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Skari being an amazing player is more reason to pay attention to what he's doing, not to dismiss it. The way he plays is more likely to avoid the pitfalls a lot of you lower level players fall into. He's only human, anything he does you are also capable of doing with the exact same models if you improve your own game.

 vict0988 wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
I stopped reading this thread around page 2, too many walls of text.

Just one word of advice.
Don't rush your opinion of the new points.
Look at something like this, i.e. real data https://youtu.be/84luazM84U4
Looking at the new points, everyone was sure that Drukhary were done, that they were screwed by the new points and so on. Yet, it looks like they are doing great.

This is just an example obviously, but the point is that "We could spot the broken and trash things in 5 minutes" is just armchairing at its best.

One of the best Drukhari players in the world with a relatively large amount of 9th knowledge and experience gets second at a one-day RTT, sorry I don't find this to be amazing, people occasionally made Dark Eldar work in 7th. Skari cannot be too negative, his job is literally making Drukhari work and making others believe he can help them make it work, screaming and crying at GW won't bring him any income, this is why I'm taking what he's saying with a grain of salt. He also said that he'll move to a 9-Talos build because those were hit relatively lightly taking 9th rules changes into account. Him saying that he thinks taking a unit of 5 Kabalite Warriors will be part of his competitive list does not mean that the pts increase was not outrageous. Kabalite Venomspam is dead.

As soon as you take out the "He doesn't say what I think he should say so he must not be in good faith" card, you lose any credibility.

Dunno why I thought his first opponent was BA (or why I called them BE, lol), wasn't really paying attention because I saw it was a 3-game tournament and he went 2-1 and was like "this is supposed to be the proof that Drukhari are good? Seriously?"

The overall point is unchanged. One good player going 2-1 at a small local tournament is not an indication of anything at all, much less that Drukhari are fine. I'm honestly floored that anyone would think you can draw any sort of conclusions from that. I'm sure Skari himself would agree.

Firmly in agreement with Spoletta here. Being only-human works both ways, you’re free to disagree with anything he says, but you’d be silly to dismiss the thoughts of a top level player with hands on experience just because it doesn’t fit into the narrow picture you’ve built up in your mind.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Skari: *shares conclusions after play experience*

Yuki: I’m sure Skari would agree we can’t draw any conclusions from that


You know, I somehow don’t think he would agree

Not sure what you're talking about there. Nobody dismissed Skari's opinion that I can see (though the one guy did suggest he has a motive to be positive), and he didn't say himself that he thought Drukhari were great.

"Guys look this great player went 2-1 at a local 3 game tournament, DE are actually great! Shows what everyone on the internet knows!" was just such a bizarre hot-take that I think a lot of people were genuinely perplexed.

 Nitro Zeus wrote:


Yuki: I’m sure Skari would agree we can’t draw any conclusions from that


You know, I somehow don’t think he would agree

We were clearly talking about conclusions re: the viability of the faction in competitive play, not conclusions about how he'd tweak his list. He didn't draw any conclusions about competitiveness of the faction (other than saying that "points increases hurt the faction hard"), and I very much doubt he would tell you you can draw any conclusions on that point from a 3-game local tournament he went 2-1 at.

 Nitro Zeus wrote:
Skari being an amazing player is more reason to pay attention to what he's doing, not to dismiss it. The way he plays is more likely to avoid the pitfalls a lot of you lower level players fall into. He's only human, anything he does you are also capable of doing with the exact same models if you improve your own game.

I agree, but there comes a point where what can work isn't why you play the faction in the first place.

If you like Drukhari for their fast moving, glass hammer playstyle, and 'space pirate' theme, being told that the only way to go now is with 9 Taloi, is unwelcome news.

I can dig it. Especially for older DE players, the army playstyle has really been jerked around. They filled a great niche and I hate how they have been redesigned over time to be something much more cookie cutter.

Giving the rule set to a hard core player modifying it could end in a disaster.
Since these guys have a totally different view of the 40k universe.
They know how to conquer but eventually not how to have fun playing.
I can speak from experience.

yukishiro1 wrote:
Not sure what you're talking about there. Nobody dismissed Skari's opinion that I can see (though the one guy did suggest he has a motive to be positive), and he didn't say himself that he thought Drukhari were great.

"Guys look this great player went 2-1 at a local 3 game tournament, DE are actually great! Shows what everyone on the internet knows!" was just such a bizarre hot-take that I think a lot of people were genuinely perplexed.

 Nitro Zeus wrote:


Yuki: I’m sure Skari would agree we can’t draw any conclusions from that


You know, I somehow don’t think he would agree

We were clearly talking about conclusions re: the viability of the faction in competitive play, not conclusions about how he'd tweak his list. He didn't draw any conclusions about competitiveness of the faction (other than saying that "points increases hurt the faction hard"), and I very much doubt he would tell you you can draw any conclusions on that point from a 3-game local tournament he went 2-1 at.

I never said anything like that.

I said, and I quote

Spoletta wrote:


This is just an example obviously...

I was giving hints to the fact that maybe the community at large isn't so good at armchairing and we are just echo chambering each other.

 Nitro Zeus wrote:
I can dig it. Especially for older DE players, the army playstyle has really been jerked around. They filled a great niche and I hate how they have been redesigned over time to be something much more cookie cutter.

GW has half the time jack all off an idea or vision for certain factions.
DE are a parade exemple, heck , it's the only dex with less options over time, and even more confusing divisions and subdivisions.



Compare that to other factions, which GW has a vision for but ultimately fails at even reaching that vision: F.E
Chaos Space marines, supposedly the veterans of the long war, centered if it would go after GW around their Marines. Meanwhile the only way GW incentiviced (really punished) players is by nerfing Cultists.
And still you will not see more then 5 CSM / squad 3x to get enough HQ slots....

Why's that? because there's no point in CSM troops thanks to the meta facilitated by GW themselves...

Rather than nerfing a unit into oblivion, wouldn't a 7th-esque traitor legions style book be better?

Set limits on what certain factions can take with regards to units. A Swarm of Cultists isn't fluffy in a Night Lords army but is probably very fitting in a Word Bearers army considering their drive for fanatical devotion.

It would still be a bitter pill to swallow but would work out a whole lot better than points dumping things into unplayability because you don't like the look of the list.

 Tristanleo wrote:
Rather than nerfing a unit into oblivion, wouldn't a 7th-esque traitor legions style book be better?

Set limits on what certain factions can take with regards to units. A Swarm of Cultists isn't fluffy in a Night Lords army but is probably very fitting in a Word Bearers army considering their drive for fanatical devotion.

It would still be a bitter pill to swallow but would work out a whole lot better than points dumping things into unplayability because you don't like the look of the list.

just one issue: Gw would need to potentially design differing units for the legions and actually waste a moment on propper design of subfactions. Which gw don't do unless you are a Marine.

Fundamentally all of the mainline CSM play like sevely gimped AL atm, no legion really has without PA or vigilus quirks to even make some differing choices work and since soup will go the way of the dodo for CSm, because without CP , this army basically turns into renegades without any capability you will see even less variety in units fielded.
It's also why the lower ammount of detachments, will hurt hard, due to the cardhouse design relying on buff stacking until the new dex comes out.

Something said earlier in the thread and something which people kind of don't really understand is that, of course GW don't understand their own game; no games designer does. I used to work in the games industry, I've got a degree in games design and nobody who actually makes games really understands or knows how to play their own creations. GW designers going to tournaments to see how the game is actually played in the wild is not an indictment of their methods. This is why you do outside playtesting and QA on everything.

Now, where the GW studio system breaks down is not making enough use of outside playtesting, or in certain cases not really taking the feedback on board. When I worked in QA and testing it was all too common to have issues be flagged WNF (Will Not Fix) on my feedback either because the dev studio didn't have the time or money to prioritise addressing that problem, or because they didn't consider it a problem. This is also why people should fething lay off attacking the playtesters for 40k and blaming them for perceived slights. They likely have no real power or input over actual decisions and we know for a fact a lot of them (like TTT) had zero input over the new points. Maybe some of this doesn't fully overlap between tabletop and computer gaming, but I think there are lots of WNF-style problems that crop up because of GW's slavish adherence to their print schedule. In fact we know that this is what happened with Marines and IH specifically. It's almost hard to blame the design studio for that either because that has always felt like Corporate getting involved and wanting to push the release date up which seemingly messed up a lot of the procedures the design studio had been doing with playtesters up until then and also lead to Marines being forced out of the door early. And really there's a lot of evidence of this being the case, the biggest culprit is that the Sisters dex and the majority of the models were finished months before Marines 2.0 and yet that book came out before them.

I'm surprised and disappointed that the beta Sisters codex hasn't become a model for other dexes going forward since I hoped that would have signified a paradigm shift in how GW designs and balances their books. I wouldn't be surprised if it's something that the design team themselves would be keen to do again. However I imagine corporate talked to marketing and it was decreed that sort of business model isn't viable or isn't good at generating interest and sales, just look at these metrics etc etc.

 Bosskelot wrote:
Something said earlier in the thread and something which people kind of don't really understand is that, of course GW don't understand their own game; no games designer does. I used to work in the games industry, I've got a degree in games design and nobody who actually makes games really understands or knows how to play their own creations. GW designers going to tournaments to see how the game is actually played in the wild is not an indictment of their methods. This is why you do outside playtesting and QA on everything.

Now, where the GW studio system breaks down is not making enough use of outside playtesting, or in certain cases not really taking the feedback on board. When I worked in QA and testing it was all too common to have issues be flagged WNF (Will Not Fix) on my feedback either because the dev studio didn't have the time or money to prioritise addressing that problem, or because they didn't consider it a problem. This is also why people should fething lay off attacking the playtesters for 40k and blaming them for perceived slights. They likely have no real power or input over actual decisions and we know for a fact a lot of them (like TTT) had zero input over the new points. Maybe some of this doesn't fully overlap between tabletop and computer gaming, but I think there are lots of WNF-style problems that crop up because of GW's slavish adherence to their print schedule. In fact we know that this is what happened with Marines and IH specifically. It's almost hard to blame the design studio for that either because that has always felt like Corporate getting involved and wanting to push the release date up which seemingly messed up a lot of the procedures the design studio had been doing with playtesters up until then and also lead to Marines being forced out of the door early. And really there's a lot of evidence of this being the case, the biggest culprit is that the Sisters dex and the majority of the models were finished months before Marines 2.0 and yet that book came out before them.

I'm surprised and disappointed that the beta Sisters codex hasn't become a model for other dexes going forward since I hoped that would have signified a paradigm shift in how GW designs and balances their books. I wouldn't be surprised if it's something that the design team themselves would be keen to do again. However I imagine corporate talked to marketing and it was decreed that sort of business model isn't viable or isn't good at generating interest and sales, just look at these metrics etc etc.

Many thanks for your insight.
Sheds some different light onto game development.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Tristanleo wrote:
Rather than nerfing a unit into oblivion, wouldn't a 7th-esque traitor legions style book be better?

Set limits on what certain factions can take with regards to units. A Swarm of Cultists isn't fluffy in a Night Lords army but is probably very fitting in a Word Bearers army considering their drive for fanatical devotion.

It would still be a bitter pill to swallow but would work out a whole lot better than points dumping things into unplayability because you don't like the look of the list.

just one issue: Gw would need to potentially design differing units for the legions and actually waste a moment on propper design of subfactions. Which gw don't do unless you are a Marine.

Fundamentally all of the mainline CSM play like sevely gimped AL atm, no legion really has without PA or vigilus quirks to even make some differing choices work and since soup will go the way of the dodo for CSm, because without CP , this army basically turns into renegades without any capability you will see even less variety in units fielded.
It's also why the lower ammount of detachments, will hurt hard, due to the cardhouse design relying on buff stacking until the new dex comes out.

Would it though? the 7th edition codex also had a nifty rule that allowed certain units to be taken as an alternative choice, that gives a player more to work with and gives each army a niche where they can bring more of a specific unit to the field. that could be replicated again or the units could have a small rule shift to allow for an option not usually available. Eg:

Night lords: For every Unit of Chaos space marines taken as a troop choice, One unit of Raptors may be taken as a troop choice, instead of fast attack. Special rules applied to the Troop type role do not affect this unit.
Iron Warriors: For every 2 Units of Chaos space marines taken as a troop choice, one unit of Havocs may be taken as a troop choice, instead of heavy support. The default loadout of this unit may not be modified. Special rules applied to the Troop type role do not affect this unit.
Black legion: For every 5 models in a chaos space marine unit taken as a troop choice, that unit may take 1 heavy or special weapon (Up to a maximum of 4 in a unit of 20 models).
World eaters: Every model in a Chaos Space Marine unit taken as a troop choice may choose to take a chainsword without replacing any equipment. Points cost still applies.
Word bearers: Models with the "Prayers to the dark gods" rule may reroll the dice when determining whether the litany succeeds as long as it targets a Troop choice.
Alpha Legion: Units of chaos space marines taken as a troop choice count as benefitting from light cover as long as there is a unit of Chaos cultists within 9 inches closer to the firing unit than the targetted unit.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:
I can dig it. Especially for older DE players, the army playstyle has really been jerked around. They filled a great niche and I hate how they have been redesigned over time to be something much more cookie cutter.

GW has half the time jack all off an idea or vision for certain factions.
DE are a parade exemple, heck , it's the only dex with less options over time, and even more confusing divisions and subdivisions.



Compare that to other factions, which GW has a vision for but ultimately fails at even reaching that vision: F.E
Chaos Space marines, supposedly the veterans of the long war, centered if it would go after GW around their Marines. Meanwhile the only way GW incentiviced (really punished) players is by nerfing Cultists.
And still you will not see more then 5 CSM / squad 3x to get enough HQ slots....

Why's that? because there's no point in CSM troops thanks to the meta facilitated by GW themselves...

I run Chaos Marines all the time dude, they're great for holding objectives and I love it when I get to run my chainsaw boys into some imperial unit. Bing Abby along for some awesome 5+ DTTFE action.

and yet that works how well?

i will tell you how long it works well, until you don't run into SM players, because massed AP-1 /AP-2 will make that an excercise off futility.

Spoletta wrote:

Spoletta wrote:


This is just an example obviously...

I was giving hints to the fact that maybe the community at large isn't so good at armchairing and we are just echo chambering each other.

Spoletta wrote:
Looking at the new points, everyone was sure that Drukhary were done, that they were screwed by the new points and so on. Yet, it looks like they are doing great.

FTFY

 vict0988 wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
Funny, I seem to remember people were saying all through 8th that GW had no interest in competitive balance and never will.

I mean you could have listened to us when we said that GW cares far more about casual and thematic balance but what do we know. We're just "filthy casuals".

We just need to scream louder to drown out the people that want randomly imbalanced formats to explore and the people that think balance is a bad thing because it might mean people play the game how they want to play rather than how GW wants them to, as if the hamfisted Chapter Tactics rules weren't enough already. I'm just being tongue-in-cheek, I don't mind narrative and power level players, Warhammer is for everyone, I just want my preferences to be catered to like everyone else. I think it's bad form to spit on the people that want GW to produce a reasonably balanced set of pts after we got dunked on by GW delivering a bad product, just like it'd be poor form to hate on Orks or Marines for getting a terrible sculpt. I know GW can improve balance because the Necron pts got more and more balanced with every CA, not just in a way that I could field my pet units, but in a way that I could field any Necron unit and not feel too bad about it. I could give my HQs any weapon and feel good about it and GW has seemingly thrown it away. It will be at least four years before the edition is balanced because the first shot at balancing it seems to be as good as no shot at all. It will probably be less than four years before a new edition come out, so my only hope is that the codexes are truly balanced as some playtesters have said and that we'll have balance in two years, that's still a criminally long time to wait and a criminal number of times GW are going to keep charging for pts updates just because they refused to make the game as balanced as possible at the start of 9th.

Bolded the important bit, don't take this as a personal attack because it applies to a lot of people.

Your wants ARE catered for, just not by GW. If you leave the umbrella of Warhammer you'll find a bunch of other games more balanced and more competitively orientated than 40k. 40k has never and will never be designed to a real tournament level and if you hadn't clocked that in the last 30 or so years then thats on you. If you want to stick with 40k in the HOPE that it becomes competitive thats also on you.

And yeah, you could say "better balance is good for casual and competitive alike" but its never going to be balanced to that extent. Most casual player have accepted this and know how to just enjoy the game for what it is, its the competitive players trying to push a square peg into a round hole.

 vict0988 wrote:

Spoletta wrote:

Spoletta wrote:


This is just an example obviously...

I was giving hints to the fact that maybe the community at large isn't so good at armchairing and we are just echo chambering each other.

Spoletta wrote:
Looking at the new points, everyone was sure that Drukhary were done, that they were screwed by the new points and so on. Yet, it looks like they are doing great.

FTFY

Order of text is important.

I said that they look great (referring to the video) and then that it obviously was just an example.

Sorry if the meaning wasn't clear.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
So something I want to remind people is that we should be disagreeing with the statements made by the playtesters, not attacking them.

It's fine to disagree with people, but once we start slapping labels on them like "shills" we're not addressing their points, we're just acting in bad faith.

I personally buy the theory because GW has a track record in the past of balancing books internally, but rarely balancing them exterally. Obviously they did a lot of external balancing in 8th, but there is the chance that the devs feel that the factions were no longer balanced internally like they should be, leading to a rough pass to adjust things both for internal balance, and perhaps for the missions, but left external balance alone as the shifting meta from the changes to the game already threw that out of whack and they want more info before they adjust those points.

As such we could see some massive points shifts across the game as they push to keep internal balance the same but drastically rework things relative to each other.

Or we could be going back to a 3rd to 5th design philosophy where internal balance is the main focus to keep the faction "feeling" correct and external balance is largely ignored.

Honestly, I'm not really sure amd unless GW starts communicating more about why they make the changes they do, all we can do is make guesses at what they're doing and why.

This doesn't make sense in the context of GW making so many bad units much much worse. I mean, unless we're thinking GW just hates aspect warriors and wants no one to use them in an eldar army.

GW flatly, didn't balance very much in the update. They cut corners and it shows.

Spoletta wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

Spoletta wrote:

Spoletta wrote:


This is just an example obviously...

I was giving hints to the fact that maybe the community at large isn't so good at armchairing and we are just echo chambering each other.

Spoletta wrote:
Looking at the new points, everyone was sure that Drukhary were done, that they were screwed by the new points and so on. Yet, it looks like they are doing great.

FTFY

Order of text is important.

I said that they look great (referring to the video) and then that it obviously was just an example.

Sorry if the meaning wasn't clear.

I think the people who criticized your post latched unto you saying that Drukhari looks to be doing great from very little information, Skari's video didn't really prove that people's "incredibly" hot take of a 50% price hike being too much was wrong in the slightest, Skari went from 3+ (6 I think) units of Kabalites to 2 and now maybe down to 1. I don't think Skari or Tony Kopach said anything wrong and I think they both think GW could have done a better job. I don't think Skari is lying about how good Drukhari are to get more Patrons, but everyone has an angle and I'd be mad as heck in Skari's shoes and I'd be doing an angry rant, but that's not who Skari is and that's not what his fanbase want him to be. He's also Canadian so that might also be to blame for the lack of an angry rant.

 Sim-Life wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
Funny, I seem to remember people were saying all through 8th that GW had no interest in competitive balance and never will.

I mean you could have listened to us when we said that GW cares far more about casual and thematic balance but what do we know. We're just "filthy casuals".

We just need to scream louder to drown out the people that want randomly imbalanced formats to explore and the people that think balance is a bad thing because it might mean people play the game how they want to play rather than how GW wants them to, as if the hamfisted Chapter Tactics rules weren't enough already. I'm just being tongue-in-cheek, I don't mind narrative and power level players, Warhammer is for everyone, I just want my preferences to be catered to like everyone else. I think it's bad form to spit on the people that want GW to produce a reasonably balanced set of pts after we got dunked on by GW delivering a bad product, just like it'd be poor form to hate on Orks or Marines for getting a terrible sculpt. I know GW can improve balance because the Necron pts got more and more balanced with every CA, not just in a way that I could field my pet units, but in a way that I could field any Necron unit and not feel too bad about it. I could give my HQs any weapon and feel good about it and GW has seemingly thrown it away. It will be at least four years before the edition is balanced because the first shot at balancing it seems to be as good as no shot at all. It will probably be less than four years before a new edition come out, so my only hope is that the codexes are truly balanced as some playtesters have said and that we'll have balance in two years, that's still a criminally long time to wait and a criminal number of times GW are going to keep charging for pts updates just because they refused to make the game as balanced as possible at the start of 9th.

Bolded the important bit, don't take this as a personal attack because it applies to a lot of people.

Your wants ARE catered for, just not by GW. If you leave the umbrella of Warhammer you'll find a bunch of other games more balanced and more competitively orientated than 40k. 40k has never and will never be designed to a real tournament level and if you hadn't clocked that in the last 30 or so years then thats on you. If you want to stick with 40k in the HOPE that it becomes competitive thats also on you.

And yeah, you could say "better balance is good for casual and competitive alike" but its never going to be balanced to that extent. Most casual player have accepted this and know how to just enjoy the game for what it is, its the competitive players trying to push a square peg into a round hole.

I don't think I'm being catered to when GW has balanced Necron weapon options the way they have for 9th, in 8th we found out one weapon is worth x, next weapon is worth between x+1 or x+3, second is worth x+6 or x+8, fourth is worth x+7 or x+15 and fifth is worth x+9 or x+17. How come they turn it into x, x+0, x+0, x+0 and x+5? They're dumbing down pts to make them simpler, I don't want simpler pts, I can figure out how to use a spreadsheet and I use Battlescribe for most of my pts anyways and GW is coming out with a Battlescribe competitor soon. Who wants these pts costs? I'm never going to take the first two weapons because they're worth 5+ pts less than the last three. GW did cater to me with CA, I freaking love CA as a concept and I've been praising GW for getting Necrons more and more right with CA18 and CA19 and now I'm scratching my head thinking how could they mess up so bad except if they don't want to cater to me anymore? So why did GW mess with the pts of Necron weapons when they were close to perfect? You can say they will never get it right, but they did more or less get it right.

It's not rocket science to increase or decrease weapon options costs based on stats and then adjusting based on use in competitive events. GW can do this because they are a major company and I was making strides balancing 7th with a half dozen buddies playing irregularly and only rarely reporting their issues and me writing codexes and balancing things as issues came up in playtesting while I was in High School and doing a side job. Playtesters have also said that the codexes will be great, that GW has listened, then why did they throw everything in the water when it comes to the pts that will help decide whether 9th will get a healthy launch? New people are going to get into the game or back into the game and their grots will get shot to gak by Intercessors and they will quit. It's not like Intercessors are some kind of arcane FW unit that only hardcore meta gamers know about, one of the most popular units in 8th 40k, got no rules nerfs in 9th and they got off relatively light compared to many other units in pts terms, some of which are worse off in 9th than they were in 8th. It is not okay for GW to sell this crap to people, I demand they do better and I think you should too. Whether you want competitive balance or casual balance, if you love imbalance because you want to exploit the rules or if you want to play GM and balance the game yourself every time you set up a casual game then I think you should stop using pts and stop saying how pts are ruining games and just enjoy your slice of the market because PL is what you are looking for. PL has a deliberate imbalance in weapon options that you can exploit or not exploit to your heart's content, I want pts to have as few of those issues as possible. In 9th the weapon imbalance for Necrons is larger than it's been in any edition previously, Stormteks were OP in 6th sure, but the other Crypteks had cool weapons and they were all costed more or less according to their level of usefulness and not just one flat cost for all of them.

 vict0988 wrote:

 auticus wrote:
So we have more actual tangible proof that they dont use points to balance the game.

But people will dryhump that idea into oblivion that the points bring balance so everything is fine just git gud.

And continue sending GW forklifts loaded down with crates of cash. To continue buying in.

I'm perfectly fine with blaming power level wanknards that GW made all wargear cost the same. Thank you for ruining pts power level fanboys, can't let us have nice things, balance is an illusion so there is no reason to put any effort into making a mostly balanced system.

 Kanluwen wrote:
Only if you've got an obsessive need to have points now, now, now!

How else am I supposed to play the game? Put toy soldiers on the table and make pew pew noises like the narrative players? I signed up for a game with pts, if the game doesn't have pts I cannot play it. GW are squandering the free resource at their fingertips, the balance I could introduce with several dozen playtesters skilled at 40k would be as staggering as the lack of balance GW has provided us with through this latest pts batch. If Cultists are not fluffy then they should not be in the codex.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Points are always 100% about "what should this army look like", thats why almost universally from one game to another that utilizes points systems, 2 units in 2 different factions with similar capabilities are often priced differently. And the truth of the matter is that "balance" doesn't really exist either, only the perception of it - the reality is that when a community at large complains that something is unbalanced, what is usually happening is that the communities perception of balance is differing from the games creators, because both parties have different expectations of how the game should be played and what the resulting balance should look like.

No, it's not, points are always 100% about making more choices valid, about making units with better stats not an auto-include over units with poorer stats. Having certain types of units be overcosted because you think the faction should be bad at fielding that type of unit is terrible miniature game design. Within 40k an option is balanced if its pts are both low enough to warrant its inclusion in some lists without being so low that its inclusion is near mandatory. Just because the game designers want the game to be unbalanced does not mean that the game is balanced when it is unbalanced in the manner in which the game designers would like the game to be unbalanced. You would not call a scale balanced if it weighed a seller's wares twice as much as the weight put on the other side, even if the scale was constructed by the seller to weigh the wares twice as much as the weight on the other side. It is an unbalanced scale and the seller is a fraud in the same manner that GW game designers appear to be frauds when it comes to the most recent pts update. When it is viable people will build fluffy lists, it is entirely on GW that they don't utilize the generous 40k playtesters to make a game where people can build whatever list they please and have fun against a majority of opponents.

this is a wild fun take. People who play power level ruined the points system? wut?

You mean all those top-level tournament players that they touted as the people testing and fine-tuning the balance of the game, they were secretly "power level wanknards" the whole time? Those ITC guys and the Tabletop Titans guys, the ones playing tournaments, they don't like playing points?


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Spoletta wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
Did you watch that video? Skari is a good player, almost certainly better than the people he was playing against. And it's not like BE or Necrons are exactly what everybody's talking about. He lost to the more meta faction he came up against.

You can't draw conclusions from three games anyway, but a good player going 2-1 beating two other lower-tier armies and losing to the higher-tier one is hardly a sign that Drukhari are fine.

BE?
Low tier?

Man did you see the video at all?

That was a top tier IH list, and it got competely crushed, both on points AND on kills.

Also important to note that he made it there thanks to melee, not thanks to shooting.

I mean, I don't completely disagree with him that "Drukhari" as a whole might be able to compete in tournaments.

The problem is, when he says "Drukhari" what he actually MEANS is "Haemonculus Covens" who are my (and from my experience, many people's) least favorite third of the army, both from a gameplay and from a concept perspective.

It's a lot like in the previous edition, when you could take ahriman+2 DPtz, and Abbadon+90 cultists, and saying to someone with a large, varied chaos space marine collection "Chaos space marines are FINE, look at this guy that won this tournament! You just have to take 0 Chaos Space Marines, 0 Daemon Engines, this specific pair of named characters for two factions you don't play, and buy a second codex book."

I don't care if someone can win a tournament with the book that I'm using, it doesn't mean that it's possible for me to win tournaments with the army that I'm using. I'm willing to take competitive choices, but I'm not willing to completely throw out 100% of my list and re-buy 2000 points of 1 particular Heavy Support choice and 1 particular Forgeworld unit, that's asinine.

Ones doesnt need a game degree design to see that this CA points are half done.

Using a formula to reach a standarized point is just the first point of a good point system. After that you need to adjust it individually, or you end with the ton of problems we have now like many weapon options costing all the same with ones being clearly worse or better than others.

GW adjusted individually some point costs, and thats good, but it was in a minimal fraction of the total weapon and unit options of the game.

 Galas wrote:
Ones doesnt need a game degree design to see that this CA points are half done.

Using a formula to reach a standarized point is just the first point of a good point system. After that you need to adjust it individually, or you end with the ton of problems we have now like many weapon options costing all the same with ones being clearly worse or better than others.

GW adjusted individually some point costs, and thats good, but it was in a minimal fraction of the total weapon and unit options of the game.

I mean, the problem is that if they did it via algorithm, they did it via a really weird, gakky algorithm.

If a weapon choice is balanced at 1pt, if you want to create "rounder" point values the sensible thing to do is round it to 0, not round it to fething 5 across the board. Who cares if sisters get 0pt hand flamers on their sergeants, that makes absolute sense, you go down to have a 6" range on a unit that generally has a 12" preferred engagement range. Absolutely give them 0pt hand flamers.

And if you want to have everything go up in points....have...everything go up in points? Don't give a 20% price hike for some factions and a 0% price hike to fething Custodes, the army that is singularly most buffed by every single rule of 9th ed?

 auticus wrote:

I demand to see the posts complaining about "too balanced too boring and list building does not matter"

Knowing you how I know you, all of the posts in the world being posted here right now would illicit a countering moving of the goal posts lol. Too much balance is boring has been said many times in the aos forums and too much balance makes list building not matter as a complaint was said in the azyr comp facebook group when that was a thing in 2015 and 2016. it was the #1 complaint about azyr comp, that it was too balanced and therefore boring and it made listbuilding not matter.

Nice copout to get out of showing proof.

" too much balance makes list building not matter"

Oh, I'll have to remember that my build order in SCII doesn't matter because the units are balanced.

the_scotsman wrote:

 Galas wrote:
Ones doesnt need a game degree design to see that this CA points are half done.

Using a formula to reach a standarized point is just the first point of a good point system. After that you need to adjust it individually, or you end with the ton of problems we have now like many weapon options costing all the same with ones being clearly worse or better than others.

GW adjusted individually some point costs, and thats good, but it was in a minimal fraction of the total weapon and unit options of the game.

I mean, the problem is that if they did it via algorithm, they did it via a really weird, gakky algorithm.

If a weapon choice is balanced at 1pt, if you want to create "rounder" point values the sensible thing to do is round it to 0, not round it to fething 5 across the board. Who cares if sisters get 0pt hand flamers on their sergeants, that makes absolute sense, you go down to have a 6" range on a unit that generally has a 12" preferred engagement range. Absolutely give them 0pt hand flamers.

And if you want to have everything go up in points....have...everything go up in points? Don't give a 20% price hike for some factions and a 0% price hike to fething Custodes, the army that is singularly most buffed by every single rule of 9th ed?

Yeah, I keep hearing that an algorithm was used but I've yet to see any evidence of that. There are far too many instances of similar units or pieces of wargear getting drastically different point changes for no discernible reason. Even the whole 'round to the nearest 5' thing only appears to have been applied to some options.

If anything, it seems like GW returning to their time-tested method of pricing every unit by use of a dart-board.

 vipoid wrote:
Yeah, I keep hearing that an algorithm was used but I've yet to see any evidence of that. There are far too many instances of similar units or pieces of wargear getting drastically different point changes for no discernible reason.

Similar in terms of abilities, or similar in terms of original cost?

A.T. wrote:

 vipoid wrote:
Yeah, I keep hearing that an algorithm was used but I've yet to see any evidence of that. There are far too many instances of similar units or pieces of wargear getting drastically different point changes for no discernible reason.

Similar in terms of abilities, or similar in terms of original cost?

Identical in many cases.

See hand flamers for Sisters vs Hand Flamers for GSC.

GSC: 1pt to 2pts
Sisters: 1pt to 5pts

Hand Flamers are almost certainly stronger for GSC than sisters - GSC can put them on every single member of their squads, which are melee units, and have a stratagem to deep strike 3" away and still shoot.