yearly points adjustment with Chapter Approved, new codices have always had new points because they have new rules. You don't have to adjust the whole game to keep selling these things. For CA2020 they could have just made adjustments to points on the old basis.

I think there are several reasons:
They want to make the game somewhat smaller/faster (see 5-turn limit as well)
A desire to (dis)incentivize certain unit usage (Transports didn't go up much while "horde" units that show up in armies that aren't really flavored that way, eg. CSM, did)
A reset on various units/options (rolling more costs into the basic unit, resetting some upgrade costs)
And it gives them more room to adjust points later, after 9th has had a chance to shake itself out some.

Overall I think GW is a bit concerned about accessibility with this edition as we're seeing more support of smaller game sizes, the 5-round cap and a small reduction in the "typical" 2k army size.

The reason for that is simple.

They had been reducing the cost of models CA after CA, and it was becoming really weird, not to mention difficult to access for new players.

They used the 9th launch to reset the point costs to higher values.
Now the game flows naturally from Kill Team to 40K.
Going from a kill team to 500 points means a vehicle and an HQ usually. At the same time you just need to put 2 kill team boards instead of one.

It has also been used as a balance passage, but it was only half done. You can see that some ranges were fine tuned with targeted nerfs and buffs, while other ranges have only a few of those and for the most part were just adjusted mathematically to the new point ranges.

GW has likely looked at hobbies like Hornby and such which are all from the same era. They've seen that if they dont' push for recruitment of new gamers, in a market WAY more flooded with competing products for peoples attention any money, then they can run the risk of ending up with a healthy market of continually aging fans that steadily dwindles. Furthermore its very hard to join into a new game and such if there's a big generation gap going on. If everyone at the club is way past their teens then its far less likely to attract more teens.

The bigger that gap becomes the greater the generation gap can make the situation worse and worse.



That's why they've been so keen to push things like their links to Duke of Edenborough scheme in the UK; school packs; Kill team; smaller side/specialist games. It's likely a big reason they are farming their IP out to video games (a big competing market now) and also creating the new TV shows.

GW knows that its not good enough for them in the long run to remain viable, they have to also remain "current." They've got to be seen and be active in recruiting people.




I also agree regarding the view that if you have a higher base point value then it allows for more potential to fine tune those points for balance. The less weight 1 point difference has to a model the greater your ability to fine tune it to suit specific balance. Similarly the rougher the values, the harder because you lose the ability to balance for subtle differences.