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I interpret "casual" as being "not tuning a list to dominate another player" and collecting whatever is cool or themed.

That thing that is cool or themed can also be optimal or tuned.

Whereas building competitively is intentionally building a list to try to dominate the other player and intentionally only choosing the most tuned or optimal choices to have as much of an advantage before the game starts as is possible (and requires the other player to be doing the same thing to enjoy that game otherwise it is a seal clubbing)

 Mezmorki wrote:
But the core issue in this thread, in my understanding, is how skewed lists (from whatever source enables it) can lead to a poor experience versus someone playing a more casual list.

Different people are arguing different things - but "skew" largely isn't an issue in today's 40k.
If you look at top competitive lists they aren't spamming the same unit profile. They typically take a variety of unit types, including troops.

The concern is that say I take 3 units of troops, 3 stabby assault units, 3 shooty units and 2 tanks.
And you also take 3 units of troops, 3 stabby assault units, 3 shooty units and 2 tanks.

But my units are all better than yours. They statistically expect to do more damage and take less damage, while more easily moving around the table.
Therefore I have a much higher chance to win the game, regardless of what decisions you and I make.

We've then got into this wide tangent about how you can't identify what points cost something should be - but I'm not sure that's hugely helped even if its true in theory. Its very hard for instance to think of a scenario where say a Predator Destructor with 2 Heavy Bolters would be more valuable than a Skorpius Disintegrator or Plagueburst Crawler - but that's where the points are at the moment.

Maybe you could say Marine players shouldn't run tanks, so its fine the Predator sucks to discourage them. But that doesn't help casual players who may go and buy one, only to then find its just "bad" on the tabletop.

back in the day of old GW, the difference was simple, by running a theme that fit the background you had a weaker list than someone who just took the best units available

but with the random changes for the sake of change, we have now armies were this fluffy themed lists are the strongest option available, while other armies cannot compete even with taking the strongest units available

so your fluffy lists is a "skew" list while the competitive WAAC netlist from your opponent still has no chance to win
and both are casual players who just want to have fun playing 40k because they like the background

or as a youtuber said it yesterday, Space Marines are cool and we like them, but all games with Space Marines suck, so lets hope that the new Demonhunters is really just XCom2 with Marines
(funny how this applies to computer/mobile/console games as well as to tabletop)

 jeff white wrote:
not gonna chase your moving goalpost.

I don't get it, what goalpost has moved? The goal is to "fix to all this "balance" business", your original suggestion failed to that, what I misconstrued your suggestion as failed that, the revised version someone else suggested fails at it. You cannot "balance" by ignoring it any more than you can fix a burnt pancake by turning off the stove. You will still have units that excel and units that fail, except you'd have more units that fail and fewer units that excel because you're not doing math to ensure a minimum level of balance, you're not following up with playtesting of spammy lists and you're not responding to how factions are used competitively and what their level of success is in the competitive scene. You have to get the pan hot, add some fat, pour in an appropriate amount of pancake batter, flip the pancake when one side is done and take it off the pan onto a plate once the other side is done. I don't teach classes, so you'll have to make do with my pancake analogy

Each scenario in series would move through different types of terrain.

It's not economical to update all your terrain every year, I've sort of done this for my Necron TTS terrain series, starting on top of a planet and then delving into the tomb world with bottomless chasms before entering into the depths of the cryptoscience facility, it's usable for GT missions, although too sparse terrain-wise and not updated for 2022. It would be awesome if tournaments cared enough to craft this sort of narrative, but for the sake of both tournaments and pick-up games the game should still be as balanced as possible. There should be as few terrible and incredible units as possible, a few niche units which are really good under the right circumstances but mostly bad are okay but the rest should be good solid units. You should not have to rip apart, crush or sell your minis just to have fun games. Ideally, you should be able to play a casual list against a competitive list you should have a back and forth game where you get to kill some things and score a few points and not just get steamrolled by an unkillable and all-eradicating tide of double-shooting Wraithguard that get victory points for being good at eradicating you.

I don't know whether you're talking about casual pick-up games or narrative games, with regards to your suggestions, because for the former speed of play is a huge factor. I've read about shops in Poland where they have timers on tables and if you take too long you have to help kill feral hogs /sarcasm. People have to get home for dinner time or get back home to sleep before work, having a 2k list that is in a box ready to play makes that a lot easier.

points will never be perfect...

The question is how good are they right now and how good can they get? I think balance can get extremely good, like "Spike brings a netlist to our casual game and we're equal in skill, I don't even notice that he's bringing a mean list" kind of balance. It's impossible to make every pancake perfect, but if you practice enough and you have a good recipe then the first pancake you make out of each batch does not have to be a scraggly mess.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
...the game is actually meant to be balanced. There's an emphasis on historical accuracy for sure, but the game wouldn't be any fun if you said "oh, you brought panzer grenadiers again to fight my Soviet Cavalry, why bother playing" which you DO get for some 40k armies. So it's at least better balance than that.

I did not notice the 2d6 math, thanks for pointing that out, the only thing I noticed was that counting 11-12 as 10 was a bit weird because it's a 1/12 chance. It's interesting to hear that you think it is balanced, is there no chance that this is a perception thing caused by the game not being played by a big enough community of competitive people? Like my group agreed to not look up netlists during Index 8th and the game felt pretty balanced, Necrons vs Daemons was theoretically super unfair with Changeling + Brims vs anything Necrons could field but we didn't feel it because we did not play enough games or do enough math to notice all the busted stuff immediately. My experience in 9th has also been very good in casual games.

 catbarf wrote:
One other way of looking at it is instead of allowing armies to adjust to match the mission, which implicitly requires that you have enough extra models to make meaningful change, you can instead look at adjusting the mission to match the armies.

Like the Titan Hunter secondary mission that lets you change the mission to make it easier if your opponent is playing Titanic skew. This also makes explicit what the designers are trying to do, don't bring too many vehicles/too much infantry/too many Titanic units, how do I find out whether GW thinks I should take Reanimators or Skorpekh Destroyers more often in terms of fluff? If GW was going to make Reanimators bad then they should advertise this in codexes by warning people not to get Reanimators.

 vict0988 wrote:
If GW was going to make Reanimators bad then they should advertise this in codexes by warning people not to get Reanimators.

You can't possibly be this naive. There's no game company in existence that's going to tell you straight up "Don't buy our kit".

ccs wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:
If GW was going to make Reanimators bad then they should advertise this in codexes by warning people not to get Reanimators.

You can't possibly be this naive. There's no game company in existence that's going to tell you straight up "Don't buy our kit".

Over-emphasis for effect, you can say that a unit is a dedicated anti-tank unit but overpriced for most other duties or you can portray a unit as the versatile staple of an army. You can make rules that prevent people or make it difficult to take 3 Reanimators like a Decurion-type of deal or like the limit of 1 Captain/Detachment. GW absolutely told people to stop buying 4 DDAs or 3 Doomscythes, but they don't tell me to not take a Reanimator, so Reanimators should be pts-efficient in at least one list. It's kind of hard to show that they're overcosted since someone did top 4 with a single Reanimator, but even if you accept my argument that it is 20% overcosted, 15 pts in the scheme of a 2k list is unnoticeable the rest of your list can carry that unless it is also 20% overcosted. I would argue a newb cannot put together a list that can carry the overcosted Reanimator and a casual player might just not be interested in making the adjustments needed to make it less bad.

It could be that Chain of Command is horribly imbalanced. But we are about to do a 3v3 "Big CoC" (their Apoc style system) in March and there's probably eight players total locally and it hasn't cropped up.

Besides, the reason you would want balance in your hobby casual game is all perception anyways. But yeah, we don't have tons of tournament data or anything to see whether or not CoC is balanced in the strictest sense.

What I can say is that in my local meta of players who want to succeed, no one has found any "secret sauce" or anything that totally broke the game. Compared to playing my Slaanesh Daemons at the beginning of 9th (which was so brutal I threw up in my mouth a little) it has felt surprisingly balanced.

Okay, so I get it- I know that looking at top performing armies don't tell the whole story, because each of them is the best (and possibly only good) build for the dex they represent.

But 5 different armies were represented in the LVO top 8. No single army received more than two of the top eight spots.

That feels like a somewhat level playing field. Again, fully acknowledge it doesn't tell the whole story. A special shout out to people still struggling with an 8th ed dex, because yeah, these dexes will struggle more than most.

Its debatable really.
A lot of lists seem able to make progress - even if they can't go the full distance. This is good. There are fewer hard walls - at least for those factions with updated books.

But equally in the LVO Custodes, DE and Tyranids were scored over 60% win rates. This seems bad - and the situation would become more closed and oppressive if say those 3 factions ceased being 24%~ of tournament participants, and instead approached 50%+. As tends to happen over time once its clear certain factions are winning.

You still have things like the Necron Reanimator that I think are medicore at 80 - but were obviously rubbish at 110.

Ruthlessly the big issue with 9th is that there's a lot of skill in it - and this serves to balance things - but you might not like that skill. Its kind of like how Kill Team seems to be "reasonably" balanced right now if everyone plays to the mission - but falls over hard if you line two armies up facing each other and just see which falls over first. Maybe CoC is the same.

Tyel wrote:

Ruthlessly the big issue with 9th is that there's a lot of skill in it - and this serves to balance things - but you might not like that skill. Its kind of like how Kill Team seems to be "reasonably" balanced right now if everyone plays to the mission - but falls over hard if you line two armies up facing each other and just see which falls over first.

Might be getting my first game of the new KT in two weeks- the painting is actually going well right now.

It'll probably be a weird one, since it's only going to be one fire team per side rather than a full KT, but we'll see how it turns out.

Tyel wrote:
Ruthlessly the big issue with 9th is that there's a lot of skill in it - and this serves to balance things - but you might not like that skill. Its kind of like how Kill Team seems to be "reasonably" balanced right now if everyone plays to the mission - but falls over hard if you line two armies up facing each other and just see which falls over first. Maybe CoC is the same.

Yes, this is exactly true for COC. I think I even was explicit about it earlier in the thread - if all you're doing is a firefight with no maneuver/tactics/other equipment than guns and guts, there's a very clear imbalance. Panzergrenadiers, no matter the stage of the war, have a pretty gigantic dice advantage thanks to having two belt-fed machine guns in the squad.

However, this FIREPOWER advantage tends to come with a maneuver disadvantage - they lose more when moving than other squads from other nations and drop down to about parity with other squads (e.g. a maneuvering American rifle squad might get to move 1d6 and shoot with 12 dice rerolling 1s due to semi-automatic rifles and marching fire, while a PzGren squad gets 10 dice no rerolls on a 1d6 move. On a 2d6 move, the Americans get 6 dice and the Germans get zero). Compared to stationary, where the pzgren get like 20 dice and the rifle squad still gets 12.

But infantry maneuver on a battlefield with so many machineguns is definitely a skill. Choosing the appropriate support assets and executing the plan to use them, when to use or not to use covering fire or smoke, how to give your opponent the overwatch dilemma, etc. All stuff I talked about in my earlier post.

The most "OP" thing (in that it is a great leveller) is the off-table artillery, because its bombardments can shift the course of the battle. But those are somewhat random and usually unreliable, and while they're powerful enough to shape games, they can be played around.

PenitentJake wrote:
Okay, so I get it- I know that looking at top performing armies don't tell the whole story, because each of them is the best (and possibly only good) build for the dex they represent.

But 5 different armies were represented in the LVO top 8. No single army received more than two of the top eight spots.

That feels like a somewhat level playing field. Again, fully acknowledge it doesn't tell the whole story. A special shout out to people still struggling with an 8th ed dex, because yeah, these dexes will struggle more than most.

It means that in the tournament sense if you want a diverse group of armies, but where everyone is still expected to bring the one or two lists that do well, that its doing well. From a tournament sense, they are succeeding.

Its a level playing field IF you are chasing the meta and making sure that the army you are fielding is a part of the top of the meta.

That they have multiple top placing armies is also a good thing if you are playing in the tournament scene.

Pry up the floor boards of the tournament scene and you have a rotten black mould infested under deck that is everyone else underneath the tournament scene trying to get in fun games and for those of us trying not to have to invest upwards of a grand or more into an army every time the rules change or are updated to keep up with the meta.

It doesn't help Bob at the local game store showing up with an army that gets roflstomped by Joe's meta army, and then Joe says "yeah well this army doesn't win every GT and other armies can place alongside it, so its perfectly balanced, you just need to get better and buy one of those GT armies too so we can have closer games!"

vict0988 wrote:It's interesting to hear that you think it is balanced, is there no chance that this is a perception thing caused by the game not being played by a big enough community of competitive people? Like my group agreed to not look up netlists during Index 8th and the game felt pretty balanced, Necrons vs Daemons was theoretically super unfair with Changeling + Brims vs anything Necrons could field but we didn't feel it because we did not play enough games or do enough math to notice all the busted stuff immediately. My experience in 9th has also been very good in casual games.

Not to speak for Unit, but my perception has been that Chain of Command is designed to be balanced in terms of forces and, if you were to remove the randomization of support and use a deterministic system instead, you'd get pretty consistently fair fights.

The idea of the support roll is so that it's not deterministic, and you do have the occasional uphill battle, because real warfare isn't always fair. But that unfairness is actually, truly random, rather than because the balance system sucks and can be min-maxed.

You can always substitute flat values for the dice roll if randomness isn't your thing. I ran some AK-47 Republic with a small group a long time ago, and we had a couple of guys who loved how unpredictable it was, and others who felt that having part of your force just not show up to the battle due to UN intervention was simply not fun. It's not for everyone.

vict0988 wrote:Like the Titan Hunter secondary mission that lets you change the mission to make it easier if your opponent is playing Titanic skew. This also makes explicit what the designers are trying to do, don't bring too many vehicles/too much infantry/too many Titanic units, how do I find out whether GW thinks I should take Reanimators or Skorpekh Destroyers more often in terms of fluff? If GW was going to make Reanimators bad then they should advertise this in codexes by warning people not to get Reanimators.

Yeah, I'd agree with that. In theory, I like the secondaries because they allow armies to counteract skew by getting extra VPs. In practice, I dislike that there's glaringly no secondary keyed to heavy infantry spam, I hate how it renders certain units just unusable because they yield too many secondaries, and it's bs that a well-rounded Guard army yields 2-3x more VPs than a well-rounded Marine army because it's all keyed to wounds rather than points of damage done. The secondary system could be a valuable anti-skew system if it were designed a little better.

Unit1126PLL wrote:Yes, this is exactly true for COC. I think I even was explicit about it earlier in the thread - if all you're doing is a firefight with no maneuver/tactics/other equipment then guns and guts, there's a very clear imbalance. Panzergrenadiers, no matter the stage of the war, have a pretty gigantic dice advantage thanks to having two belt-fed machine guns in the squad.

However, this FIREPOWER advantage tends to come with a maneuver disadvantage

Yeah, I made specific reference to situational force-multipliers earlier because this is a really important aspect of the game design. You don't maximize your damage by listbuilding to wombo-combo your damage output before the game starts; you maximize damage through positioning to catch units in the open and suppress for assault. Those machine guns can really feel like a liability when standing still isn't an option.

PenitentJake wrote:
Okay, so I get it- I know that looking at top performing armies don't tell the whole story, because each of them is the best (and possibly only good) build for the dex they represent.

But 5 different armies were represented in the LVO top 8. No single army received more than two of the top eight spots.

That feels like a somewhat level playing field. Again, fully acknowledge it doesn't tell the whole story. A special shout out to people still struggling with an 8th ed dex, because yeah, these dexes will struggle more than most.

In a tournament that size, you really need to stretch out to the top 32 because most of those armies were one bad decision or one dice roll or one sportsmanship point away from top 8 with how narrow the field is with 500+ players.

Stretching out to top 32 we have 11 represented factions, which is decent tbh. The problem is the majority of those 11 are one off players.

9 Armies are Custodes. 7 are tyranids. 6 are Drukhari. Then you have Orkz and GK with 2 appearences.

Also look at the highest level some factions finished at. PRE-NERF Sisters finished 39th the next highest was 93rd.

PRE-NERF deathguard finished their highest at 36th, next highest was 59th.

Necrons highest finish was 76th. They got buffs though,so we'll see what happens with them. Blood Angels and space wolves were in the 90s.

Now, all of this obviously doesn't make definitive statement about anything, a lot of data like % of field, WL% and more advanced statistical analysis are needed to get a clearer picture of where everyone is at at this precise moment in time.

But looking at 22 of the top 32 being the same 3 armies and several armies having 1 or 0 appearances in the top NINETY doesn't bode well.

Auticus also has a point that tournament results are also totally non-indicative of the INTERNAL balance of the books. Every GK list runs as many Dreadknights as they can fit because they're head and shoulders better than most other options. Deathwing got a top 16 placing. DEATHWING specifically, not Dark Angels.

The thing is, the game as a whole is so poorly balanced even assuming the absolute top tier of each book is the only thing being taken, that worrying about internal balance of the book is a luxury most armies don't have.

The Sisters of Battle changes (and yes, I harp on these but they're illustrative of a lot of GW's design problems) DO technically result in a more internally balanced book. The efficiency per point of Sacresancts, Dominions, and Morven are now closer to Immolators, Castigators, and Exorcists. BUT because the increases to our strong units have a frankly massive impact on the book's position on the overall power curve, and the decrease to our weak units have a negligible or non-existant effect, the army's external balance is now worse.

TLDR, We're at a point where most armies even having 1 really good build is a luxury and until external balance improves, internal balance needs to be a secondary concern. For balance adjustments, both should be considered when writing the book.

That's a pretty solid analysis- thanks for that.

I'm surprised there isn't an entirely different set of rules for competitive play vs non-competitive.

And I mean entirely new set.

Competitive play should not have as much micro for list building. Every army should have basically copy/paste datasheets for their troopers, light tank, heavy tank, airplane etc. If the goal is external and internal balance, then the models should just be a representation of what your guys look like. But in function they are all the same. This is the only way to truly have a "perfect balance"

But even if that were the case, you would have people chiming about how going first/second is a bigger advantage yada yada yada.

Basically, a game developer can never make their competitive crowd 100% satisfied, and attempting to do so just cuts flavor from your system and slowly leads to more homogenization. Why don't we just rip the band aid off and homogenize everything right now for a COMP set of rules and then add back in all the flavorful elements into the subset of rules for more role play/historical/narrative/casual player base.

The problem there is that 40k is definitely designed and marketed toward "deck builders" or people who enjoy making lists to try to outlist their opponent.

You wouldn't have a competitive scene in 40k marketing to those people if you took out the main reason they are playing - to build and outlist their opponent.

As they are choosing to target that as their primary demographic that indicates their marketing research suggests that that is the bulk of their revenue source.

That also would remove churn and burn which I believe is also intentionally built in as a kind of nod to CCG regular new releases that the kids come in to stores to drop a grand or more on boxes of new cards regularly.

I just don't see that as reasonable from a business stance.

From a player stance I'd love that but I'm also not the core demographic of deck builder that GW has targeted.

Tittliewinks22 wrote:
I'm surprised there isn't an entirely different set of rules for competitive play vs non-competitive.

And I mean entirely new set.

Competitive play should not have as much micro for list building. Every army should have basically copy/paste datasheets for their troopers, light tank, heavy tank, airplane etc. If the goal is external and internal balance, then the models should just be a representation of what your guys look like. But in function they are all the same. This is the only way to truly have a "perfect balance"

But even if that were the case, you would have people chiming about how going first/second is a bigger advantage yada yada yada.

Basically, a game developer can never make their competitive crowd 100% satisfied, and attempting to do so just cuts flavor from your system and slowly leads to more homogenization. Why don't we just rip the band aid off and homogenize everything right now for a COMP set of rules and then add back in all the flavorful elements into the subset of rules for more role play/historical/narrative/casual player base.

Because no one wants that? Not developers, not players, not even the illusion of the 'competitive crowd' as wholly different from 'normal players.'
Its a load of extra work that will just hack people off and drive down interest.

Tittliewinks22 wrote:
I'm surprised there isn't an entirely different set of rules for competitive play vs non-competitive.

And I mean entirely new set.

Competitive play should not have as much micro for list building. Every army should have basically copy/paste datasheets for their troopers, light tank, heavy tank, airplane etc. If the goal is external and internal balance, then the models should just be a representation of what your guys look like. But in function they are all the same. This is the only way to truly have a "perfect balance"

But even if that were the case, you would have people chiming about how going first/second is a bigger advantage yada yada yada.

Basically, a game developer can never make their competitive crowd 100% satisfied, and attempting to do so just cuts flavor from your system and slowly leads to more homogenization. Why don't we just rip the band aid off and homogenize everything right now for a COMP set of rules and then add back in all the flavorful elements into the subset of rules for more role play/historical/narrative/casual player base.

A verbose version of "just play chess".

The narrative crowd will never be happy until they can play Blood Angels and Necrons alliance vs Orks and Tyranids alliance in a 10k vs 1k match on an upside-down table on the ceiling, why don't we just get rid of narrative play and make 40k Narrativer Edition. Each battle round both players roll a D6, if the roll is the same the armies will manoeuvre and do a little damage to each other according to the shared narrative that the "players" want to tell. If one "player" rolls higher than the other player their army will outdamage or outmanoeuvre the opponent's army, the higher the roll relative to the opponent's roll, the bigger the impact. The game is decided when the collective difference between the dice rolls of the two "players" is 10. There is no turn limit and if one army is entirely destroyed then they get a new army made up of anything from 40k, or AOS, Gorkamorka is okay too, but you have to ask before you use DnD miniatures, we're not being crazy or anything. Now you can ignore points and use blast templates while you make noises at each other like widdle kiddies. And don't you ever dare come near the competitive side of the game again, us comp devils will crush you into the floor because that is the only thing we care about muhahaha.

The concept was intended as hyperbole to illustrate a point. The more calls for "external balance" the more homogenized we are going to see each army.

There are plenty of "balanced" competitive games out there, why should GW change the rich history of this one to placate to a competitive crowd that will move on as soon as they've been milked dry?

I think imbalance is more desirable. I may be old, but I miss the days when every army excelled in some aspects but had weaknesses in others. Marines at the time were considered a jack of all, best of none.

If GW were to act on all the zealots who turn any critical discussion into a means of balance argument, then the game will deteriorate anyway. Why wait? To milk the cash cow until it's at a state of disrepair and they implement another AoS/40k 8th reboot.

The complexity of the game is too high for there to be any semblance of balance given the current rules teams bandwith. Look at another hobby that, until recently, had a very large competitive scene and pro-circut. Magic: The Gathering. Their rulebook puts everything in 40k rules writing department to shame. Unless we want a manifesto the size of the Britannica then the only other option for a "balanced" ruleset is to have more homogenization and slimmer rules (ex. Chess, Catan, Ticket to Ride).

tl;dr
Achieving balance in 40K is impossible without making every army the same or investing too many resources to the rules department to the point of a bad ROI for GW.



EDIT:
To the competitive (tournament players) what is the appeal of 40k rule set that other more balanced competitive games do not scratch for you. Purely rules, not lore/narrative/setting, what is the appeal?

Tittliewinks22 wrote:
To the competitive (tournament players) what is the appeal of 40k rule set that other more balanced competitive games do not scratch for you. Purely rules, not lore/narrative/setting, what is the appeal?

availability, you want to play miniature games events, you need to play 40k, end of story
(when I started it was Warhammer Fantasy here, even most people in the club liked 40k more but if you wanted to play tournaments, you needed to play WHFB, and the time before that it was Battletech)

Tittliewinks22 wrote:
The concept was intended as hyperbole to illustrate a point. The more calls for "external balance" the more homogenized we are going to see each army.

Homogenized milk is good, that's what I use for my pancakes, I don't want to have to shake my milk to get the fat distributed evenly in it.

There are plenty of "balanced" competitive games out there, why should GW change the rich history of this one to placate to a competitive crowd that will move on as soon as they've been milked dry?

If by rich history you're just referring to the various cheeses that curdled out of the unhomogenized imbalance in past editions then I think you are being silly. Invisible deathstars is no more rich history than the 2010 BP oil spill. I'm not saying that invisibility had to be removed, it should have had a larger opportunity cost. The competitive community did not get the Castellan removed from the game, what was removed was infinite CP and 3++ Knights. Is that really the hill you want to die on? There is nothing rich about Castellans costing 100 pts too little or having Stratagems that are too cheap.

I think imbalance is more desirable. I may be old, but I miss the days when every army excelled in some aspects but had weaknesses in others. Marines at the time were considered a jack of all, best of none.

You must have missed all the editions where Marines were jack of none and Eldar were masters of all or the 8th ed books that made SM masters of all. You cannot be a jack of all trades and master of none without balance, because it is ultimately points-efficiency that decides whether you are good at something.

If GW were to act on all the zealots who turn any critical discussion into a means of balance argument, then the game will deteriorate anyway. Why wait? To milk the cash cow until it's at a state of disrepair and they implement another AoS/40k 8th reboot.

What critical discussion? Are you being critical when you say that 40k should be an unbalanced mess as it is most of the time already? I'm the one doing the criticizing here. I also criticize them when they write unfluffy rules like Iyanden's chapter tactics, but the rules are imbalanced so I'm sure you love them because sure as hell nobody gave a gak about balance when they came up with chapter tactics or wrote them for Craftworld Eldar.

The complexity of the game is too high for there to be any semblance of balance given the current rules teams bandwith. Look at another hobby that, until recently, had a very large competitive scene and pro-circut. Magic: The Gathering. Their rulebook puts everything in 40k rules writing department to shame. Unless we want a manifesto the size of the Britannica then the only other option for a "balanced" ruleset is to have more homogenization and slimmer rules (ex. Chess, Catan, Ticket to Ride).

I am offended and appalled that you don't want a core rulebook the size of the Britannica, that is part of the rich history of 40k to have an oversized rulebook /sarcasm. The core rules have nothing to do with balance, although they're fine for competitive at the moment. Is the Harlequin codex more internally balanced than the Space Marines codex? Not really. Simplifying the game would not make it balanced, balancing the game would balance it.

I don't know what rules teams bandwith means. We don't even know how much staff the writing department has, you have no way of knowing whether it is a staffing issue if that's what you are referring to. I think it's 100% a methodology issue. All the information on whether to buff SK or Deathmarks is out there, but GW's methodology got none of it or let them ignore it very easily.

To the competitive (tournament players) what is the appeal of 40k rule set that other more balanced competitive games do not scratch for you. Purely rules, not lore/narrative/setting, what is the appeal?

You're still not getting it, you don't have to be competitive to want a more balanced 40k. Maybe you just want to have more games that go to turn 3+ for casual game nights, maybe you'd like to use <insert bad unit> in this environment or <insert OP unit> in that environment.

Also, the idea that balance = less "narrativeness" is a bit spurious imo.

I used to make it myself, then I realized I couldn't draw the thread of causality between "this interaction became more balanced" and "this interaction became less narrative" for anything in the game.

Really, what seems to murder the "narrativeness" the most are decisions caused by GW's own incompetence, and the understandable but regrettable decision to chase money.

 auticus wrote:
The problem there is that 40k is definitely designed and marketed toward "deck builders" or people who enjoy making lists to try to outlist their opponent.

You wouldn't have a competitive scene in 40k marketing to those people if you took out the main reason they are playing - to build and outlist their opponent.

As they are choosing to target that as their primary demographic that indicates their marketing research suggests that that is the bulk of their revenue source.

Agreed with your points overall but I think there's a GW quote floating around where they proudly say they don't bother doing market research. Which if true and not just a boastful quote out of context, would be quite remarkable that they managed to organically shift towards a sales model that targets deck builders without any detailed research. Just as the sea favors crabs perhaps the market for competitive nerdy games evolves towards deck building.

Tittliewinks22 wrote:
The concept was intended as hyperbole to illustrate a point. The more calls for "external balance" the more homogenized we are going to see each army.

There are plenty of "balanced" competitive games out there, why should GW change the rich history of this one to placate to a competitive crowd that will move on as soon as they've been milked dry?

I think imbalance is more desirable. I may be old, but I miss the days when every army excelled in some aspects but had weaknesses in others. Marines at the time were considered a jack of all, best of none.

If GW were to act on all the zealots who turn any critical discussion into a means of balance argument, then the game will deteriorate anyway. Why wait? To milk the cash cow until it's at a state of disrepair and they implement another AoS/40k 8th reboot.

The complexity of the game is too high for there to be any semblance of balance given the current rules teams bandwith. Look at another hobby that, until recently, had a very large competitive scene and pro-circut. Magic: The Gathering. Their rulebook puts everything in 40k rules writing department to shame. Unless we want a manifesto the size of the Britannica then the only other option for a "balanced" ruleset is to have more homogenization and slimmer rules (ex. Chess, Catan, Ticket to Ride).

tl;dr
Achieving balance in 40K is impossible without making every army the same or investing too many resources to the rules department to the point of a bad ROI for GW.



EDIT:
To the competitive (tournament players) what is the appeal of 40k rule set that other more balanced competitive games do not scratch for you. Purely rules, not lore/narrative/setting, what is the appeal?

I am trying to understand your point of view. I am guessing you do not consider yourself a competitive player and you are upset about the competitive scene? You worry that adjustments made to the competitive game will affect your fun?

Are you worried about points changes? Why worry if you are not competitive? So one of your units costs more points. And? You aren't competitive. Heck, you are free to play without points or PL, just casually plonk down the models that you like and play a free-form game with your like-minded opponent. Recreate you favourite BL moment with someone who also wants to engage in that.

Is it the restrictions that are imposed on Matched Play? The sub-faction restrictions and flyer restrictions, for example, are for GT 2022 Matched Play games. I realize that if everyone at your FLGS/gaming community is playing that way it will be hard to find a like-minded opponent. That's on you, though, and not on them. They are presumably having fun playing their GT 2022 Matched Play games. You are free to join them.

You ask what is the appeal of 40K to tournament players. People will have different answers. I am not an ITC fellow, but I certainly play in local tournaments on a regular basis. A long time ago I played at the National GT. I like the background, the models (collecting and painting), the gameplay and the competitive aspect. By competitive I mean having to plan against another person who has agency. I like have relative freedom to pick my army. I understand the need for constraints and restraints, but I enjoy being able to design a list. List design is not, however, everything. You still have to play the game. Someone could try to use the latest LVO-winning list, but lacking that player's acumen they would not achieve the same results on the tabletop. Winning is nice, but playing is more important. For some tourney players, especially local tourneys, the tourney scene offers a convenient way to arrange games in a busy schedule.

 The Red Hobbit wrote:

Agreed with your points overall but I think there's a GW quote floating around where they proudly say they don't bother doing market research. Which if true and not just a boastful quote out of context, would be quite remarkable that they managed to organically shift towards a sales model that targets deck builders without any detailed research. Just as the sea favors crabs perhaps the market for competitive nerdy games evolves towards deck building.

That quote is from Kirby's days as the CEO, back when GW was struggling and people were theorizing Hasbro was going to buy the whole company.

GW may not have actually changed that much from those days, but I believe we can agree GW does bother with market research these days.

Long post there Vict, but you knocked it out of the park right at the end:

 vict0988 wrote:

To the competitive (tournament players) what is the appeal of 40k rule set that other more balanced competitive games do not scratch for you. Purely rules, not lore/narrative/setting, what is the appeal?

You're still not getting it, you don't have to be competitive to want a more balanced 40k. Maybe you just want to have more games that go to turn 3+ for casual game nights, maybe you'd like to use <insert bad unit> in this environment or <insert OP unit> in that environment.

Good balance is important for casual/narrative players because it makes it easier to have fun with the models and armies you like, instead of leaving them at home because they don't work, and having to play with the models you don't like as much just because they do.

Tittliewinks22 wrote:
The concept was intended as hyperbole to illustrate a point. The more calls for "external balance" the more homogenized we are going to see each army.

Ah. As hyperbole, it worked against you.

Also, 25+ years of calls for better external balance haven't homogenized the game, so that isn't really a concern.

To the competitive (tournament players) what is the appeal of 40k rule set that other more balanced competitive games do not scratch for you. Purely rules, not lore/narrative/setting, what is the appeal?

Universally (and speaking as someone that also lived and breathed and died by competitive 40k for many years) its the simple fact that its the only game that fields players in such massive numbers that you can find events literally anywhere.

Its a safe investment for your money. You know you will always have games of 40k available.

Its a safe investment for your time. You know you won't have to do any community building.

Its a safe investment for competitive comparisons. You know that there are hundreds to thousands of tournaments to compare notes with, rank up against, and dozens of large scale "grand" tournaments to compete in.

No other game on the market comes close to the numbers in terms of playerbase. Not even warhammer fantasy did in its prime.

Its never been about the ruleset for a giant majority of all competitive players I've ever known or played with, its always been about the massive community that exists.

Its much more impressive of an achievement to place top 5 or even win a tournament that has 180 people in it than it is to win a "grand tournament" that only had 20 people in it. Thats a massive draw to a lot of competitive people as well.

There are many games out there that could be better competitively but you have to drum up a community and then there's not a global tournament circuit for it either so from a competitive side you are losing out on a whole bunch.

EDIT: there's also the "pro" gamers that want to make a living from 40k. You need the massive player base for that to also even be remotely a reality. The cottage industries that stem from competitive 40k can't be denied. There are guys that make a living just doing twitch and youtubes (ad revenue) and there are guys that make a ton of money from people that pay them hundreds of dollars to simply build them a list. The standard of "make a living" may differ from person to person but its still a fair bit of money that people are chasing that they choose 40k over because of its massive player base.

Exactly like hell bolt action is a really good game and can be quite competative but there is basically no community for it.