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I think the biggest issue with trying to balance 40k in any meaningful way is tournament/competitive play. I don't think it was really designed for that. Big beautiful armies, epic battles, and fluff are the draws of WH vs. other tabletop battle games. The constant points changes/nerfs/rules changes are unfun for virtually everyone, Timmy, Johnny, and Spikes alike.

I disagree.

Did you have a proposal? or just baiting?

hunterac20@gmail.com wrote:
I think the biggest issue with trying to balance 40k in any meaningful way is tournament/competitive play. I don't think it was really designed for that. Big beautiful armies, epic battles, and fluff are the draws of WH vs. other tabletop battle games. The constant points changes/nerfs/rules changes are unfun for virtually everyone, Timmy, Johnny, and Spikes alike.

I think unbalanced rules are unfun, while fewer people would use strong combos, they would still exist and all the randomly broken stuff would still decide games before they begin. Tournaments are an easy place to gather data from games between players with lists built to win and players doing their best to win. A lot of players will sandbag to make games more interesting when things go in their favour, at least that's what posters here on Dakka have said, but sandbagging would ruin data for figuring out which options are too good or not good enough. Timmy benefits because he can bring his rad Monolith against Drukhari without getting stomped. Competitive 40k has fewer unwritten rules than casual 40k does, this makes it simpler to enjoy. Competitive 40k is also a way to challenge yourself and your list, something that Johnny and Spike enjoy. Competitive 40k is small but important part of the 40k game eco-system. If you want a bigger problem I'd point towards WAAC players that will gladly play against casual lists using their tournament netlist. Constant point changes are good because they minimize the amount of time the game is broken, the game is more fun when it is not broken. I don't think it'd be impossible to have the current level of balance with a quarter of the changes if GW took more care with their changes, I too find the changes exhausting.

I'm curious as to why you think the game would be more balanced if tournament play wasn't a thing. Without the tournament packs what format would a standard pick-up game be? Ultimately GW still needs to balance based around something and the easiest at the moment is the tournament scene, thanks to the standardised missions and wealth of data available.

Your proposal doesn't seem to make much sense. Are you suggesting the game would be better if it was less balanced?

Tournament Play doesn't make the broken combos not exist. It makes them more obvious to everyone, especially the Design Studio. The game will not be better for having the broken combos only know to a select few and their internet followers. That would mean they would be less likely to be fixed.

For me, the biggest problem with 40K is the Design Studio has failed to sculpt the game to in a way to encourage players to play the game in a way that more closely matches the core of the background material.

The clear answer is that a tournament balanced game is good for everyone, a loosey goosey fluff narrative experience might be balanced in a narrative environment but flakes the second someone pushes it by contrast.

Yes. No. Kind of. But mostly no.

I myself am not terribly fussed for Tournament play. Just never been something that’s appealed to me. But many friends in my Nerd Herd partake and enjoy, due to the social side of things.

I am far from persuaded Tournaments are a negative. For many folk, they’re the best way to get a decent number of games in, and even better, against new and hopefully interesting opponents.

The drawback of course is That Guy. Y’know, takes it all just a bit too seriously, puts getting a win over anyone actually having much in the way of fun. Who feels that if you’ve not “cheesed” your list, you’re somehow disrespecting them. Maybe they’re also a rules lawyer - but only when it’s your turn. Maybe they’re a sore loser and the second you get an upper hand, it’s Grumpy Tosspot O’clock.

But hey, That Guy is not exclusive to Tournament Play. Like. At all. I’m sure we’ve all encountered them before in-store or during a narrative game - and if you’re really unlucky, during a TTRPG, where they constantly argue with the GM because Them Winning is all they can conceive of in any given endeavour.

I don’t think Tournaments particularly encourage That Guy, so much as That Guy sees it as a captive audience.

To add some flavour from my unique perspective? Many many moons ago, around probably 2002, I was Staffing GW’s Capitol Conflict, an “official” tournament. The one held at Alexandra Palace.

I was in charge of collecting the results at the end of every round, and passing them on to the Nerd Herd in the back room who hashed out placement. Of what must’ve been a hundred, maybe two hundred, players? Only one was A Pain In My Arse.

I specifically remember them, because between every game, he’d be bothering me wanting to know his current placement. Never mind every time I explained “I’m just gathering the data, others are crunching it”. He asked. Every. Single. Bloody. Time.

Then I saw his army. Nids. Horribly painted Nids. Where his only Troops Choices were Ripper Swarms, one of which was simply a toy Mini (as in the car) painted green and based. It was a proper “if I min-max, I won’t actually have to do any thinking on the day” list. He was That Guy.

But more importantly? The Only That Guy In The Whole Tournament. Genuinely the only one. I perused most of the armies, as whilst a round was ongoing I didn’t have a lot to do, and I do like seeing Pretty Things smashing each other up. His stood out as particularly “I’ve only painted so I don’t lose score points, and bollocks to the quality”.

So something like 1%, maybe 0.5% of participants was an Awful Sportsman.

I can’t properly remember much more, but much to my chagrin I think he did Place quite well - but I honestly couldn’t say whether he got his much coveted win.

No. You, specifically, are the biggest problem with 40k.

The incessant point/rule changes aren't caused by tournament play. They're the result of GW's rules writing being trash tier.

Flamebait.jpeg

 Lord Damocles wrote:
The incessant point/rule changes aren't caused by tournament play. They're the result of GW's rules writing being trash tier.

Yeah I don’t get how people conclude otherwise. Things like the Iron Hands supplement or the whole Votaan release shouldn't have happened as is, period.

It's also exacerbated by GW rebuilding the whole rule system every 3 years. So whatever good moves they make toward improving game balance get thrown out the window every 3 years.

Changing the core game as much as they do means that even if they had good technical writing and attention to balance; they'd still have only a 3 year window which means a tiny opportunity to fix and adjust things before it all changes

hunterac20@gmail.com wrote:
I think the biggest issue with trying to balance 40k in any meaningful way is tournament/competitive play. I don't think it was really designed for that. Big beautiful armies, epic battles, and fluff are the draws of WH vs. other tabletop battle games. The constant points changes/nerfs/rules changes are unfun for virtually everyone, Timmy, Johnny, and Spikes alike.

No. Even if it was I don't want to hear it from a throwaway account so lazy they couldn't even manage a username.

 Overread wrote:
It's also exacerbated by GW rebuilding the whole rule system every 3 years. So whatever good moves they make toward improving game balance get thrown out the window every 3 years.

Changing the core game as much as they do means that even if they had good technical writing and attention to balance; they'd still have only a 3 year window which means a tiny opportunity to fix and adjust things before it all changes

I think 9th has been almost purposefully unbalanced, 9th has not been radically different from 8th and 8th was broken by the release of Marines anyways. GW made no attempt to balance the game at the start of 9th, the points updates were random and stupid. Taking game design to be 100% art and 0% science. If they added just a touch more science to the project, 9th could have been balanced from the word go. Stuff like not adding more points to a top performing army after giving it additional rules, only testing codexes against the one released just before and maybe the one just after when at the very least faction power level should be balanced against Space Marines. It can't be true that GW cannot release a new unit without it being broken. The game should never be broken, it should be perfectly balanced at the end of each edition, it shouldn't be that we need another 3 years of 2000 Stratagems just to fix mistakes that could have been caught pre-release.

I don’t think tournament play is the biggest problem at all. Frankly the line is very vague when jumping from casual to competitive. Very few people build lists or make choices that are designed to lose. In many ways the full on tournament scene is more honest because everyone is clear about their intentions. I’ve know a good number of players both as casual and tournament players. I never had a tournament player bring a feels bad list except when they asked to test a build. The casual group meanwhile would occasionally just bring something completely out of left field and body you. Basically tournament play is clearly defined where as casual play is very vague.

The only thing people worry about with tournament play is the concept of creating and chasing an ever shifting meta. Ergo that the game is designed around one build/army/structural element which is more powerful than the rest; which the tournament players find and build for.


However whilst some games do approach balance that way with an ever shifting meta system; wargames don't really fit that very well at all.

First up most people do not build dozens of armies, they build and collect very few because each army is a big time sink. Forget money, just focus on time to build and paint and just to play. It's not a card game where you can play several rounds in half an hour; its a wargame where the whole evening would likely be one battle.

Secondly the tournament scene is tiny compared to the casual scene. So if they were meta-chasing they'd be chasing a very tiny market of customers who army hop and if you talk to those who do meta chase at the competitive scene you'd find they often buy secondhand armies when switching. They aren't buying brand new from GW, they are building premade often prepainted armies. About the only market they might actually be good for are commission painters .






In general if a company approaches supporting the competitive market in a fair and sensible manner then they'd aim for a flat level of mechanical balance. That is al factions would have as equal a standing of winning as each other. Furthermore an ideal situation would have each army itself able to field several different army compositions without one or more standing out as vastly superior.
Yes you could still build a bad list if you built the army poorly; but the gains between a good and great army would be subtle not game breakingly powerful.



That approach benefits competitive scenes as it puts the onus on the player skill for the win; it works for casual scenes because a balanced structure game is just as fun to play casually.
It also works great for narrative and open because when you've a balanced system you can more easily change what happens and have a good idea how the changes will influence the game you are going to play.



In the end better balance works in favour of all save the department at GW that's pushing out new books and the one that doesn't want to spend more money and resources on balance and game testing.
SAdly one thing we have to live with is that GW has a style of rules development, production and release which hampers it at the core in terms of achieving a balanced game.

Things are a LOT better than they were, but we still get problems. We still get armies going live with a broken codex/battletome where the powerful option isn't some crafty complex thing that slipped the net but a really big and obvious thing that really should have been spotted (yes I'm looking at you Ossiarch Bonerepers with a subfaction that gave a +1 save to EVERY model; and you Slaanesh with your old tome with Keepers of Secrets summoning more Keepers to the table)

 alextroy wrote:
For me, the biggest problem with 40K is the Design Studio has failed to sculpt the game to in a way to encourage players to play the game in a way that more closely matches the core of the background material.

Counter-point - if they were to try to do that, the tournament try-hards would complain that They're Doing It Wrong, would still build lists that bear little resemblance to the lore, and (in extremes) decide they can do it better and produce their own packs for events, which in turn would lead to bad data if the Studio was using it. And the NOVA guy would get employed by them, for no good reason.

 Dysartes wrote:

 alextroy wrote:
For me, the biggest problem with 40K is the Design Studio has failed to sculpt the game to in a way to encourage players to play the game in a way that more closely matches the core of the background material.

Counter-point - if they were to try to do that, the tournament try-hards would complain that They're Doing It Wrong, would still build lists that bear little resemblance to the lore, and (in extremes) decide they can do it better and produce their own packs for events, which in turn would lead to bad data if the Studio was using it. And the NOVA guy would get employed by them, for no good reason.

Pffft. Just remember all those fluff bunny Death Guard players who suddenly took three units of bikes/spawn when they became good (not that a Chaos Legion being able to muster a dozen bikes in one place is actually all that unfluffy...)

 Dysartes wrote:

 alextroy wrote:
For me, the biggest problem with 40K is the Design Studio has failed to sculpt the game to in a way to encourage players to play the game in a way that more closely matches the core of the background material.

Counter-point - if they were to try to do that, the tournament try-hards would complain that They're Doing It Wrong, would still build lists that bear little resemblance to the lore, and (in extremes) decide they can do it better and produce their own packs for events, which in turn would lead to bad data if the Studio was using it. And the NOVA guy would get employed by them, for no good reason.

Also trying to match the background to the tabletop isn't just a perfect translation. IT's also something that varies person to person.

Also lore changes - Tyranids at their inception were a very different conceptual army to what they are today. These changes aren't just design changes, but also where things like more plastic investment and equipment has allowed GW to make models way bigger than they ever could before and have them affordable for customers.

Another thing to consider is that the lore is a bit nuts. Imperial Guard and Tyranid players would have to buy hundreds of basic swarm troops whilst Marine players would be done after one or two tactical marine boxes. Meanwhile the Eldar player could deploy a whole army or, lore wise, their game would be spending hours whispering in the ear of other players to get them to fight their battles for them

hunterac20@gmail.com wrote:
I think the biggest issue with trying to balance 40k in any meaningful way is tournament/competitive play. I don't think it was really designed for that. Big beautiful armies, epic battles, and fluff are the draws of WH vs. other tabletop battle games. The constant points changes/nerfs/rules changes are unfun for virtually everyone, Timmy, Johnny, and Spikes alike.

Competitive play is the only hard set of data at the disposal of the design team in order to at least try to balance the game trough point values, altho it creates a toxic list-tailoring environment, it's still useful.

Whether the competitive scene has had an input on the absolutely terrible 8th/9th power creep and special snowflakes rules galore , i don't know

I tend to think that the design team is entirely responsible for the bloat because they need to justify shaking things regularly up to their management, in order to sell books and miniatures.

rising tides raise all ships, tournament play is good for the game as it allows those competitive player and WAAC players to find and exploit the problems in the game and GW to fix them, sure in an ideal world GW would playtest the game and find these issues but that is not and never has been the way GW does things.

if the cost of having a relatively balanced game is competitive players, that is fine.

Analysis of Tournament Results don’t just highlight popular lists. They can also reveal which units just aren’t seeing the field.

Whilst I can’t comment on the modern game, a historical and I guess ongoing issue is some Codexes can only produce a couple of decent lists.

That is not the same as Netlisting. Instead, it’s a limitation accidentally built into the Codex. For instance, if Guardians are just too squishy and weedy (oh hi, 3rd and 4th Ed!), you’re not going to see them being taken over say, Dire Avengers.

That in turn excludes one source of heavy weapons, which needs to be picked up elsewhere, such as Wraithlords, who are a bit of everything nice (tough, shooty, still fighty), and in turn that edges out say, War Walkers and so on.

Now that is not because Tournaments Are The Pinnacle Of Hobby. It’s because they’re an excellent source of Solid Information. You can know for a fact what people actually fielded. If a given list keeps showing up, it’s a clear sign something needs addressing within their Codex - and it’s not necessarily “well everything in that list am need toning down”.

Let’s go back to the early days, Knight, Smash Captain, and a smattering of cheapo Guardsmen. That was an aberration not foreseen. A deliberate abuse of options to produce something not intended. And so, we saw changes to what could be fielded in a single list - and that army was just done, as it was no longer a legal list. The constituent parts themselves weren’t overpowered - just that specific combo.

Keep in mind if GW want to actually release anything, they have a finite amount of playtesting time. And that amount of time is miniscule compared to the game hours put in once it’s out in the wild. And so adjustments are always on the back foot. And for the reasons above, Tournaments are a reliable way to gather data.

Certainly better than salty comments online, where you can never be quite sure if you’re getting factual information. Yes a good chunk will be honest, but a good chunk is liable to be butthurt bad losers blaming everything but themself. Because let’s be honest, self criticism is genuinely tricky.

Another aspect of tournament data is that it should be the game being played as the game is intended. Rules should be correctly used; armies properly built; resolutions and problems that arise should be issues with the rules not with interpretation of them etc...


Ergo its the best data for the game running as it should, or at least as the rules allow it to.

Many events today are also recorded and logged so you've got hard actual data to work with. Documentation, reviews, videos etc... Again all that info that provides solid information.

They are also predictable events so you can more easily track them and monitor them and the results.



General user data is a mess. You've got people playing wrong; using home rules; adjusting things; interpreting things poorly; not recording nor logging information; playing at random without any structure to reporting on their playing. Heck they might even play old editions or such.

Basically its a much much harder set of data to work with. Now there are valid bits of data in there, eg if everyone is interpreting a rule wrongly or such. There is valuable data. It's just much more work to tease out the value from the waste and to also be able to interpret the results in a meaningful way.

And don’t forget someone may entirely invent results or something to whine about.

Many moons ago when I was cluttering up BoLs, the Ork Codex with ramshackle Trukks first landed. One poster made the wild claim that in his first three games with that Codex, every time a Trukk was shot off the board, it inflicted the maximum possible damage to its occupants. Clearly talking out his bum for reasons of…well I’ll never understand the need to invent stuff to complain about.

And we’ve seen similar on Dakka, where it becomes apparent we’re only getting one, typically biased, side of the story. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re making it up entirely, just that without the other party, it can be hard to say if the problem is as presented, or perhaps a significant tactical goof, an opponent outright cheating, the dice doing a genuine betrayal (like that time out of 8 2+ save, I promptly rolled seven 1’s…) or what have you.

It can also help with analysis of what makes popular Netlists actually work. Are they Dwarven Gunline Of Boring Inevitability or Smash Captain, Knight and Loyal 32 levels of “well I don’t really need any particular tactical understanding or ability here”? Or are they a curious mix of well positioned units, timely and cunningly stacked stratagems, where you need to know the beast’s innards to wield it effectively, it’s just when you do know those innards it becomes unstoppable. And if so, what exactly is it allowing it to overperform to a significant degree. Is a Stratagem under priced? Is a given unit too cheap or too fighty or both? What’s the genuine keystone holding it together? What happens if you alter or remove that keystone?

And that analysis can help prevent swinging the pendulum too far in the other direction, because that can be just as irritating, especially for those who feature a Wonder Unit outside of its “optimal” list, who now find it either useless, or from a shift in points, your army needs a thorough rejig.

That's a good point on getting both sides. Tournaments by reports do indeed let you easily see both sides of the game.

A lot of user reports, esp on text based sites, but also video where its more a report of a game than a live game; can easily skew the presentation of results as someone miss represents the situation. Even if they are being totally honest they can still miss-represent something.

That's all before you get down to the fact that the real world isn't like a video game and you don't go around with stats or levels above your head. So two players of very different skill can play each other - the higher skilled one might find the game easy/boring and the army simple to control; whilst the opponent might find the entire situation the reverse. Even if they were playing the same armies against each other their experience is influenced by the skill divide between them.


Tournaments, certainly by the latter part of the event, should be seeing more even or at least less extreme differences in player skill.

hunterac20@gmail.com wrote:
I think the biggest issue with trying to balance 40k in any meaningful way is tournament/competitive play. I don't think it was really designed for that. Big beautiful armies, epic battles, and fluff are the draws of WH vs. other tabletop battle games. The constant points changes/nerfs/rules changes are unfun for virtually everyone, Timmy, Johnny, and Spikes alike.

Tournament play is not problematic in any fashion. It´s just a certain way of playing 40K in a gamey fashion alike in E-Sports. Why bother raiding fuel dumps, blowing up bridges or assassinating enemy commanders when you can can squat on circular shapes in order to achieve a victory? If Eisenhower would have been this wise things would have been way easier for the Allies.

Special mention goes to the architects of the war-torn battlefields of the far future. These skirmishes take always place on daemon worlds where the laws of physics and common sense don´t matter as you will see the L-shaped ruined remains of structures placed in odd angles which would make any notions of previous roads pretty laughable.

All you need to do to see the problem of one sided reports is think back to sore losers you’ve met.

I once had a Bretonnian Player park a full Bretonnian Bus of Knights of the Realm, with his General and Sorceress, right in front of a Helblaster Volleygun, and a Great Cannon. Worse? The Great Cannon had a front-on line of fire. And not that it made a difference, whilst within Short Range of the Helblaster, it was a broadside shot. Yeah. It went squish in my turn, big proper squish. Great Cannon first, Helblaster as the side salad.

Man he whined and moaned my artillery was OP, and completely unfair. Never mind he positioned himself so badly. It’s all just My Toys Am OP.

Or when someone fell for your trap, being baited into a bad situation they really didn’t need to fall into.

Or when you comprehensively outplayed them knowing your army inside and out, only to be reliably informed “you diced me”.

None of those happened during Tournaments.

Indeed, other than being beaten like butter by better players, I’ve never had an objectionable experience at the few Tournaments I’ve attended.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
A
Man he whined and moaned my artillery was OP, and completely unfair. Never mind he positioned himself so badly. It’s all just My Toys Am OP.

Or when someone fell for your trap, being baited into a bad situation they really didn’t need to fall into.

Or when you comprehensively outplayed them knowing your army inside and out, only to be reliably informed “you diced me”.

None of those happened during Tournaments.

I've had them happen during tournaments. They were all a certain type of player who were followers of a certain someone that was run off of Dakka, formed his own blog that gained a small cult following who all netlisted any list he swore would run rough shod over events(they always ended at the bottom), and berated Yakface for his banning despite it being a direct result of his own behavior(including being directly called out by GW's head of tournaments at the time).

Coming to this as someone who has years of gaming experience but has only just started dabbling in GW games recently, tournament play is not a bad thing by itself. Making tournament wins the only metric of success and the driving focus of a games development however is a really bad thing and can lead to a downward reinforcing spiral.

I used to play WM/H for many years in our basement group of friend as a casual fun game we all enjoyed. When that group split up due to people moving away etc, a few of us went out into the world and found the wider wm/h community and to our horror we realised that we had been playing a totally different game to the rest of the player base. There was no such things a a "fluffly list", there was no lore, there was not hobby, there was no painting, there was just the next tournament, the tournament win and the stats for that unit/caster/faction etc. Over time this drove the company to swing between buffing and nerfing with competitions in mind. In the end the community's mindset has very very hard, very very competitive, noobs got stomped because "they had to learn". That is what lies at the end of the competitive spiral for a game.

My observation as a new player is that 40K up to this point has not really been designed to be a competitive/tournament game. Its still an excellent wargame but its rules are 10-20% "looser" or "less precise" that other games because that enables the playing experience, story telling, hobby elements to be 100% better. Its designed with social interaction and fun in mind. Having the competitive/tournament gamer as the driving force will change that. And this will start to boil away the community. You wont get as many new people coming into the game. Adults who want to have an hour or two of fun will go off and find something else to do with their money & time. Because who wants to drop all that ££ on models when they people you end up playing with are hyper competitive gakkers? That's why the WM/H community is left only with its competition players and their new edition is not really appealing to any new players, because who want to be part of that community mindset?

Making the 40K rule set tighter is a great thing. Handing the reigns over to the competition player is very very dangerous.