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In hindsight do you think they went "maybe we should not have given the basic troop a S7 D2 melee weapon for free?"

Huh?

 Niiai wrote:
In hindsight do you think they went "maybe we should not have given the basic troop a S7 D2 melee weapon for free?"

Maybe they shouldn't've made weapon options free.

And I'm not just talking about Warriors.

 Niiai wrote:
In hindsight do you think they went "maybe we should not have given the basic troop a S7 D2 melee weapon for free?"

Nope. No hindsight here. They had to be bludgeoned with thousands of games to learn the blatantly obvious the hard way.
Given that the wargear (glands, sacs, hooks) are still on a per-unit rather than per-model basis, there is still more for them to learn just from warriors.

The fact that they didn't manage to expand this basic lesson to termagants (fleshborers vs spinefists, anyone?) and raveners (among many, many other things) says they didn't really learn anything. They're just throwing a random point adjustment at a 'problematic meta unit.'

Before the codex released I was pointing out that dual boneswords outperformed every other melee option available to Warriors in nearly every circumstance, and the ones where it isn't optimal it was still within a single digit percentage of the optimal choice.

And by the same token, despite the improvements they made to Devourers, the Deathspitter was still better against almost everything.

I'm not some probability wizard. These are basic calculations anyone can do with a high school math education. The fact that the writers put these stats to paper and then decided they should all have equal costs just says they don't care.

Now they're adding points costs... but only in round 5pt increments. So now a Venom Cannon is equally costed to a Deathspitter.

They just don't care.

 catbarf wrote:
They just don't care.

I instead propose that they don't understand.

Watch the metawatch videos. They're excellent and talking the talk, but I don't think they ever learnt to walk.

They can talk about finding the "sweet spot" of 45%-55% win rates until the cows come home, but I don't think any of them truly understand what that means, or how to achieve it. They just think it sounds good because the (very loud) tournament crowd tells them that, so they continue to make their ham-fisted and nonsensical changes because they think that's what will work.

I think they care quite a bit, but just have no understanding on what they care about.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
They just don't care.

I instead propose that they don't understand.

Watch the metawatch videos. They're excellent and talking the talk, but I don't think they ever learnt to walk.

They can talk about finding the "sweet spot" of 45%-55% win rates until the cows come home, but I don't think any of them truly understand what that means, or how to achieve it. They just think it sounds good because the (very loud) tournament crowd tells them that, so they continue to make their ham-fisted and nonsensical changes because they think that's what will work.

I think they care quite a bit, but just have no understanding on what they care about.

Thats the problem with hiring internally, you get people who are really passionate about the game but have no idea how the game works.

Is the better metric not “by what degree are these forces winning”.

Numbers out my arse, but if I’ve a Win Ratio of 90%, but each outcome, victory or loss, was narrow, that suggests a different underlying issue to someone of a 60% win ratio, where their wins are proper ROFLstomps, and their losses are Narrow Squeaks?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Is the better metric not “by what degree are these forces winning”.

Numbers out my arse, but if I’ve a Win Ratio of 90%, but each outcome, victory or loss, was narrow, that suggests a different underlying issue to someone of a 60% win ratio, where their wins are proper ROFLstomps, and their losses are Narrow Squeaks?

If we make every army lethal enough, then we can get to a perfect 50% win ratio! Who cares if the game is over T1? We will have perfect balance!

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Is the better metric not “by what degree are these forces winning”.

Numbers out my arse, but if I’ve a Win Ratio of 90%, but each outcome, victory or loss, was narrow, that suggests a different underlying issue to someone of a 60% win ratio, where their wins are proper ROFLstomps, and their losses are Narrow Squeaks?

This is a good point I haven't heard considered before.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
They just don't care.

I instead propose that they don't understand.

Watch the metawatch videos. They're excellent and talking the talk, but I don't think they ever learnt to walk.

They can talk about finding the "sweet spot" of 45%-55% win rates until the cows come home, but I don't think any of them truly understand what that means, or how to achieve it. They just think it sounds good because the (very loud) tournament crowd tells them that, so they continue to make their ham-fisted and nonsensical changes because they think that's what will work.

I think they care quite a bit, but just have no understanding on what they care about.

Frankly, the idea that someone would look at those weapons with a sincere interest in balance, but genuinely not understand why 4 attacks at S7/AP-2/D2 is better than 3 attacks at S6/AP-4/D1, sounds to me like such a poor understanding of their own game (and/or probability) that it circles back to not caring enough to learn. I'd rather believe that just nobody was interested in seeing how they compared.

I mean, we're not talking about complex issues like winrates and external balance which are certainly complicated things to resolve, and I can understand struggling with those. They've done a good job in the grand scheme of things, with internal and external balance generally better than it was in the past. But we're talking about things like Hive Guard getting nerfed into oblivion in the codex, and then getting a points hike again in the latest balance pass. Why? It almost seems like some sort of versioning control issue; where changes based on prior game states crept through to final release, and nobody noticed.

I'm not one of those people that thinks GW designers are all incompetent or that they hate the players or whatever. But there comes a point where low-level decisions are so inexplicable that the only way I can make sense of it was to assume it was unintentional and nobody is being paid to notice, or that balance isn't actually a priority until people start complaining about specific things.

 catbarf wrote:
I'm not one of those people that thinks GW designers are all incompetent...

What would it take to convince you?

I think seeing one codex out of three suddenly benefitting from way better design choices and fewer mistakes would make me think that there is someone who knows what they're doing in there. The designers sounding competent when they write or talk about the game would make me believe as well, then I might believe that it's an issue of deadlines because corporate wants every player to buy 3 books each year. When everything is completely gak and they sound like they have no understanding of 40k or general game design you start to get suspicious. How do they hire again? From within the company. I think upward mobility in companies is great, but they should demand a GT top 4 or having acted as a judge at a GT in the current edition and evidence of completing an online course on game design before they charge someone with designing the game.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Is the better metric not “by what degree are these forces winning”.

Numbers out my arse, but if I’ve a Win Ratio of 90%, but each outcome, victory or loss, was narrow, that suggests a different underlying issue to someone of a 60% win ratio, where their wins are proper ROFLstomps, and their losses are Narrow Squeaks?

I'd suggest, too, that the respective builds matter.

If an army has a 70% win rate with one specific build, but as soon as you move away from that build then your win rate drops like a brick, then it would seem that a highly-targeted nerfing is in order - rather than it being an army-wide issue.

 vipoid wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Is the better metric not “by what degree are these forces winning”.

Numbers out my arse, but if I’ve a Win Ratio of 90%, but each outcome, victory or loss, was narrow, that suggests a different underlying issue to someone of a 60% win ratio, where their wins are proper ROFLstomps, and their losses are Narrow Squeaks?

I'd suggest, too, that the respective builds matter.

If an army has a 70% win rate with one specific build, but as soon as you move away from that build then your win rate drops like a brick, then it would seem that a highly-targeted nerfing is in order - rather than it being an army-wide issue.

Internal vs. external balance.

To keep things on tyranid hindsight theme, how long did nids lean on flyrants as the only hope to be competitive while the rest of the codex was hot garbage? Sure, they could get wins, but only a very focused skew list.

Our local nidplayer will just went from Bonesword/Deathspitter to Rendingclaws/Devourer.

Worse against some targets, better against others - but remains 30 ppm.

Personally I think it's hilarious that GW almost completely removed wargearcosts from SM but are still tweaking wargearcosts for some armies like Tyranids...

 catbarf wrote:
Frankly, the idea that someone would look at those weapons with a sincere interest in balance, but genuinely not understand why 4 attacks at S7/AP-2/D2 is better than 3 attacks at S6/AP-4/D1, sounds to me like such a poor understanding of their own game (and/or probability) that it circles back to not caring enough to learn. I'd rather believe that just nobody was interested in seeing how they compared.

So it's less not caring or not understanding, and instead just pure negligence. Dereliction of duty, as it were.

I mean, I did call Armour of Contempt and Hammer of the Emperor an abdication of responsibility - a virtual admission that they don't know how to fix anything - and that fits with what you're saying.

 catbarf wrote:
But we're talking about things like Hive Guard getting nerfed into oblivion in the codex, and then getting a points hike again in the latest balance pass. Why?

That's not new though. GW has punished units after edition/Codex changes because of their performance in prior editions/Codices. Rule of 3 exists because of what people did with Hive Tyrants and Supreme Command Detachments at the start of 8th. They've continued to punish Hive Tyrants ever since. Hive Guard are getting nerfed (again) because of how they performed in the last book. It's like they have no short-term memory. And they've done it to other units in the past, like the Wraithlord in 4th.

This is why they seem to go through obvious paradigm shifts during editions, where we'll get 2 or 3 Codices in a row that are really in love with a certain new mechanic (a recent example being "Ignores Invul Saves" - Tau, Squats, Guard), and then it goes away and we get something new in the next batch of Codices. I'm frankly amazed that they stuck with Crusade for an entire edition. They couldn't even do that with sub-factions.

 catbarf wrote:
It almost seems like some sort of versioning control issue; where changes based on prior game states crept through to final release, and nobody noticed.

Looking back over the history of points changes, I'm actually certain that there is a version control issue, or that the person who does one points update didn't necessarily do the one before it. I recall Ogryn getting a good points reduction in one points pack, and then reverting back to the previous points with the very next update, with no explanation given, like whoever wrote it just didn't know they had gone down/had never seen the previous version.

 catbarf wrote:
I'm not one of those people that thinks GW designers are all incompetent or that they hate the players or whatever. But there comes a point where low-level decisions are so inexplicable that the only way I can make sense of it was to assume it was unintentional and nobody is being paid to notice, or that balance isn't actually a priority until people start complaining about specific things.

I'd wager that balance isn't a problem until they see it affecting sales negatively. If one army is so powerful that it starts to cause a dip in the big sellers (READ: Marines), then that would cause a reaction.

I don't think GW's writers hate the players, but I do ascribe to Hanlon's Razor. Because if not incompetence, then it is malice, and I don't believe that you can run a games division on spite for your fans. I mean, this isn't the writers room for The Witcher!

 vict0988 wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
I'm not one of those people that thinks GW designers are all incompetent...

What would it take to convince you?

I think seeing one codex out of three suddenly benefitting from way better design choices and fewer mistakes would make me think that there is someone who knows what they're doing in there. The designers sounding competent when they write or talk about the game would make me believe as well, then I might believe that it's an issue of deadlines because corporate wants every player to buy 3 books each year. When everything is completely gak and they sound like they have no understanding of 40k or general game design you start to get suspicious. How do they hire again? From within the company. I think upward mobility in companies is great, but they should demand a GT top 4 or having acted as a judge at a GT in the current edition and evidence of completing an online course on game design before they charge someone with designing the game.

They hire yes-man. Those who follow company order rather than start doing anti-profit thing like balance.

tneva82 wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
I'm not one of those people that thinks GW designers are all incompetent...

What would it take to convince you?

I think seeing one codex out of three suddenly benefitting from way better design choices and fewer mistakes would make me think that there is someone who knows what they're doing in there. The designers sounding competent when they write or talk about the game would make me believe as well, then I might believe that it's an issue of deadlines because corporate wants every player to buy 3 books each year. When everything is completely gak and they sound like they have no understanding of 40k or general game design you start to get suspicious. How do they hire again? From within the company. I think upward mobility in companies is great, but they should demand a GT top 4 or having acted as a judge at a GT in the current edition and evidence of completing an online course on game design before they charge someone with designing the game.

They hire yes-man. Those who follow company order rather than start doing anti-profit thing like balance.

I'm not sure balance is anti-profit, imagine you could pick up any force you wanted with a fair chance of winning whatever you want to win. I'd wager people would be more likely to have multiple armies and or they might instead have a broader selection of units rather than buying then selling the exact 2k list the meta dictates etc.

Proper balance is the opposite of anti-profit.

I see people picking up units and armies that they did not consider before under 9th edition rules, as they are hot trash.

The only revenue GW would lose, would be balls to the walls tournament players who jump from army to army every few months. But at the same time those guys might be a non insignificant part of the second hand market. If there are less used Marines on eBay, direct sales might even go up.

Painters and collectors don't care either way, but the casual players should outnumber the hardcore tournament players by a big margin.

From a production and warehouse perspective, a well balanced game is good too, as it is easier the predict what to produce and keep stock of.

What I find odd about the double bonesword ruling is that they kept the points unchanged for the bonesword+lash whip combo. The difference in the effective hit rate between the two configurations is 1/3 of an attack.

Effectively, they decided that 1/3 of an attack is worth 10 points per model. I am not sure if this makes sense.

HF_Scorpion wrote:
What I find odd about the double bonesword ruling is that they kept the points unchanged for the bonesword+lash whip combo. The difference in the effective hit rate between the two configurations is 1/3 of an attack.

Effectively, they decided that 1/3 of an attack is worth 10 points per model. I am not sure if this makes sense.

That's not quite right, the bonesword/whip did go up. It's now 5 points.

While I don't like the dual swords at 10 points, 5 points for the sword/whip seems a bit more reasonable. I'm leaning towards that over rending claws personally. As while the claws are cheaper, I don't mind paying 5ppm to get 2 damage weapons.

Dudeface wrote:


I'm not sure balance is anti-profit, imagine you could pick up any force you wanted with a fair chance of winning whatever you want to win. I'd wager people would be more likely to have multiple armies and or they might instead have a broader selection of units rather than buying then selling the exact 2k list the meta dictates etc.

While balance isn't anti-profit, stagnation is anti-profit. You want to keep the meta in a dynamic status in which players are incentived to be constantly updating their forces.

a_typical_hero wrote:
Proper balance is the opposite of anti-profit.

I see people picking up units and armies that they did not consider before under 9th edition rules, as they are hot trash.

The only revenue GW would lose, would be balls to the walls tournament players who jump from army to army every few months. But at the same time those guys might be a non insignificant part of the second hand market. If there are less used Marines on eBay, direct sales might even go up.

Painters and collectors don't care either way, but the casual players should outnumber the hardcore tournament players by a big margin.

Yes but your casual player who just picks what they like will be turned off very quickly if they get tabled endlessly because of playing what they like.

Tournament players are not the only market they stand to lose due to imbalance; to claim that is to ignore the games history. The game was in a horrible place in 7th edition from a financial standpoint and that is a direct result of how bad the game was. Tournament players and pure painters are both minorities, the majority of players fall somewhere in between and they are going to be turned off to buying products if they feel like the game has no balance.

Arson Fire wrote:

HF_Scorpion wrote:
What I find odd about the double bonesword ruling is that they kept the points unchanged for the bonesword+lash whip combo. The difference in the effective hit rate between the two configurations is 1/3 of an attack.

Effectively, they decided that 1/3 of an attack is worth 10 points per model. I am not sure if this makes sense.

That's not quite right, the bonesword/whip did go up. It's now 5 points.

While I don't like the dual swords at 10 points, 5 points for the sword/whip seems a bit more reasonable. I'm leaning towards that over rending claws personally. As while the claws are cheaper, I don't mind paying 5ppm to get 2 damage weapons.

I do not think it went up. The base warrior at 30 points comes with bonesword/lashwhip and devourer, and it's 30 points. If you want to exchange the devourer for a laswhip/bonesword combo, that's +5 points. But I am fairly sure the base warrior stays the same.

HF_Scorpion wrote:

Arson Fire wrote:

HF_Scorpion wrote:
What I find odd about the double bonesword ruling is that they kept the points unchanged for the bonesword+lash whip combo. The difference in the effective hit rate between the two configurations is 1/3 of an attack.

Effectively, they decided that 1/3 of an attack is worth 10 points per model. I am not sure if this makes sense.

That's not quite right, the bonesword/whip did go up. It's now 5 points.

While I don't like the dual swords at 10 points, 5 points for the sword/whip seems a bit more reasonable. I'm leaning towards that over rending claws personally. As while the claws are cheaper, I don't mind paying 5ppm to get 2 damage weapons.

I do not think it went up. The base warrior at 30 points comes with bonesword/lashwhip and devourer, and it's 30 points. If you want to exchange the devourer for a laswhip/bonesword combo, that's +5 points. But I am fairly sure the base warrior stays the same.

Thats not how it works.

The Warriors is 30 points, and while it does come with a bonesword/lashwhip by default, it still has to pay 5 points for that bonesword if you opt to keep it, for a total of 35 points.

It's the same for everyone where wargear costs, another example; A Leman Russ is 150 pts comes with a Turret Weapon and a Heavy Bolter by default, but you still have to pay 5 point for the Heavy Bolter for a total of 155 pts.

 Tyran wrote:

Dudeface wrote:


I'm not sure balance is anti-profit, imagine you could pick up any force you wanted with a fair chance of winning whatever you want to win. I'd wager people would be more likely to have multiple armies and or they might instead have a broader selection of units rather than buying then selling the exact 2k list the meta dictates etc.

While balance isn't anti-profit, stagnation is anti-profit. You want to keep the meta in a dynamic status in which players are incentived to be constantly updating their forces.

I refuse to believe that the constant stream of new units, even new armies (Votann), total range refreshes (Primaris), overhauled rules (Guard), new tournament packs, new mission packs, and quarterly balance adjustments are all insufficient meta-rotation to keep things fresh without also deliberately screwing up the balance too.

I was talking more in a purely theoretical context. You don't want to achieve a perfect balance in which no further changes are needed.

 catbarf wrote:

 Tyran wrote:

Dudeface wrote:


I'm not sure balance is anti-profit, imagine you could pick up any force you wanted with a fair chance of winning whatever you want to win. I'd wager people would be more likely to have multiple armies and or they might instead have a broader selection of units rather than buying then selling the exact 2k list the meta dictates etc.

While balance isn't anti-profit, stagnation is anti-profit. You want to keep the meta in a dynamic status in which players are incentived to be constantly updating their forces.

I refuse to believe that the constant stream of new units, even new armies (Votann), total range refreshes (Primaris), overhauled rules (Guard), new tournament packs, new mission packs, and quarterly balance adjustments are all insufficient meta-rotation to keep things fresh without also deliberately screwing up the balance too.

If game is balanced new armies etc require zero changes on existing armies as you can simply figure way to win with your existlng army and your wr depends on your skill. And new purchases have zero impact how much you win.

The moment you say you need to buy new models to respond new armies/mission packs you know game isn't in balance. And indeed that imbalance is driving sales then.

tneva82 wrote:

 catbarf wrote:

 Tyran wrote:

Dudeface wrote:


I'm not sure balance is anti-profit, imagine you could pick up any force you wanted with a fair chance of winning whatever you want to win. I'd wager people would be more likely to have multiple armies and or they might instead have a broader selection of units rather than buying then selling the exact 2k list the meta dictates etc.

While balance isn't anti-profit, stagnation is anti-profit. You want to keep the meta in a dynamic status in which players are incentived to be constantly updating their forces.

I refuse to believe that the constant stream of new units, even new armies (Votann), total range refreshes (Primaris), overhauled rules (Guard), new tournament packs, new mission packs, and quarterly balance adjustments are all insufficient meta-rotation to keep things fresh without also deliberately screwing up the balance too.

If game is balanced new armies etc require zero changes on existing armies as you can simply figure way to win with your existlng army and your wr depends on your skill. And new purchases have zero impact how much you win.

The moment you say you need to buy new models to respond new armies/mission packs you know game isn't in balance. And indeed that imbalance is driving sales then.

It’s a fine line, having new missions, new opponents and new mechanics that ad interesting changes that facilitate changes to what units you want too field is good and a healthy meta.
Having a rule suddenly make what you have rather bad for all aspects of the game, not so healthy for the game.

I think a lot of players do focus too much on a very focused competitive view that isn’t helping there own enjoyment of the game, but GW has spent decade or two focused on that to the point a lot of players playing face that disconnects from how they want to play 40k now.