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Well, the flipside is that MSU is worse against both definitions of "attrition" in 9th. Easier to get down to half strength and lose extra models in the morale phase, easier to lose more total units and get scored on for what is arguably the best "kill stuff" objective to take.

I don't think these factors quite even things out but it's clear that GW recognized there was a problem and took steps to mitigate it.

TBH counter intuitive gameplay is at this point the house brand of Warhammer 40k.

Sidebar, I'm missing the part where any of the issues the OP brought up have anything to do with competitive players balancing the game for competitive blah, blah blah.

Take Orkz. Orkz have never really played thematically how they are in a competitive environment.

In 8th their best strategy was to camp out half the board and win on objectives.

In 7th their best strategy was to play Eldar instead.

In 6th their best strategy was to play Eldar also.

In 5th their best strategy was to use Nob Bikers to abuse wound allocation.

So in at least the past 4 editions Orkz have been NEITHER thematic OR balanced competitively and yet only 8th edition has even attempted to bring competitive play into the conversation.

Sure, it would be great if you could have both, but up until now we haven't really had either for the majority of armies. At least competitively.

ERJAK wrote:
Sidebar, I'm missing the part where any of the issues the OP brought up have anything to do with competitive players balancing the game for competitive blah, blah blah.

Take Orkz. Orkz have never really played thematically how they are in a competitive environment.

In 8th their best strategy was to camp out half the board and win on objectives.

In 7th their best strategy was to play Eldar instead.

In 6th their best strategy was to play Eldar also.

In 5th their best strategy was to use Nob Bikers to abuse wound allocation.

So in at least the past 4 editions Orkz have been NEITHER thematic OR balanced competitively and yet only 8th edition has even attempted to bring competitive play into the conversation.

Sure, it would be great if you could have both, but up until now we haven't really had either for the majority of armies. At least competitively.

What the OP is saying is that listening to competitive play and competitive play only is but half the solution to this problem you've so neatly outlined. The other half remains to be addressed - but since GW is only getting feedback from the first half, the modern playtested 40k is skewed away from thematic armies and towards competitive ones (since theme is disregarded when balancing armies).

 Arachnofiend wrote:
Well, the flipside is that MSU is worse against both definitions of "attrition" in 9th. Easier to get down to half strength and lose extra models in the morale phase, easier to lose more total units and get scored on for what is arguably the best "kill stuff" objective to take.

I don't think these factors quite even things out but it's clear that GW recognized there was a problem and took steps to mitigate it.

Five-man units suffer almost the same under the new morale system as they do under the old. If penalizing MSU through morale was their intent, they either wanted it to be an extremely subtle change (at Ld8 on a five-model unit, the only difference occurs if you take exactly three casualties, roll a 6 on the morale check, and then roll a 1 or 2 on the last model's attrition check), or they didn't actually math out what the impact would be.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Spoiler:

ERJAK wrote:
Sidebar, I'm missing the part where any of the issues the OP brought up have anything to do with competitive players balancing the game for competitive blah, blah blah.

Take Orkz. Orkz have never really played thematically how they are in a competitive environment.

In 8th their best strategy was to camp out half the board and win on objectives.

In 7th their best strategy was to play Eldar instead.

In 6th their best strategy was to play Eldar also.

In 5th their best strategy was to use Nob Bikers to abuse wound allocation.

So in at least the past 4 editions Orkz have been NEITHER thematic OR balanced competitively and yet only 8th edition has even attempted to bring competitive play into the conversation.

Sure, it would be great if you could have both, but up until now we haven't really had either for the majority of armies. At least competitively.

What the OP is saying is that listening to competitive play and competitive play only is but half the solution to this problem you've so neatly outlined. The other half remains to be addressed - but since GW is only getting feedback from the first half, the modern playtested 40k is skewed away from thematic armies and towards competitive ones (since theme is disregarded when balancing armies).

Or, at least, this appears to be the case based on who they're getting to contribute to these Faction Focus articles - and bringing the NOVA guy on board in a community role. I vaguely recall an article in WD during 8th where they did interview playtesters, and there were some narrative groups in there - but if they're still around, their contributions aren't getting acknowledged by featuring on WHC at the moment.

 Dysartes wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Spoiler:

ERJAK wrote:
Sidebar, I'm missing the part where any of the issues the OP brought up have anything to do with competitive players balancing the game for competitive blah, blah blah.

Take Orkz. Orkz have never really played thematically how they are in a competitive environment.

In 8th their best strategy was to camp out half the board and win on objectives.

In 7th their best strategy was to play Eldar instead.

In 6th their best strategy was to play Eldar also.

In 5th their best strategy was to use Nob Bikers to abuse wound allocation.

So in at least the past 4 editions Orkz have been NEITHER thematic OR balanced competitively and yet only 8th edition has even attempted to bring competitive play into the conversation.

Sure, it would be great if you could have both, but up until now we haven't really had either for the majority of armies. At least competitively.

What the OP is saying is that listening to competitive play and competitive play only is but half the solution to this problem you've so neatly outlined. The other half remains to be addressed - but since GW is only getting feedback from the first half, the modern playtested 40k is skewed away from thematic armies and towards competitive ones (since theme is disregarded when balancing armies).

Or, at least, this appears to be the case based on who they're getting to contribute to these Faction Focus articles - and bringing the NOVA guy on board in a community role. I vaguely recall an article in WD during 8th where they did interview playtesters, and there were some narrative groups in there - but if they're still around, their contributions aren't getting acknowledged by featuring on WHC at the moment.

It also appears to be the case based on rules design. For example, many of the current players have touted (as in the OP example) the ability for melee armies to move up and have "board control" as the reason melee will be fine in 9th. As illustrated throughout this thread, while that may result in games that are 'balanced' between melee and shooting in terms of winrate, it does not result in thematic games. It results in the melee army moving to midboard and then hunkering down and getting shot until the game ends - exactly the opinion provided by the competitive player that the_scotsman was commenting on at the beginning of the thread.

"Orks aren't dead, they can just sit on objectives and soak bullets to victory!" rings hollow for players who picked orks to, say, "git stuck-in wif da boyz".

I think this is coming down to the crux of what is "competitive playtesting".

I feel the morale system is pure GW - not competitive playtesters. Its "People don't like the current system - lets change it and see - look at player base a bit like a hopeful dog"

Because... the change is fairly incidental - and I feel competitive players will have said its marginally better, but morale is a non-issue so don't care much.

Hypothetically it punishes failing by say 1 more severely - but in MSU, there simply won't be the bodies to be attritioned away. So many 5 man units are functionally immune unless you almost killed them - and that was the case before. Modifiers might mess with this a bit, but... eh. Need more testing to see, given how bad morale has been. The change theoretically helps big squads but... blast still just deletes them, and they are probably running with near hard-coded faction-wide rules to help reduce the impact of morale anyway.

To a degree I think the only change for what people want will be in the 9th edition codexes. It might change the design space for these various factions taking account of the new rules. Big points changes might also shake up the meta - but in practice, most things play much the same as they do now, +/- the little things.

But I guess my view is "blast sucks - its a dumb rule" - but I don't think that's GW giving in to the competitive players, that's GW doing Narrative. And saying you want more narrative players deciding how the game will work will result in more such rules.

Actually, blast is a fine rule. I think it's implemented badly, but it's actually a perfect example to hinge the discussion around.

In the "game logic" or "battle vision" or "lore" or "reality" (whatever you want to call it), explosive weapons affect a greater area than non-explosive weapons (given similar quantities). "Back in the day", as it were, GW had a good way to handle this, but these days, they do not. The disappearance of said area mechanism left the awkward situation where area targets took equal damage as point targets from an explosion.

The current rules are a clumsy but well-meaning attempt to fit the logic of the "reality" of the game into the rules. It is clumsy but present.

 catbarf wrote:

 Arachnofiend wrote:
Well, the flipside is that MSU is worse against both definitions of "attrition" in 9th. Easier to get down to half strength and lose extra models in the morale phase, easier to lose more total units and get scored on for what is arguably the best "kill stuff" objective to take.

I don't think these factors quite even things out but it's clear that GW recognized there was a problem and took steps to mitigate it.

Five-man units suffer almost the same under the new morale system as they do under the old. If penalizing MSU through morale was their intent, they either wanted it to be an extremely subtle change (at Ld8 on a five-model unit, the only difference occurs if you take exactly three casualties, roll a 6 on the morale check, and then roll a 1 or 2 on the last model's attrition check), or they didn't actually math out what the impact would be.

Yeah, I agree it's a minor change for five man squads. It's more significant in the argument of 10 vs. 20, which is meaningful to me because Necrons.

I think the attrition objective is the more impactful check; take two Thousand Sons players who are just obsessed with Rubrics for some reason. One of them splits them up into 5-man MSU squads, the other takes big 20 man rubricks. The second player is getting Attrition for free, and since only one person can score that objective that's a huge difference in scoring potential.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Actually, blast is a fine rule. I think it's implemented badly, but it's actually a perfect example to hinge the discussion around.

In the "game logic" or "battle vision" or "lore" or "reality" (whatever you want to call it), explosive weapons affect a greater area than non-explosive weapons (given similar quantities). "Back in the day", as it were, GW had a good way to handle this, but these days, they do not. The disappearance of said area mechanism left the awkward situation where area targets took equal damage as point targets from an explosion.

The current rules are a clumsy but well-meaning attempt to fit the logic of the "reality" of the game into the rules. It is clumsy but present.

But you had that already. Its reflected in getting D6 shots.
I think it would be far - far - preferably to say D6 weapons always get 3 hits. Or 4 hits. It doesn't really matter - and you can balance them accordingly.

But saying you get on average (with downside) 3.5 shots versus this unit, 4 on that unit, and 6 on that unit, is dumb. Its a huge buff, that is going to be incredibly difficult to quantify.in points.
Either things like a Wyvern are going to be generally *bad* - because they are only justified against 11+ units and suck otherwise - or they are okay normally, and offer obscene returns versus hordes.
I don't think there can be a middle ground when you get 50% more shots. (Or, RAW min 3, 71% more shots.)

The sensible thing I think would just be to make all such weapons treat the dice roll as a minimum of 3. That's what I think a competitive player would have gone for - because it gives consistency and that can be valued in points.
This by contrast is a mess - and the likely function is to make squads of 11+ extinct. Or one turn wonders.

Now as said in other threads - meta is meta. In a world where no one takes anything but MSU, it may be that blast weapons are bad, so no one takes them, which in turn means people can start taking hordes again. But this remains to be seen. Points will tell - but right now, I think its been a net buff to lots of guns that didn'tn obviously need it, and as a result bringing hordes is a liability. There are loads of downsides and no upsides.

But I don't think this is because of competitive playtesters. This is because GW think battlecannon go boom.

Making statements about how GW has supposedly catered to tournament play in terms of design is pointless if you can't actually point to instances where this is objectively the case, especially in the examples OP and others have been using. Plus, you don't even know how GW actually playtests or what they ask their playtesters to find.

I used to work in the games industry and also do QA before that and I can tell you that testers are routinely ignored or only asked to do very specific things. It is LAUGHABLE that you would criticise the competitive players who were chosen to playtest 9th on the basis of Orks or Eldar not playing thematically, because you don't know WHAT they were asked to playtest. Essentially, it isn't Tabletop Titans fault that Eldar are almost encouraged to play a cheap chaff type of playstyle because they probably have little input into the actual design of datasheets or units. They might absolutely give feedback along the lines of "Aspect Warriors don't represent what they're like in-lore" but GW are free to ignore that, especially if Tabletop Titans has only been hired to test if the current unit and its stats essentially "works" within the new system and is pointed appropriately.

I remember doing bugtesting and compliance for games and usually if you ever gave actual feedback on game design or balancing, you were usually ignored or told to feth off. That wasn't what you were hired to do and I'm sure in many cases it's the same for playtesters in 40k.

What a lot of you are griping about is a failure of the games designers. I'm sure Lawrence Baker from TTT would love if Howling Banshees were more evocative of their background, but from what it sounds like they're just given their materials, asked to see if anything is too exploitable or broken and if its points match its current datasheet appropriately.

EDIT: Also we know for a fact that GW can absolutely just ignore playtesting completely. Take a look at Marines 2.0 and the Iron Hands supplement specifically. Their entire playtesting team, including the competitive aspects of it, routinely and repeatedly told them it was a massive issue. Their concerns were not taken on board.

 Bosskelot wrote:
What a lot of you are griping about is a failure of the games designers.

OP and others have explicitly said that, so... yes?

I mean, where are you getting the idea that people are blaming competitive players themselves and absolving GW? Everything I see in this thread is criticizing the idea of only balancing towards tournament play, or criticizing GW directly.0

 Bosskelot wrote:
EDIT: Also we know for a fact that GW can absolutely just ignore playtesting completely. Take a look at Marines 2.0 and the Iron Hands supplement specifically. Their entire playtesting team, including the competitive aspects of it, routinely and repeatedly told them it was a massive issue. Their concerns were not taken on board.

Who's on the record saying this happened, btw?

@OP

Looking at you list of grievances, it looks like 40% of your complaints are against skew lists, which is hardly a competitive only "problem". Wacky skewed lists are basically the only way to play a titan, for example, and I have never see someone frown in the presence of one. The dirty secret of these kinds of units is that they aren't actually that powerful for their points. While essentially everything can kill a single cultist, very few things are even vaguely efficient at it (heavy bolters are better at killing knights than cultists), and killing one cultist a turn won't even destroy the unit by the end of the game. Heavy skew lists are always especially hard on tac lists, but that's the trade-off you make for being tac.

I think the problems, become real for regular folk, when you are given only two options either play a tournament army or play something realy bad, so bad that it isn't even worth trying out in casual settings.

One build books, or armies who have to be build around one model type, but unlike knights don't consist of that one model, are the real bad thing in w40k.

Most people don't care about playing in tournaments, they do care about quality of game play. I doubt there are many people who are willing to spend 800$ or more, and then find out the army they bought for looks is not up to task when playing vs other armies bought for looks too.

This thread is flawed on a core level, because it makes the assumption that this change is to the benefit of competitive balance. By all means this seems unlikely. Orks and similar armies seem to be going into 9th heavily nerfed. The suggestions on how to play seem to be scraping together the last options Orks have left. The fact that they WERENT balanced for competitive play feels like it’s more responsible for unfit design than anything else. GW’s balance philosophy seems to be “make the game as fun as possible for people who enjoy interacting as little as possible and sitting their rolling dice behind their castle” as it seems like that is their breadwinner. No competitive players were suggesting ANY of the nerfs that you described there.

Sometimes watching casuals play is like this:




Competitive matches are like watching a MMA fight by comparison.

I'd take a competitive balanced game any day. If you want casual based, then you have Crusade, or 8E, hell even 7E...

 Slayer6 wrote:
Sometimes watching casuals play is like this:

Spoiler:

Competitive matches are like watching a MMA fight by comparison.

I'd take a competitive balanced game any day. If you want casual based, then you have Crusade, or 8E, hell even 7E...

Looks like they're having fun in that first example.

And MMA comparison to Competitive? I don't know man, that seems pretty different to what I've seen on competitive tables. I will agree that there is a lot of hype for a really short burst of action that ultimately lets everyone down who was waiting for a really intense, long grinding fight!

I spit my coffee out for real.

40k competitive matches like MMA matches while casuals are inept minions slap fighting.

hahahahahahahaha

Those minions had a blast... if we're talking about a game... I think they're winning.

MMA fighting?

This is why I say both camps have wildly different goals and objectives and the differences will not likely be reconciled under one big umbrella.

At least with Crusade and Matched Play, we got two smaller, more specific umbrellas to play under. Let fluffy people be fluffy and slap box and laugh at their stupid antics... and let the competitive guys be super cereal. Everyone enjoys the game in their own ways.

Silly question: why can't gw write rules for factions that are both competitive and portray them as they should be in their fluff? I don't see why they can't, in fact they often do. The reason csm players loved the 3.5 codex wasn't just because it was strong competitively, it was also because it is considered by most to be the best portrayal of them. Hh does an excellent job of making all the legions play like they should, while still being good.

Personally, I think the rules for Night Lords in Faith and Fury are an excellent recent example of this. As a long time Night Lords player I love them. They are strong without being meta breaking while reflecting the legion almost perfectly.

If gw would spend more time trying to write rules like these instead of just trying to make things better by making them cheaper, or writing rules that just boost raw power, then they could have factions that are both fun for casual and narrative players and competitive. It would just take a little more effort.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
Silly question: why can't gw write rules for factions that are both competitive and portray them as they should be in their fluff? I don't see why they can't, in fact they often do. The reason csm players loved the 3.5 codex wasn't just because it was strong competitively, it was also because it is considered by most to be the best portrayal of them. Hh does an excellent job of making all the legions play like they should, while still being good.

Personally, I think the rules for Night Lords in Faith and Fury are an excellent recent example of this. As a long time Night Lords player I love them. They are strong without being meta breaking while reflecting the legion almost perfectly.

If gw would spend more time trying to write rules like these instead of just trying to make things better by making them cheaper, or writing rules that just boost raw power, then they could have factions that are both fun for casual and narrative players and competitive. It would just take a little more effort.

Ironhand's rules were fluffy as all hell and they dominated so hard just saying 'IH' is enough to pucker half the buttholes on dakka.

ERJAK wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
Silly question: why can't gw write rules for factions that are both competitive and portray them as they should be in their fluff? I don't see why they can't, in fact they often do. The reason csm players loved the 3.5 codex wasn't just because it was strong competitively, it was also because it is considered by most to be the best portrayal of them. Hh does an excellent job of making all the legions play like they should, while still being good.

Personally, I think the rules for Night Lords in Faith and Fury are an excellent recent example of this. As a long time Night Lords player I love them. They are strong without being meta breaking while reflecting the legion almost perfectly.

If gw would spend more time trying to write rules like these instead of just trying to make things better by making them cheaper, or writing rules that just boost raw power, then they could have factions that are both fun for casual and narrative players and competitive. It would just take a little more effort.

Ironhand's rules were fluffy as all hell and they dominated so hard just saying 'IH' is enough to pucker half the buttholes on dakka.

That's where the concept of "restraint" comes in. The Iron Hands supplement seemed to be written with the same amount of restraint as a bad movie character that fits the "Mary Sue" description: they had to be better than everyone else at everything. The rules writers just didn't know when to stop.

Though it does seem gw have a thing for chapters/legions with "Iron" in their name (see Iron Warriors in the 3.5 codex).

It's almost like gw is bad at balance, regardless of playtesting...

Feel I'm on the verge of whiteknighting here, but GW *does* try to write rules that represent the fluff.

Want to play Goffs? Okay, here's a rule that only benefits you if you are krumping things - and hey, you should do more damage than any other Ork.

Its just that the game doesn't always make that optimal versus the other choices. See: Doing damage isn't the problem, its getting across the table faster and not dying. But there is nothing especially "Goffy" about this.

Afraid there is always two sides to this. At some level yes Chaos 3.5 rules were cool just because they were *different*. But they were also powerful - and people inevitably gravitated to the ones that were better. (Oh, you play Iron Warriors too? What a coincidence...)

Now to a degree this is a balance calculation that could say be resolved. You should be able to balance - to a degree - doing say 7/6 more damage in assault, or moving/advancing/charging an extra inch and ignoring the assault penalty or the other options.

But the complaint here seems more visceral. "If I play Orks I should have a Green Tide and run at the enemy and if I am at any point encouraged to deviate from this preprogrammed path the game is wrong". Well.. I just can't agree. I don't think doing so should be an auto-lose. But neither should it be automatically the way to play. Or at least I don't think so.

If Orks might be forced into hanging back that is a problem with the Codex, not the fact GW is only talking to competitive players. Few of them are going to want Orks to deliberately suck, and play in this *I'll hang back and die slowly* way. They are just going to point out that they can.

I guess the argument you could make is that the competitive scene was madly convinced Orks were going to be the hottest thing ever and then they were a bit meh. Which isn't to say they didn't win games and tournaments - but their dominance never really happened. Probably because of a failure to realise the meta would quickly adapt to be very anti-ork if the number of Ork players ever increased to the point it was justified. In a 6 game tournament, the odds of coming up against an army skewed to murder boyz are very high.

The problem with 40k is that the meta tends to evolve to lists which can't be "meta'ed". See, laughing in Ironhands, or Eldar Flyers, or 3++ Castellans.

No, you hit the nail on the head Tyel. There's potentially issues with Orks (probably a bit early to be making threads about it), but to label ANY of these as "competitive" is just absurd. These are not competitive changes at all, no competitive player wanted that. This is GW again, designing a base system to try and ensure that their poster boys have no real speedbumps towards chewing through NPC (Xenos) factions.

Yeah, I'm sure the rules are just coincidentally structured like ITC, and ITC is just coincidentally deciding to stop houseruling and fold in to the default missions and rules.

They had nothing to do with 9th I'm sure.

I think GW has some talented guys working for them.

Which is why I also think that the imbalance that is always rife in their rulesets is intentional.

 auticus wrote:
I think GW has some talented guys working for them.

Which is why I also think that the imbalance that is always rife in their rulesets is intentional.

Sometimes i think its the end results of Rule of Cool, Everything has to be cool, even when it doesn't really make sense, or just ends in other things not being cool. Its hard to write good rules if you dont get all the peaces to make those rules really play nice.