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 jonolikespie wrote:

 Wilytank wrote:
Is it a coincidence that I don't see these sort of threads in the WHFB part of the forum? That's GW too.

Not nearly as many people around there to talk about it and there is a general concensus there that while fantasy still has plenty of problems it has MUCH better balance than 40k.

The basic rules of Fantasy has always been less prone to imbalance. In a regiment based game with limited movement ability of those regiments, deficiencies in an army list can be made up for by careful manoeuvring. 40k is much more prone to codex imbalance.

 Paradigm wrote:
... I doubt there ever has or ever will be a battle where a commander has had exactly the troops and resources they need, and to me it almost breaks the immersion when I see those min-maxed optimised lists being played that do not at all represent the force or situation.

By that logic, though, we should be selecting our armies randomly at the start of every game, rather than choosing the units we want...

... I will say that is possibly the fault of the attitude of portions of the player base to go looking for the most powerful units and combos when this is clearly not how the game is intended to be played, that cause the problem.

It's really not. The fact that the rules don't match how the game is supposedly intended to be played is the problem. If you write a set of game rules, unless you are deliberately aiming for a sub-standard product, why would you not write the game rules to reflect how the game is best played?

You don't say 'Hey, we wrote rules that allow you to take three of these, but they're a bit overpowered so the game is better if you only take one of them, or don't take them at all..'

You write the rules so that the overpowered unit either isn't overpowered, or is only available in a quantity that reduces the overpoweredness, and let players alter the rules themselves if they want to play the game differently to how you intended it to be played.


This idea that we should all be altering the rules of the game based on some perceived intention of the designers that isn't reflected in the rules they wrote is utter lunacy.

If people were to all play the game in the way it seems obviously built for (build a force you like, roll some dice, see a cool story unfold) rather than going for making the absolute best combos and furthermore suggesting these to any new player that asks for advice, then the issue of balance would rear its ugly head far less often.

Indeed. And if people choose to overlook the fact that the rules for LOS don't cover models with no eyes. that also doesn't become a problem.

That doesn't change the basic fact that the rules are flawed, and these things would be even less of a problem if the guys who wrote the rules didn't work these things into them in the first place...


It's not 'exploiting the system' to use the things that are available in your codex. Telling us what is and isn't acceptable in an army is what the codex is for.

 Dakkamite wrote:
You quoted one really controversial statement, but left out some of the more reasonable stuff.

Personally I like hearing GW say that Taudar is a "mistake". Even if they aren't gonna fix it, its still better than nothing. And "sure, let the TOs make the game more competitive, they do a better job of it than we do" is pretty nifty as well.

I'm sure hearing that makes a lot of people feel better.

Until you realize that means that all of GW's good and successful rules writing have all been not just flukes but MISTAKES.

The thing with the Taudar quote is they they aren't saying it was a mistake because it was OP, but because it gave the idea that all the other codexes would be comparative. That's what sounds scary - it doesn't sound like they think it's OP at all just that it made people assume that every codex would be just as good when that's not their intent.

What's a shame is that in a vacuum the Eldar and Tau codices actually pretty well written books, they're power level is just a bit OTT compared to where the rest of the game is and they can really abuse the Battle Brothers rules.

 insaniak wrote:

 Paradigm wrote:
... I doubt there ever has or ever will be a battle where a commander has had exactly the troops and resources they need, and to me it almost breaks the immersion when I see those min-maxed optimised lists being played that do not at all represent the force or situation.

By that logic, though, we should be selecting our armies randomly at the start of every game, rather than choosing the units we want...

No, your logic is flawed. Commanders do not randomly pick armies, they carefully select the troops and resources they will need in the upcoming campaign. However, that does not mean that everything they want is always available, nor that it is completely random.
What he is saying, is that you should select your units according to what seems appropriate for the background of the battle you are going to fight, rather than always selecting the best/strongest units.



What the GW rep is saying is that you should be playing 40k to have a fun time by making up a fun story. If you are playing 40k because you want to be competitive and your aim is to win, than you are playing the wrong way.
40k is not a competitive game, it is more like a cinematic roleplaying game.

people may say that it is just an excuse because GW, for some unexplainable reason, is lazy and does not care about players, but that is nothing more than a wild, unbased accusation.
While I agree that the game would benefit from better balance, GW probably does have a valid reason for why they are doing things.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

 Paradigm wrote:
... I doubt there ever has or ever will be a battle where a commander has had exactly the troops and resources they need, and to me it almost breaks the immersion when I see those min-maxed optimised lists being played that do not at all represent the force or situation.

By that logic, though, we should be selecting our armies randomly at the start of every game, rather than choosing the units we want...

No, your logic is flawed. Commanders do not randomly pick armies, they carefully select the troops and resources they will need in the upcoming campaign. However, that does not mean that everything they want is always available, nor that it is completely random.
What he is saying, is that you should select your units according to what seems appropriate for the background of the battle you are going to fight, rather than always selecting the best/strongest units.



What the GW rep is saying is that you should be playing 40k to have a fun time by making up a fun story. If you are playing 40k because you want to be competitive and your aim is to win, than you are playing the wrong way.
40k is not a competitive game, it is more like a cinematic roleplaying game.

people may say that it is just an excuse because GW, for some unexplainable reason, is lazy and does not care about players, but that is nothing more than a wild, unbased accusation.
While I agree that the game would benefit from better balance, GW probably does have a valid reason for why they are doing things.

I see this argument a lot and it is just wrong. If people wants the game to be balanced, it is exactly because it makes it possible for someone who want to "create a narrative" to play his army and still have fun with it. It is not fun to lose without any chance to do something (not necessarily winning). Winning or losing, you need an experience to make a game fun, and if the experience is null, like a genestealer army fighting a taudar, then it is not "fun".
Balance is the only way GW has to makes every players understands each other - competitive and non competitive spirits. If your point is that only non competitive spirits should play the game, then seriously...

 Iron_Captain wrote:
While I agree that the game would benefit from better balance, GW probably does have a valid reason for why they are doing things.

And that valid reason is that playtesting and good game design cost money, the white knights will take pride in playing a game with horrible rules because it shows how "casual" they are and how little they care about winning, and the kids begging their parents for a box of space marines probably never play the game before they abandon the hobby and go back to their xbox. So why put the effort into making a better game when you can get away with selling garbage?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
What he is saying, is that you should select your units according to what seems appropriate for the background of the battle you are going to fight, rather than always selecting the best/strongest units.

And the problem is that, almost without exception, when people say "appropriate for the battle" what they really mean is "not very good at winning". For the "casual at all costs" crowd the fluff is just an excuse to criticize anyone who tries to win the game, even an army straight out of the background fiction will be labeled "unfluffy WAAC" if it wins too often, while armies that are bad at winning are held up as shining examples of fluff even if they're just a pile of random units with no real ties to the background fiction.

Starcraft looks better every day

 Iron_Captain wrote:

What he is saying, is that you should select your units according to what seems appropriate for the background of the battle you are going to fight, rather than always selecting the best/strongest units.

Which is fine if you're playing a battle with a background as part of a league/campaign/narrative. It's not fine when your gaming is pick-up games against random players who happen to be at the FLGS on miniatures night, and that's the problem. GW says that it's okay for the game to not be balanced, because you're supposed to have fun and have an enjoyable battle for the narrative, but I would bet the majority of players don't play games like that, they play one-off battles against a variety of opponents, rather than playing regular opponents where you can string battles into a narrative campaign or introduce your own special rules depending on the scenario and past battles.

The game experience for most people is more akin to a tournament setting without points, awards or overall winners, i.e. playing one-off games against different people, than it is playing narrative games that are part of a campaign.

You should be able to pick the units that are most true to the background and have a fighting chance, but largely you don't and the cheesey WAAC lists that throw fluff to the wind to field 3 of some uber-unit and minimal troops will crush a well-balanced force with mostly Troops and a few additions in most cases, and that's the underlying root problem of what needs to be balanced. If someone plays an Ork horde army with lots of Boyz that have some extras to support them, they shouldn't be punished for that because they come up against the Taudar 3x Riptides + Farseer with two Kroot squads and not a Fire Warrior in sight kind of rubbish.

I play Tyranids and I really like Flying Hive Tyrants and Raveners.
Now if I play against anyone competitive I can't field Raveners because they're a waste of points at even the semi-competitive level and the my opponent will easily crush me, which won't be fun for either player.
If I play against casual players I can't field my Flying Hive because they're too good and I will easily crush my opponent, which won't be fun for either player.

Every army has this problem, the massive imbalance Games Workshop has created restricts both casual and competitive players on their unit choices. No one can just take their favourite units and have fun unless their favourite units just happen to be at the appropriate level of competitiveness they play at. Making the game more balance will help everyone, including Games Workshop and their sales. It is much better to have a product that every [insert army here] player will want to buy, rather than one that only the competitive or casual half want to buy.

Hah I can't believe so much argument has come out of a clearly fake "rep" troll's rant.

We don't need a rep saying Games Workshop doesn't care about balance any more than we need someone to tell us the sky is blue, if we aren't blind we can see it.