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 AegisGrimm wrote:
Armies have no soul of their own on the board now, as they are all amalgamations of different armies/races just purely for the buffs they provide.

I wouldn't say that so broadly honestly. I for one have a Sisters army with no allies, and I'm looking at a pure Space Marine army, again with no allies. Some of us believe allies should be limited to combinations that provide flavor (like CSM and Daemons), at least when we build and play them.


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Martel732 wrote:

ClockworkZion wrote:

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:
My issue is not with the people, but with the direction in which the developers have taken the game.

Honestly when talking about the way some competitive lists are made "combohammer" style that's not really the Devs fault when they're the ones pushing to make the game more focused on being a fun, casual game.

As Ailaros said, abusers will always out-think the developers. The developers may write the game with a given intent but without following that intent (or sometimes knowing what it is), abuse will always occur.

I don't accept this. I think the writers are too lazy to write tight rules that can cut down abuses. Or, even worse, they don't understand/play the game they are writing for.

Playtesting is in two-phases. First the devs do it, then they have people from GW do it who aren't on the dev team (my money is the WD guys). They don't write the game for tournaments like NOVA or Adepticon though, and that's something we need to accept. They have said they write a beer and pretzels game and Jervis has made many a statement about making sure the game is fun for all the players. That's the game they're writing. If we choose to leave that design philosophy then it's our problem not theirs.

I don't get to play that often, nor do I read every codex that comes out, so I rely on being able to gauge the strength and power of an enemy unit by how it looks as a miniature. This became a mistake in sixth edition, as the most powerful combinations are psychic powers and innate abilities that are not represented on the model whatsoever. In fact, that's actually why I stopped playing Warmachine, I couldn't keep up with the new releases and got hit by combos I couldn't predict (if anyone knows Lady Aiyana, you may know where I'm coming from, she looks harmless). This isn't a flaw with the rules, though, it's a flaw with me as a casual gamer.

Meh, combo-hammer in and of itself doesn't bother me, and I'm not an ultra-competative player. Its the fact that the SAME combos get used over and over, with little to no deviation, that kind of ruins the game for me.

I don't care if you crush my fluff-bunny list with your ultra-nasty tournament ready combo-laden list, just don't use the same combos every freakin' game we play. Not only does it show zero imagination or creativity, its BORING to play against. A friend of mine that I play frequently is guilty of this, and its finally starting to backfire on him as our respective armies have received new rules/models. We know exactly what he's going to play in general, so we tailor our lists just a bit to include a unit to derail those combos. Beardy? Sure, list tailoring is always a touch beardy, but so is bringing the same power-combos every 1500 point game when the guy owns 3000+ points in models. I keep telling him all he needs to do is STOP taking those same combos and he'd completely derail us. But no, every army he fields continues to include at least two of the three combos he has used for the last 6-7 months (one is a constant).

 Godless-Mimicry wrote:
And what's this? Shock horror, people are complaining once again about a business making business decisions. Seriously, do people really think GW are obliged to care about the hobby? They are a business at the end of the day, so expect business decisions every step of the way. That's just how the world works. I'm no big fan of GW, and will openly criticise many of their decisions, but complaining that they put profits over balance is stupid, because at the end of the day, if GW didn't make decisions all about business, they wouldn't have a business and we wouldn't have our games.

What you're ignoring is that if GW makes decisions against the best interests of the hobby they won't have a business. Long-term success depends on having a quality product that people want to buy. If GW produces mediocre models and garbage rules they're going to fail no matter how well they cut costs or increase prices.

ClockworkZion wrote:
They have said they write a beer and pretzels game and Jervis has made many a statement about making sure the game is fun for all the players.

Sorry, but that's just lazy and/or incompetent design. A good designer can create a game that is fun for "beer and pretzels" games AND competitive tournaments. An incompetent idiot like Jervis is only able to use "beer and pretzels" as a way of saying "don't look too closely at the rules I'm selling" and an excuse for why you should buy their garbage even when you see the obvious flaws. The fact that GW has convinced people that this is a good idea is arguably their greatest success as a business.

 LValx wrote:
The same helpless feeling some armies feel vs the new Deathstars or FMC Daemons, is the way a lot of armies felt vs mech spam of 5th. Many codices had very few answers.

The difference is that with mech spam you could at least kill stuff. If you couldn't at least kill a couple Rhinos then the problem was your list, not game balance. Unless you deliberately built a list to remove anti-tank you'd have weapons capable of dealing with AV 11 transports. And unless you were stuck with one of the oldest codices (a very different problem) you could fight back even more. With a re-rollable 2++, on the other hand, you just can't kill it unless you brought one of the very specific counters for it. You don't even get the illusion of being able to fight back, you just have a frustrating "game" of throwing everything you have at the death star and accomplishing nothing.

ClockworkZion wrote:
As Ailaros said, abusers will always out-think the developers. The developers may write the game with a given intent but without following that intent (or sometimes knowing what it is), abuse will always occur.

Not at all true, because intelligent game designers do two things:

1) Hire the "abusers" to playtest the game. Only clueless idiots like GW have "casual" players design the game and never bother to playtest properly.

2) Design built-in failsafes in case you miss something. If you're going to add flyers, make sure everyone has access to at least mediocre AA. If you have vehicles, make sure everyone has an anti-vehicle unit. Etc. That way if a list that spams an overpowered unit shows up there's a counter already waiting for it.

WOTC does both of these things with MTG, and the result is a balanced game where high-level competitive play may occasionally go in different directions than the developers expected, but rarely goes in a completely unanticipated direction where no counters exist.

What Peregrine said. Squared. Exalted. Squared, if I could.

Agreed, again, Peregrine has it nailed.

I can agree on the first point. There's a reason the most talented hackers often end up "workin for the man" amd breaking systems to help shore up and adress loopholes and weaknesses.

The second point I'm a bit iffy on simply because more goes into balance than just codex content. We often forget that the elephant in the room can just as often be terrain, or specifically a lack there of.

 Crablezworth wrote:
I can agree on the first point. There's a reason the most talented hackers often end up "workin for the man" amd breaking systems to help shore up and adress loopholes and weaknesses.

The second point I'm a bit iffy on simply because more goes into balance than just codex content. We often forget that the elephant in the room can just as often be terrain, or specifically a lack there of.

Which is addressed through the main rule book on how to set up games; if they had bothered to do it properly.

All boils down to proper rule writing either way.

 Peregrine wrote:

ClockworkZion wrote:
They have said they write a beer and pretzels game and Jervis has made many a statement about making sure the game is fun for all the players.

Sorry, but that's just lazy and/or incompetent design. A good designer can create a game that is fun for "beer and pretzels" games AND competitive tournaments. An incompetent idiot like Jervis is only able to use "beer and pretzels" as a way of saying "don't look too closely at the rules I'm selling" and an excuse for why you should buy their garbage even when you see the obvious flaws. The fact that GW has convinced people that this is a good idea is arguably their greatest success as a business.

Peregrine, the two rerollable deathstars are the screamercouncil and seercouncil. Both will have troops and support units to kill. This is generally the best option vs. deathstars anyway. Not to mention fairly reliable counters being available to most codices. I think you are making it out to be worse than it is. I know people who ran both at nova and the list, like deathstars before it, are still susceptible to tac lists that are played well.

 LValx wrote:
Peregrine, the two rerollable deathstars are the screamercouncil and seercouncil. Both will have troops and support units to kill. This is generally the best option vs. deathstars anyway. Not to mention fairly reliable counters being available to most codices. I think you are making it out to be worse than it is. I know people who ran both at nova and the list, like deathstars before it, are still susceptible to tac lists that are played well.

I don't think you really understand what I'm saying. It's not an "I can't beat this" problem, it's a "this isn't fun" problem. Yes, you can win with a "kill their troops while the invulnerable super-unit runs around wiping out whatever it feels like" strategy, but that's a frustrating experience that makes you wonder why you bother playing the game.


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ClockworkZion wrote:
A good designer can, but only if they choose too.

Sorry, but choosing to make a game that appeals to only one group of customers instead of one that appeals just as much to the "main" customers while also appealing to lots of other customers is just stupid from a business perspective. If GW's designers are making a conscious choice to do that (rather than just being too incompetent to get it right) they should be fired and replaced with better ones.

And honestly, hiring people to abuse your system isn't outsmarting them, it's hiring them to get paid to do what they normally do.

The point is not to outsmart the people who "abuse" your system, the point is to make a good game. You hire the people who "abuse" your system because they will abuse it, tell you what you need to fix, and the result will be a better game.

No one plays Sim City in a tournament, and even if they did the devs aren't responsible for balancing it for that. Why? Because it's a casual game, and you're to do what you want with it, but the point remains that the game isn't built around competetive play.

It has nothing to do with being a casual game, nobody plays Sim City because it's a single-player sandbox game. That's a genre of games that can't be played as competitive tournaments without losing everything that makes them fun. 40k's problems, on the other hand, are entirely caused by lazy and incompetent game designers. A tournament version of 40k would play just fine as a "casual" game. In fact it would probably work better than the current game because you'd no longer have the problem of choosing your favorite units vs. having a chance of winning.

If you want a good example look at MTG: excellent competitive balance, rules that have zero ambiguity, and a thriving "casual" community that enjoys a wide variety of "casual" play styles. There is absolutely no reason that competent professionals couldn't do the same with 40k.

lol at sim city reference. 40k is a player vs player pick up game for crying out loud.

if any type of game needs tight, good rules it would be a PvP pick up game.

 Peregrine wrote:

ClockworkZion wrote:
A good designer can, but only if they choose too.

Sorry, but choosing to make a game that appeals to only one group of customers instead of one that appeals just as much to the "main" customers while also appealing to lots of other customers is just stupid from a business perspective. If GW's designers are making a conscious choice to do that (rather than just being too incompetent to get it right) they should be fired and replaced with better ones.

I disagree with you on this. The devs are doing a fine job and it's really not their fault it they end up picking up customers who play the game differently. It's a lot like shows like My Little Pony, there is a definite target audience, and it ends up picking up people it's not aimed at anyways.

Honestly I think you're just coming across as bitter and angry because the game isn't catering to what you think it should be.

And honestly, hiring people to abuse your system isn't outsmarting them, it's hiring them to get paid to do what they normally do.

The point is not to outsmart the people who "abuse" your system, the point is to make a good game. You hire the people who "abuse" your system because they will abuse it, tell you what you need to fix, and the result will be a better game.

Clockwork, your entire argument boils down to equating a poor rule set as a casual one.

Everyone else's point is that a good, solid rule can be as 'casual' as 40k, but still be competitive.

In fact, I'd argue that 40k isn't even a casual ruleset. Its unnecessarily complicated, is riddled with rule oversights, poor wording, and massive balance issues.

A tighter rule set would be easier to play, far more balanced allowing for more combinations to be fielded, and allow better meshing between casual and tournament level players.

Check out nearly every other wargame that's gaining traction. They don't have to make such a hard distinction between casual and tournament level, because the game works great in both environments.

40k doesn't even work well as a casual game.

ClockworkZion wrote:
I disagree with you on this. The devs are doing a fine job and it's really not their fault it they end up picking up customers who play the game differently. It's a lot like shows like My Little Pony, there is a definite target audience, and it ends up picking up people it's not aimed at anyways.

Again, if you can appeal to audience A and B instead of just A without sacrificing any sales or appeal to A and you choose not to then you are an incompetent designer. And if your management continues to employ you after you make such a stupid profit-destroying decision then they are incompetent as well.

GW tried that. They ended up with massive leaks from the playtesters and honestly I don't think the game was better for it. That was primarilly 3-4th edition, both editions which are more commonly referred to as "inferior" to 5th and 6th editions which are less tournament based.

So why does GW's incompetence at stopping leaks matter? MTG has professional playtesting and (meaningful) leaks are extremely rare.

I was using Sim City as an example of a product that has a defined niche and how it's not the developer's responsibility to please everyone.

It's a terrible example because Sim City can't appeal to competitive tournament players without sacrificing everything that makes it Sim City. 40k only fails to appeal to competitive tournament players because its designers are incompetent.

And really, the idea that "the developers don't have to please everyone" is one of GW's greatest successes as a business. They can sell you half a game and not only will you eagerly buy it, you'll even defend it to other potential customers and insist that selling you a whole game would ruin everything. Thanks to your low standards GW can continue to employ the cheapest incompetents to write their games instead of having to pay extra for more talented game designers.

And you keep comparing 40k to Magic and honestly it's a BS comparison. Magic is designed around being a tournament system game. It always has. It has cards that come into and out of circulation, which is a large factor of how it can balance things. And even MtG has had stupid things happen (8th Edition Core: AKA everyone play Darksteel Forge and Darksteel Colossus). Comparing a card game that has been designed to be competetive and has options available to it that 40k doesn't (blocks, cycles, banned lists) isn't a fair or even a close comparison. It's like comparing a tree to a dog, they're not even the same kind of thing.

No, the thing that MTG has that 40k doesn't is competent professional designers. The exact mechanics used to balance the game don't really matter, the important part is the attitude of the people making it. WOTC starts with the assumption that they're going to provide a high-quality game with broad appeal, and understands that things like professional playtesting are required to make a high-quality game. GW, on the other hand, starts with the attitude that as long as you shove a pile of garbage out the door the fanboys and 12 year olds will buy it and the investors don't care enough to investigate and see how much profit you're throwing away.

 Blacksails wrote:
Clockwork, your entire argument boils down to equating a poor rule set as a casual one.

That's not what I've been saying. I've been saying that there is a difference in focus between what the Dev's goal is with the rules and what people are doing with them.

And yes, the rules CAN be better, but the point was that the goal hasn't been for a competitive ruleset, and that a competitive ruleset requires a specific design goal from the ground up with the game.

 Blacksails wrote:
Everyone else's point is that a good, solid rule can be as 'casual' as 40k, but still be competitive.

I agree, that a competitive ruleset can be used by casual players. I disagree that a casual ruleset has to be geared to be playable on a competitive level though.

 Blacksails wrote:
In fact, I'd argue that 40k isn't even a casual ruleset. Its unnecessarily complicated, is riddled with rule oversights, poor wording, and massive balance issues.

That's exactly the reason why it's no a competitive game and more focused on a "beer and pretzels, good time with your friends" experience. It's hardly perfect, but the most fun I've had with it was when I dropped playing it competitively and embraced that it's flawed, but it doesn't mean people can't enjoy it.

It's like a B-Movie, you can have lot's of fun with it if your mindset is right.

 Blacksails wrote:
A tighter rule set would be easier to play, far more balanced allowing for more combinations to be fielded, and allow better meshing between casual and tournament level players.

Yes it would but frankly I don't think GW gives a toss about tournament players and that's their choice to make we like it or not.

 Blacksails wrote:
Check out nearly every other wargame that's gaining traction. They don't have to make such a hard distinction between casual and tournament level, because the game works great in both environments.

40k doesn't even work well as a casual game.

40k works GREAT as a casual game. And honestly I have looked at other games. I didn't like their scale (most of them are skirmish games) or something about the theme or setting didn't interest me.

Like I said, games who are geared towards tournaments are designed from the ground up to be that way. Considering GW's bad attempts at it I don't blame them for staying away and focusing on hobbyist over tournament players. CAN a tournament-centric game be playable by everyone? YES. But a casual based game doesn't have to be accessible to tournament players to be fun.

EDIT: I'm not changing my mind about anything I've said. I firmly believe that 40k is perfectly fun as a casual game and that people just need to be a little less uptight so they can enjoy it better.

However, I'm just not going to keep arguing with people who think that they can equate "doesn't play how I want it to" to "the designers fail at life". I've got too much to do to spend all my time on here dealing with people who are far too angry about a game played with plastic people.

Seriously, if some of you get this wound up about 40k on the Internet, I can't imagine how you react when things are actually bad (in a real world, important matters sense).

ClockworkZion wrote:
That's exactly the reason why it's no a competitive game and more focused on a "beer and pretzels, good time with your friends" experience.

No, that isn't it at all. There's a huge difference between being geared to the "beer and pretzels" experience and being so poorly designed that you have to low your standards to "beer and pretzels" to even attempt to enjoy it. 40k's design flaws don't make it a better "beer and pretzels" game, they just make it suck at everything else.

40k works GREAT as a casual game.

Only if you have very low standards. The rules are an awkward mess (even ignoring YMDC-style "nitpicking"), and lack of balance hurts casual players more than competitive ones. Competitive players will just play the latest overpowered units/armies and happily win with them, it's casual players that stop having fun because their favorite units/armies get crushed by more powerful ones.

I firmly believe that 40k is perfectly fun as a casual game and that people just need to be a little less uptight so they can enjoy it better.

Or people can just spend their time and money on better games.

ClockworkZion wrote:

That's not what I've been saying. I've been saying that there is a difference in focus between what the Dev's goal is with the rules and what people are doing with them.

And yes, the rules CAN be better, but the point was that the goal hasn't been for a competitive ruleset, and that a competitive ruleset requires a specific design goal from the ground up with the game.

The point many of are making is that why would anyone purposefully design a ruleset to alienate a significant portion of the player base that have organized large scale tournaments for well over a decade. In fact, GW did, once upon a time, so 40k at some point or another has at the very least been a pseudo tournament level game.

It just makes no business to not spend a little extra time and produce a grade A ruleset that everyone can play with equally. I can assure that such a product would sell better. In fact, I'm positive part of the success of some of the newer miniatures companies is due to writing an excellent set of rules.

ClockworkZion wrote:

I agree, that a competitive ruleset can be used by casual players. I disagree that a casual ruleset has to be geared to be playable on a competitive level though.

It isn't about being geared. Its about being just a good ruleset. A good rule set can be played at any level because it would be simple, clear, concise, balanced and the right amount of genuine 'cinematics' or story driven element. It'd be hard to deny such a rule set wouldn't be enjoyable for everyone equally, at no loss to either the casual or competitive player.

ClockworkZion wrote:

That's exactly the reason why it's no a competitive game and more focused on a "beer and pretzels, good time with your friends" experience. It's hardly perfect, but the most fun I've had with it was when I dropped playing it competitively and embraced that it's flawed, but it doesn't mean people can't enjoy it.

It's like a B-Movie, you can have lot's of fun with it if your mindset is right.

I've also had a lot of fun playing Beerhammer. But I've the same amount of fun, if not more playing BeerSpaceships, or any other balanced ruleset with alcohol. I'm not saying is torture or un-fun, I'm saying it could significantly better, and isn't so for any real reason.

ClockworkZion wrote:

Yes it would but frankly I don't think GW gives a toss about tournament players and that's their choice to make we like it or not.

Sure, they don't care. We all are well aware, but it can't hurt to discuss things like this, as it will hopefully bring to light how poor the rule set is and drive some more money into the companies that actually do listen to feedback.

ClockworkZion wrote:

40k works GREAT as a casual game. And honestly I have looked at other games. I didn't like their scale (most of them are skirmish games) or something about the theme or setting didn't interest me.

Like I said, games who are geared towards tournaments are designed from the ground up to be that way. Considering GW's bad attempts at it I don't blame them for staying away and focusing on hobbyist over tournament players. CAN a tournament-centric game be playable by everyone? YES. But a casual based game doesn't have to be accessible to tournament players to be fun.

I love the fluff, a lot of the models, and the general mood of 40k. I love my IG and I've loved the look of two painted 40k armies against eachother. But the whole experience regardless of casual play or tournament level would be better if the rule set was just, better.

ClockworkZion wrote:

EDIT: I'm not changing my mind about anything I've said. I firmly believe that 40k is perfectly fun as a casual game and that people just need to be a little less uptight so they can enjoy it better.

However, I'm just not going to keep arguing with people who think that they can equate "doesn't play how I want it to" to "the designers fail at life". I've got too much to do to spend all my time on here dealing with people who are far too angry about a game played with plastic people.

Seriously, if some of you get this wound up about 40k on the Internet, I can't imagine how you react when things are actually bad (in a real world, important matters sense).

I'm not wound up in the slightest. If anything this last comment looks as though you're more wound up trying to defend 40k. Some of us love the background, the models, their army, and other aspects while disliking the rules. Its never a bad thing to intelligently discuss the matter. We're not trying to tell you you're a horrible person, or how to play. The point is simply that 40k is a generally sub-par ruleset that has so much more potential if GW actually spent the time to write a great ruleset and codices. For whatever reasons they choose not to, and we have to deal with that. But it won't stop us from at least intelligently and calmly discussing the finer points of it.

Please don't assume anyone here is wound up or losing touch with reality, or any other insinuations. If you don't want to discuss it anymore, just politely do so and leave. No need for that final line.

Thud wrote:
Meh.

There has always been powerful units/combos/lists/builds/build types.

And then there has always been gakky players who whine about it and try to condescend tournament players because they themselves can't figure out a way to beat them.


What I do agree with, is that 6th seems to have brought with it a bunch of crap that's just frustrating to play against. And by that, I mean having to use seriously unconventional tactics instead of just "i shoot my tactical squad into your screamerstar, what, no kills? you're playing 40k on easymode, herpaderpderp."

What makes 'tournament players' so good? It's just copying net lists and bringing broken units to a game for numbercheese. Anyone can do that. You're not a unique snowflake, bro.

 Godless-Mimicry wrote:
And what's this? Shock horror, people are complaining once again about a business making business decisions. Seriously, do people really think GW are obliged to care about the hobby? They are a business at the end of the day, so expect business decisions every step of the way. That's just how the world works. I'm no big fan of GW, and will openly criticise many of their decisions, but complaining that they put profits over balance is stupid, because at the end of the day, if GW didn't make decisions all about business, they wouldn't have a business and we wouldn't have our games.

Good business decisions are business decisions that make you money. Releasing Finecast with a price drop (due to the massive drop in production cost) would have been a good descision, even with the flaws, as people would have been more tolerant to the miscasts and likely bought even more models. Releasing it with a price increase wasn't. Re-packing the Dire Avengers to have half of their number at the same price per box (effectively a 100% price increase) was not a good business decision, as less people overall will buy them to make up that cost.

It's not impossible to listen to your community and make good business decisions based on their feedback. Corvus Belli have been doing this fantastically of late.

People asked for a campaign system - they released a Campaign rulebook. It is still a very linear campaign, not a 'create your own', but it was handled with such respect for the gamers playing it that people don't mind. This also came with a free miniature if you pre ordered.
People asked for a Nomad doctor that wasn't an anime cheesecake catgirl. They made one.
People asked for a female Wulver model. They got 2 in a brand new multipart box.
People asked for new Spec Ops models. They're doing a whole new range of 'Dire Foes' sets that have two opposing new Spec Ops models, plus a Civilian model different for each box some of which are based on popular art in the books. Plus they also decided to name some of the new characters after veterans in the community (Konstantinos and Yasbir) or on fanart (Trasimedes). They also include an exclusive scenario based around normal armies plus those 3 models.
People asked for display models rather than game models. They released the Bootleg series.
People asked for an Art book. They released one, with A4 glossy prints of some of the art in it as a free bonus. This also came with a free miniature if you pre ordered.

These are examples of Corvus Belli listening to what the community wants, and giving it to them when they can. They also give the community news on the progress of some of the projects. Crazy huh? This even shows in their financial report. The company made record revenue last year, and over the last 3 has shown massive growth every year. Least year was, IIRC, over double the previous year.

And GW does listen to its customer base as well. It's why we have fliers in the game, for example, or apocalypse at all.

Anyways, I suppose one could go all conspiracy theory with this. The idea being that it's making an imbalanced game with a curious choice of development cycle ON PURPOSE. The purpose being to make serious competitive players so angry that they quit the game altogether and go find something else to play.

If their main demographic is the casual player, it would be a silly, but possibly fruitful gambit to purge the serious type to make it so that those left over don't have to deal with them.

 Ailaros wrote:
And GW does listen to its customer base as well. It's why we have fliers in the game, for example, or apocalypse at all.

Anyways, I suppose one could go all conspiracy theory with this. The idea being that it's making an imbalanced game with a curious choice of development cycle ON PURPOSE. The purpose being to make serious competitive players so angry that they quit the game altogether and go find something else to play.

If their main demographic is the casual player, it would be a silly, but possibly fruitful gambit to purge the serious type to make it so that those left over don't have to deal with them.

But it's not the competitive player that quits from unbalanced rule books. It's casual players who don't have the money or time to buy brand new armies that happen to get stronger. The competitive player goes out and gets 15 tzeentch flamers when they get good for half a year, not the guy who wants to eat some pretzels with his dice rolling.

A balanced rule set that gets updated with all the codexes at once would benefit everyone. It's never going to happen due to how they designed their business model and simple logistics. If they want to update something it ends up being in much larger scale than small companies. So a miss for a product release is a bigger kick in the pants. So we're mostly stuck with how things are. However, things could be improved if they at least play tested the rules a little more. Just bring in a few obnoxious gamers and let them at the rules. Broken combos could be quickly revealed and kept out of the final codex release.

bogalubov wrote:But it's not the competitive player that quits from unbalanced rule books. It's casual players who don't have the money or time to buy brand new armies that happen to get stronger.

I don't think you understand what a casual player is. A casual player doesn't buy new units when new armies come out that are stronger because he doesn't care that the new army has gotten stronger. He wouldn't spend the time or money, because he doesn't want to. At least, not if the only purpose is to make his army stronger.

Furthermore, there are a lot of casual gamers out there that have huge collections of 40k stuff. They don't have to spend time and money to buy minis that they already own.

The behavior you're talking about is only exhibited by players who want to have an easy time winning games. That's not all players. I doubt it's even close to a majority.

 Ailaros wrote:
I don't think you understand what a casual player is. A casual player doesn't buy new units when new armies come out that are stronger because he doesn't care that the new army has gotten stronger. He wouldn't spend the time or money, because he doesn't want to. At least, not if the only purpose is to make his army stronger.

But that's not the point. The casual player gets crushed by the competitive player who did buy Helldrakes/Riptides/etc, and can't compete without buying the same overpowered units to spam. The competitive player is happy, the casual player quits the game.

Furthermore, there are a lot of casual gamers out there that have huge collections of 40k stuff. They don't have to spend time and money to buy minis that they already own.

So in your theory why would GW care at all about those people? If they don't buy new models they aren't making GW any money, and it's better to sell Helldrakes/Riptides/etc to the competitive players.

The behavior you're talking about is only exhibited by players who want to have an easy time winning games. That's not all players. I doubt it's even close to a majority.

Or just anyone who thought "hey, that Riptide model looks cool". If you have a deliberately unbalanced game some people will win easily just because of what they thought was a cool model, and it's the "casual" players who are most likely to quit over that.

A lot to read with a mobile..

I don't mind the basic rules, they are the same for all. They work for both casual and tournament play.

The problem are the codexes. They are all over the place. We should not have top tier codex or 3rd tier or whatever. They can be different but at the same time close to each other in power level. I can't believe that basically the same people gave us Codex CSM and Eldar. Once you screw up the intended power level of a codex, then you are stuck with that.

Supplements to fix this? Bring them on, but what the heck was that black legion supplement?

I don't understand one thing . If it is true that GW is making the game only for the casual player and they don't want their games to be played by tournament players , then isn't it kind of a stupid. They are losing customers . WoT can make a card game which is great for tournament player and is great for the casuals . Both groups by the game and both use the same rules , the difference is only the cost of someones deck . On the other hand you can have two dudes spend the same amount of cash for two armies and will be happy and the other one will ask himself why didn't he just burn his money . And it would be true for both 2 casual and 2 non casual gamers.

I don't know if comparing 40k to a game where the difference is pure and simple how much money you spend is necessarily a good thing.

One of the reasons I got into 40k, in fact, is because when I played MTG back at the beginning it became so obvious so fast that whoever had the richest parents just won the game. The fact that 40k has things like codices and things like points limits at least means that you don't simply buy wins. At least, not to anywhere near the same extent.

Uuuhhhh, you know that's not actually how MTG works, right? In casual play your group just makes decks within a similar tier of power, and in competitive constructed play it is about who is the best pilot of a top-tier deck. If you can't acquire the necessary cards then you don't try to seriously play competitively. Ban lists, limited formats, and rotating formats act as the same restrictions that points limits do in 40k.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Godless-Mimicry wrote:
And what's this? Shock horror, people are complaining once again about a business making business decisions. Seriously, do people really think GW are obliged to care about the hobby? They are a business at the end of the day, so expect business decisions every step of the way. That's just how the world works. I'm no big fan of GW, and will openly criticise many of their decisions, but complaining that they put profits over balance is stupid, because at the end of the day, if GW didn't make decisions all about business, they wouldn't have a business and we wouldn't have our games.

What you're ignoring is that if GW makes decisions against the best interests of the hobby they won't have a business. Long-term success depends on having a quality product that people want to buy. If GW produces mediocre models and garbage rules they're going to fail no matter how well they cut costs or increase prices.

Right but they've not doing that. Many people on here would say they are, but what a lot of competitive players fail to realise is that we are a minority in this hobby, and the vast majority of players don't give a crap about rule balance, nor do many of them even understand it any better than the devs. Also what is an isn't a mediocre model is 100% in the eye of the beholder. GW makes high detailed miniatures and from there it is solely up to personal tastes. But again, what many people don't seem to realise is that what they like and don't like does not hold true for everybody, perhaps not even for a majority, and many people get lost in thinking their opinion has become fact just because the internet agrees. We Dakkites and Warseerites and all the other people that attends forums online are a minority of gamers, and we shouldn't forget that.

What this usually results in is unrealistic expectations from the vast majority of gamers who attend online forums, expectations that no serious business could possibly undertake. And it is all underlined with the narcissistic notion that we have rights within this little dance. The simple fact is we can vote with our wallets and that's all, and while the majority are voting yes, silent or not, then GW are doing it right.

And above all else, if they were not doing what was in the best interest of the majority of hobbyists, then they wouldn't have a business, but they do, and people still buy their product, so they are obviously doing something right, even if the internet insists otherwise. I've seen shops take the stance that the internet would have GW take, of putting the hobby first 100%, and those gaming sops are struggling, because gamers are people too, and they will take advantage of you.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Ailaros wrote:
I don't think you understand what a casual player is. A casual player doesn't buy new units when new armies come out that are stronger because he doesn't care that the new army has gotten stronger. He wouldn't spend the time or money, because he doesn't want to. At least, not if the only purpose is to make his army stronger.

But that's not the point. The casual player gets crushed by the competitive player who did buy Helldrakes/Riptides/etc, and can't compete without buying the same overpowered units to spam. The competitive player is happy, the casual player quits the game.

I rarely agree with Ailaros, but I think you are the one missing the point here Peregrine. The fact that most casual players don't care about power or balance or winning and losing means that when they get curb-stomped they don't care that they got curb-stomped. And in the case where they feel bad about it, they mostly just don't play the 'power gamer with the power list'. I have been in a lot of different gaming groups over the years and I have yet to see somebody quit because they lost all the time. It's a common mistake of us competitive players to forget that some people play solely for the joy of playing, even when the local power gamer bashes them in every other week.

 Peregrine wrote:

If you want a good example look at MTG: excellent competitive balance, rules that have zero ambiguity, and a thriving "casual" community that enjoys a wide variety of "casual" play styles. There is absolutely no reason that competent professionals couldn't do the same with 40k.

This comparrison doesn't work. For a start in MTG you can build a deck using ANY color combination you like. You can even build a deck using all 5 colors and even non-color cards. Also every card is available to any person and any deck. The equivalent to this in 40k would be to open any unit of any type to any army. This is a far cry from removing allies, your argument here would be suggest opening up all armies as allies and using any unit any way you like. In other words, just play apocalypse. That way anybody can have access to any overpowered unit, thus "balancing the game".

Also note that even MTG has it's overpowered cards and useless cards. I have a white angel deck, which by and large is not a tournament competitive deck for the fact that it is monocolored and monocreatured, but I like it none the less because of its theme. However in saying that its still a bad idea for me to run 4 Angel Of The Provinces in my deck because its vastly overcosted in terms of mana.

So I'm afraid the comparison fails.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:
No, the thing that MTG has that 40k doesn't is competent professional designers. The exact mechanics used to balance the game don't really matter, the important part is the attitude of the people making it. WOTC starts with the assumption that they're going to provide a high-quality game with broad appeal, and understands that things like professional playtesting are required to make a high-quality game. GW, on the other hand, starts with the attitude that as long as you shove a pile of garbage out the door the fanboys and 12 year olds will buy it and the investors don't care enough to investigate and see how much profit you're throwing away.

Its not exactly hard to balance MTG when everybody can take any card in their deck for any reason. The only restriction is that you're only allowed 4 of any card in your list. What doesn't work in MTG is taking a monocolored deck to your tournament. You'll get annihilated if you do that. You still get overpowered cards and useless ones to boot. If you remember Sol Ring then you'll remember that they had to limit that in tournaments because it was severely broken.