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Made in ca
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Halifornia, Nova Scotia

 Zweischneid wrote:


Greater diversity is always a plus. I agree. I know game more diverse than 40K.

As said, if you find a way to balance the game by increasing diversity, I am all for it. All "balanced" games appear to work with far less (and more "mirror-style" armies) to achieve it.

I might look at it from the "wrong side", but at least I am not looking at it from some "hypothetical game" that only exists as a vague dream in some people's head. Surely there must be an example of a game both more diverse and more balanced than 40K in the sense you promote, so we have something with a bit of meat to discuss.


Again, no, its not about balancing by increasing diversity, its about balance that encourages diversity. You still have it backwards. We have all the units we'll ever want, we just need an incentive to use them now in a pick up game.


I don't see the automatism you claim. Even if everything is 100% balanced, there would still be "unfluffy" combinations, unless you put in extra restrictions (to the detriment of diversity).


Of course there would be unfluffy combos, but a lot of armies are currently punished for bringing a thematic or fluffy list. Better balance encourages more use of thematic lists, which would proportionally drive down the unfluffy aspects. This isn't guaranteed, but it can't hurt either.


Nobody is "telling you" to re-do your list. But if people perceive that they have the "right" to bring anything they goddamn please, just because it is in some rulebook, they are putting "the book" over the "social aspect" and that can never ever be a good thing.


No, but the implication of your pre-game negotiation is determining what power level of a game you wish to play. The three options when two severely mismatched lists would be to not play that person, to play that person in a lopsided match, or some sort of compromise/list alteration. Two of those options are not ideal, as not playing a person or playing a one sided match are hardly acceptable solutions. The last option is for both or either party to agree to a change.

If the rules were better balanced, that particular aspect of the pre game discussion wouldn't be necessary. Instead it would be about terrain, scenarios, exchanging army lists, clarifying models and any vague rules, and general chit chatting. Removing the part about list negotiation is an entirely positive experience. Don't assume that having two balanced armies will all of a sudden turn both sides into mutes before the game.



I guess you haven't tried getting into some competitive Chess, etc.. yet. Give it a go and see if you like to spend your weekends like that instead.


You keep bringing up chess as though its relevant. It isn't. There's a middle ground here, and its not black and white like the chess board in your example.

*Edit* Yeah, as above, I think I'm done now.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/03/02 22:10:50


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Well, good night everyone!

I'm more than happy to stop. I am sorry if I misunderstood anybody's questions for actual interest in the topic at hand. I didn't want to appear impolite by not answering

   
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Zweischneid wrote:
Fair enough. Once Infinity/Warmachine surpass 40K as a consequence of their superiour rules swaying gamers all around the world to their side, I'll happily eat my words.

If you have a better "non-subjective" measure than aggregate popularity, let me know. Other than that, your opinion of Warmachine > 40K seems no less biased than my opinion of 40K > Warmachine.


Zweischneid wrote:

I think you are confusing "defining" and "measuring" (through an imperfect proxy/indicator, of which others and better ones could exist)

As I said, I am open to other measurable indicators for rules-quality.


So popularity 'measures' superiority? Point still stands - if popularity 'measures' superiority, one direction are the greatest band ever.

Zweischneid wrote:.
No, I didn't. Though Deadnight claimed I did, so I put things right. How is that "moving goal-posts"?


You did. You equate 'aggregate popularity' with why 40k was the better game. Sorry, you 'measure' it. All 'popular' tells you is lots of people play it. Nothing more.

quote=Zweischneid].
Either way, how about you suggest an objective measurement for "rules-quality" that we can use to compare Infinity vs. 40K, etc.., since you were the one asking for proof, and you are also apparently not satisfied with the (admittedly very blunt) measure of relative popularity/sales.


YMdc forums give a measure of issues encountered by the community. Then there are other factors like general measuring of company support, faqs, 'cleanness' of the rules etc.

But whatever. You never listen. I'm out

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/03/02 22:16:19


 
   
Made in us
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Fundamentally, when you're talking about game balance, you're talking about increasing the amount of latitude in choices people can make and you're reducing the number of "I'm losing constantly, what's wrong with my list/give me a netlist" threads. You're increasing the amount of people that can get involved in the hobby, reducing the cost of entry, reducing the general level of frustration, and increasing the variety of acceptable playstyles and army types on the tabletop.

On the other hand, if you like playing against netlists and super competitive FOTM armies, then by all means, continue what you're doing.

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Devon, UK

Ah, so Zwei must have been busy yesterday, so we're getting Zweiday on Sunday this week.

I'm going to pick up on your F1 analogy from back along, as that alone betrayed your ignorance of both this topic and f1.

They do not spend millions or billions ensuring a level playing field.

The FIA put out a set of rules which very strictly define what is and isn't permissible on a car.

The teams (the competitors) then spend millions, if not billions, of pounds and hundreds if not thousands of man hours looking for every single potential loophole or degree of latitude they can wring out of that ruleset to give themselves even the slightest, barely measurable advantage over the rest of the competition.

They push things to the absolute limit, to the point of sometimes inviting sanction and generating controversy. They do not "self limit" to be sporting, the responsibility of maintaining a competitive environment and not allowing anyone to get too far ahead to preserve it is very firmly on the FIA (GW in his analogy.) Even to the point of stepping in mid season(edition) to revise things that are legal, if they are deemed to be throwing things too far out of whack.

The thing is, at least in F1, everyone is turning up to race day with the same objective. To transport your argument, you're effectively arguing that someone who turns up with their garage built, 4 cylinder stock car somehow has the right to ask everyone else to detune their engines, add extra weight or whatever, to make it "fair."

In real life, one must qualify within a certain time of the pole sitter to even be allowed to race, if you're not quick enough then you don't get to compete.

Now, we don't have the luxury of something as easy to objectively measure as A to B speed in wargaming, but plenty of other companies seem to manage to at least ensure that the majority of their game allows for rough parity across the whole spectrum of their range, and while some choices might be less or more optimal than others, few, if any, will eviscerate your chances of winning in quite the same way as GW rules. Rendering the need for a "minimum qualifying time" largely moot.

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 Zweischneid wrote:
But if you can make a convincing case that playing your three Riptides is fun for me, and I can make a convincing case that playing my footslogging Thousand Sons is fun for you, everyone wins (either by having a mutually enjoyable game, or by parting ways before wasting precious hobby-time on an un-fun game).

Yup, everyone wins... aside from the part where they waste a whole bunch of time negotiating about whether or not they are allowed to use their armies, rather than just throwing down miniatures and getting on with the game.


Or the part where you decide that my Riptide army is broken and refuse to play against it.


In a more balanced system, neither of those things woudl need to happen.

 
   
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Deadnight wrote:
Zweischneid wrote:
Fair enough. Once Infinity/Warmachine surpass 40K as a consequence of their superiour rules swaying gamers all around the world to their side, I'll happily eat my words.

If you have a better "non-subjective" measure than aggregate popularity, let me know. Other than that, your opinion of Warmachine > 40K seems no less biased than my opinion of 40K > Warmachine.


Zweischneid wrote:

I think you are confusing "defining" and "measuring" (through an imperfect proxy/indicator, of which others and better ones could exist)

As I said, I am open to other measurable indicators for rules-quality.


So popularity 'measures' superiority? Point still stands - if popularity 'measures' superiority, one direction are the greatest band ever.

Zweischneid wrote:.
No, I didn't. Though Deadnight claimed I did, so I put things right. How is that "moving goal-posts"?


You did. You equate 'aggregate popularity' with why 40k was the better game. Sorry, you 'measure' it. All 'popular' tells you is lots of people play it. Nothing more.

Zweischneid wrote:.
Either way, how about you suggest an objective measurement for "rules-quality" that we can use to compare Infinity vs. 40K, etc.., since you were the one asking for proof, and you are also apparently not satisfied with the (admittedly very blunt) measure of relative popularity/sales.


YMdc forums give a measure of issues encountered by the community. Then there are other factors like general measuring of company support, faqs, 'cleanness' of the rules etc.

But whatever. You never listen. I'm out


You have to remember which goal posts get moved with Z.

Originally, it was about what was "Fun" or not:

 Zweischneid wrote:


I disagree. Balance severely diminishes the game (see all those inferiour, far-less fun "balanced" games like Warmachine, Infinity, etc..) for everyone, those that abuse the imbalances and those that handle them with proper maturity.

Sure, 40K can be abused, but those "tfg" as you call them aren't numerous enough to warrant gelding the game simply to stop a minority of spoilers.


Then I guess it became "Most Popular= Most Fun" or something like that?
   
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This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2017/09/23 20:04:57


Bye bye Dakkadakka, happy hobbying! I really enjoyed my time on here. Opinions were always my own :-) 
   
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Devon, UK

 Bottle wrote:
insaniak wrote:
 Bottle wrote:
You are arguing balance is detrimental to the tournament scene because the tournament scene is actually played in a casual/friendly way.

No, I'm not. I'm saying lack of balance is detrimental to the tournament scene, because the tournament scene is for many players played in a casual/friendly way.


When I said "balance", I meant lack of too

@Zwei,

I enjoyed reading all your points (although I don't agree. I still think lack of balance is less fun for casual players).


He has a blog, if you'd like to know more.

Probably has a newsletter you could subscribe to as well.

We find comfort among those who agree with us - growth among those who don't. - Frank Howard Clark

The wise man doubts often, and changes his mind; the fool is obstinate, and doubts not; he knows all things but his own ignorance.

The correct statement of individual rights is that everyone has the right to an opinion, but crucially, that opinion can be roundly ignored and even made fun of, particularly if it is demonstrably nonsense!” Professor Brian Cox

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This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/09/23 20:05:03


Bye bye Dakkadakka, happy hobbying! I really enjoyed my time on here. Opinions were always my own :-) 
   
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Vallejo, CA

insaniak wrote:Playing friendly games doesn't mean not playing to win. It's a game where someone is supposed to win.

What an interesting way of putting it.

Anyways, lots of stuff.

@ tournaments:

I think people are agreeing here, they're just being incommensurable. Most people would agree that...

1.) If the definition of a tournament is an organization in which players play to win, then it is also something that does not accurately test player skill. A more skilled player will test his skills a lot better with a handicap than without, and nobody is going to show up to a tournament with a handicap if the point is to win.

2.) If the definition of a tournament is an organization which tests player skill, then 40k has never really had tournaments. I've never, ever seen a 40k tournament that ranked players by how low-power their list was, rather than by how many games they won.

The thing to remember is that when you look at professional tournament-style things, it's that the players are severely restricted, and there's virtually no input for player creativity, and everyone is brought down to a level playing field.

For an obvious example, if a marathon was nothing more than a 26 mile race, and the winner was nothing more than who crossed the line first, then the winner would be the person who showed up with the fastest rocket car.

To continue the analogy, the player who shows up with an ork list is deciding to run the marathon on foot, while the person with the taudar is deciding to run the marathon on horseback, while the person with the foot DE list is running the marathon with 100-pound weights strapped to his legs.

As such, because all things aren't starting equal, tournaments can't test player skill. And that's before we consider how absurd it is to even talk about measuring player skill in a dice game, much less comparing skill with such a miniscule sample size as most tournaments.

@ List building: List building is a skill, but not in the way it's being presented.

It takes VERY little skill to copy a netlist from the internet. It takes a lot more skill to design a decently-powerful foot guard list. It takes a LOT more skill to design a fluffy 1ksons list and still get it to win a decent number of games.

Furthermore, it's not some crass mini-game. Some people (myself included) actually like making lists, and really take advantage of the creativity it offers. If you don't like making lists, or if you want to just copy a netlist, fine, but that doesn't mean that some people aren't enjoying it.

And it actually has a place in the greater scheme of things as well. If I feel like I'm winning too much compared to the people around me, then I SHOULD be able to have creativity in what units I bring to the table so that I can self-regulate and bring a more challenging list to counter having less challenging opponents.

Being able to craft exactly the list you want with exactly the units you want to play the exact way you want to at exactly the power level you want is absolutely most definitely a skill.

It's nearly an art form.

Zweischneid wrote:Put a Chess-newb who only started playing 2 months ago against a semi-experienced player with 2 years of experience into a game, casual or not, and see how it goes. Than put the 2 year veteran against a 20-year veteran.

As said, balanced and skill-based games are fiendishly punitive to newbies, precisely because they need to learn and train and build up game-experience and skill, often over years.

40K works, because it mitigates the skill-advantage in often brutal ways.

And this is really important.

For years I've been trying to get my wife to play games of various sorts, but it's been slow because she's not from a gamer family. One of the things that we found is that we can't play proper strategy games against each other. She's a complete and total noob at strategy games, and because I'm not, I tend to horribly slaughter her at them for no other reason than I'm used to thinking that way. We can't play chess, and we can't play go, and we can't even play stratego or, strangely enough, battleship. When we play, she loses, and badly, and there's no real good way to handicap myself in these games, which means that both of us get bored really quickly.

But we do play games together. Games like Carcasonne, and Dominion (and Settlers when we have enough people). Games that are primarily luck-based. Games where better player skill means managing odds in a different way, which means that both players can do a decent share of winning, even if one person is playing much better than the other.

These games are not ones that pit player skill directly against each other, and they're both good games, and, I'd argue, necessary games for some people. I don't WANT 40k to pit player skill against player skill. There are already plenty of games that do that. What I want is for 40k to be a glorified dice game. A game where a newbie isn't comprehensively slaughtered game after game for the first few years when playing against someone better than them. A game where things are interesting because they're unpredictable, rather than a dry exercise in memorization.

Moreover, I also want it to be a game where you can't just look at the two army lists and know exactly who should win. You should be able to compare the two lists power levels, but it shouldn't be a game like rock paper scissors where both players reveal their choices, but that's it - a winner is determined and you don't even need to bother playing it out.

And that randomness provides a huge amount of the cure for this problem. The power level between the ork player and the taudar player's lists aren't the same (and that's a good thing), but the outcome of the game isn't a foregone conclusion either, because we're playing a dice game.

And the player skill thing, too. Remember that part about there being a pool of players who are competitive - who actually WANT a challenge. If the game was so perfectly balanced that every list had an equal chance of winning, then how would those people be able to handicap themselves without doing something incredibly crass like giving themselves fewer points.

These people want the game to be imbalanced, not because they want to spam the most powerful thing, but so that they have the option of taking less powerful stuff.

insaniak wrote:That would be ideal, yes. In much the same way that a battleship in monopoly is exactly as 'strong' as the shoe.

This is a great example of what I was talking about. In monopoly, what pieces you choose to play with is irrelevant. You might as well not even have the ability to choose your piece at the beginning of the game. 40k is a much richer game for being able to decide what things are going to look like at the beginning of the game, rather than having set, equal pieces on a set, symmetric board.

But that richness and depth require a player's decisions to have a meaningful impact on the game. Without making the armies different, choosing orks vs. choosing tau has about as much difference as choosing the shoe or choosing the dog in monopoly. You're creating the illusion of choice, and nothing more.

insaniak wrote:
This means that there aren't real differences between armies, but it would merely be a difference between the number of minis that a player wanted to put down, and what those minis looked like.

It would mean nothing of the sort. An assault army would still play differently to a shooty army. They would achieve their objectives using different strategies... they would just have a reasonably even chance of actually achieving those objectives.

So, for just a moment, consider a chess analogy. Chess is a game wherein both players have an equal chance at winning at the beginning of the game. The only thing that's really different is the way that the players move their pieces. What you're saying, in effect, is that 40k should be like chess in that regard. It shouldn't matter what pieces you put on the table, and both players should start out the same, and the only thing that should matter is how people move their pieces. Of course, 40k is a little more complex than this, but it the whole game would more or less boil down to this.

Now, if the point of a tournament was to pit player skill against each other, then you'd have to start all players out as equal, so that everything but skill (moving the pieces) was controlled for. If the purpose of the game was to measure player skill, then yes, having any possible combination of units in 40k should yield you the exact same chance of winning (minus player skill) as any other army list you brought.

But is this what we really want from 40k? People play chess because the only real point is to win the game. Nobody plays chess because they like how they've painted their pieces, or which pieces they've chosen to place on the board, and nobody plays chess because the act of moving pieces, in and of itself, is an interesting activity in its own right. The game has made so many things equal, that it has made the game so shallow, that there is only one real reason to play chess - to win, and at all costs allowed by the game mechanics.

But this is a failure of chess, not a strength. Chess takes away so many possible points of player choice - so many opportunities for a player to make meaningful decisions (which is, in its very essence, what a game is), that you're stuck with only moving pieces as the only input. Expanding player choice doesn't necessarily make the game better (because people still like to play chess), but it does make the game much, much deeper. And it's that depth that makes 40k 40k. If people just wanted a dry, shallow strategy game that was nothing more than moving pieces, then they could just go play chess. Or Go. These games have already been invented and more or less perfected.

But if you want to play 40k, you want to play something different.

Think about those other games like 40k I mentioned. Imagine, for a moment, that Dominion was set up in such a way where whichever cards you chose to buy didn't matter. You could do equally well by making your first 10 moves buying moats as anything else. What cards you chose to buy didn't matter at all, only in which order you chose to play them. Would that make dominion better? No, it would make the game much worse, because the cards you choose to buy, and in which order sort of is the entire point of a deck building game.

Likewise, consider MTG. Would that game be improved by all combination of cards being equal? I could bring a deck of 75 any randomly-selected cards and it would be the same as 75 cards chosen carefully by a player, and the only difference was how you played the deck? This would make MTG a lot worse as well, because it's those player choices that are critical to the game itself.

For a third example, consider MTG or 40k if it had the rule where both players were required to build a deck of identical cards, or an army of identical models. That way, your choice of deck or lists would give you an exactly equal chance of winning (player skill excluded). Would you want to play every game as a mirror match? Of course you wouldn't. People were already talking about how everyone showing up with the same deck or the same armies makes everything worse.

What you want is INequality, not equality. Equality makes the game more shallow, and defeats the kind of purpose of having these kinds of games in the first place, rather than just playing chess. Yes, there are lots of 40k players who choose to bring the same lists to big tournaments, but that's a choice that the players are making. The game shouldn't force everyone else to make what is largely regarded as the wrong, more boring decision.

The only way to get around this, as mentioned, is with diversity, but not with fake diversity where you just have different colored pieces, or you have different pieces that move in different ways. Even chess has this. In order to have real diversity, you need to have there be real consequences for making certain decisions rather than others (remembering that meaningful player choice is what a game is). In order for choices to have real consequences, then the end result of those choices has to be actually different.

This means, for example, that you choose to take a combination of units that is so bad that you lose practically every game. Because unless you can do this, then choosing strong units and combinations is meaningless. In order for player choice in combining units to have meaning, therefore, you have to have a game that supports both "bad" decisions along with the "good" ones. You need to have a game that DOESN'T control for everything else so that only player skill in moving pieces around is what matters.

In order to have meaningful choice in a game like 40k, you need to have not all decisions be the same. You need to not have balance. You need imbalance for a game like 40k to be a game like 40k, rather than a game like chess. It is that inequality that makes the game interesting, and the choices worth making.

Just because a few people happen to always pick the strongest combination doesn't mean that you should take away everybody else's right to choose their own combinations. You shouldn't make 40k a weaker, shallower game just because some people are allowed to play the game in a way that others find boring. That's the players, not the game, and it's the player's responsibility to have fun, and make it fun for their opponent. But this is always true of every game. Making this self-balancing act easier but in a way that makes the game worse isn't worth it. Not if it destroys the game as the game is and makes it something that it isn't.

As such, 40k need imbalance to be 40k. If it suddenly gets perfectly balanced, and the only thing that matters is the results of die rolls, then it ceases to be 40k, but becomes a version of yahtzee with minis, which is a fate we're trying to avoid, rather than encourage with perfectly balanced armies.

People who want balance, and all the things that it gets you, really should just go and play one of those other games, if that's the kind of game that they want to play.




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Abstract Principles of 40k: Why game imbalance and list tailoring is good, and why tournaments are an absurd farce.

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It will greatly help your argument if you try to understand the difference between balance, randomness and symmetry, and realize that very few people enjoy your masochistic "hard mode" approach. For example, you mention Settlers as an example of a good game for non-gamers, but that's a game with perfect balance and symmetry (since all sides are exactly the same). This blatantly contradicts your claim that a balanced version of 40k would make it impossible for non-gamers to enjoy it because it would be all about chess-like obsessive memorization.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2014/03/03 00:57:05


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This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/09/23 20:05:10


Bye bye Dakkadakka, happy hobbying! I really enjoyed my time on here. Opinions were always my own :-) 
   
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 Zweischneid wrote:
Perhaps. But if so, I've yet to see an example of how more unit diversity creates more balance. Most concrete suggestions (I have seen) appear to revolve around restrictions (remove allies, make Riptides 0-1, etc..).


Simple: because maybe making Riptides 0-1 makes stealth suits a 0-3 option instead of a 0-0 option that nobody ever takes. By restricting a small number of overpowered units you make room for a lot of other options to become viable choices, and diversity is improved. Now, obviously it would be best to re-balance Riptides so that they don't need a 0-1 restriction to be fair, but that's something only GW can do. Things like 0-1 restrictions are just the community's best tool for getting the desired results when the people with the ability to make proper changes are unwilling to invest the effort.

How does the presence of strong/broken combinations force you to abandon your thematic list?


Because nobody enjoys losing one-sided massacres every time they play a game. If a thematic list can't even attempt to compete with an optimized list that exploits the broken combinations then the thematic list's player has two choices: lose constantly and not have any fun, or don't play at all.

Which would be the single most counter-productive step backwards in the history of gaming. The very fact that we've come tantalizingly close to making the pre-game negotiation an accepted part of the game, and possible are going away from a "legalistic" approach to game rules, is possibly the single greatest thing in gaming since the invention of the D6.


Sorry, but this is just masochistic nonsense. The fact that pre-game negotiation is necessary is a bad thing. A good game doesn't require it because there's nothing to negotiate, you just say "hey, let's play a game" and then play it, and everyone is happy. You only need pre-game negotiation when you're trying to salvage some enjoyment out of a broken game.

Because it is imbalanced, it does not place the burden on skill, making it a more casual game. That's the point.


So, let me get this straight: an ideal casual game is one in which both players have to care a lot about the game and make a major effort to negotiate what is allowed (and build a collection with appropriate units to vary the power of their list) if they want to have an enjoyable experience where both players have a fair chance of winning? And balancing the game so that two players who don't care very much about the game can just say "hey, want to play a game?" and then go have fun would make it less casual?

I think it's pretty clear that your definition of "casual" is not the same as the one found in the dictionary.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Zweischneid wrote:
I don't see the automatism you claim. Even if everything is 100% balanced, there would still be "unfluffy" combinations, unless you put in extra restrictions (to the detriment of diversity).


Except that "unfluffy" armies would be much rarer. If making an "unfluffy" army doesn't give you any advantage over a "fluffy" army then why wouldn't you just make an army with whatever you think is cool? The only time you'd have an "unfluffy" army is when someone else has a different idea about what the fluff should be, and I can't see how anyone could deny that this would be a better situation than the current Tau/Eldar/Inquisition/titan abominations where the player just takes a collection of the most overpowered balance mistakes without even an attempt at caring about the theme or background fiction.

Nobody is "telling you" to re-do your list. But if people perceive that they have the "right" to bring anything they goddamn please, just because it is in some rulebook, they are putting "the book" over the "social aspect" and that can never ever be a good thing.


And the point that everyone but you understands is that a good game doesn't have any difference between "the book" and "the social aspect" because the two aren't in conflict. In a good game (which includes good balance) there's no question of whether you have a "right" to do something, because doing it is still fun for everyone involved. This conflict only exists in bad games where the rules are broken and you need to resort to shunning "bad" people to allow everyone in your group to have fun.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2014/03/03 01:19:56


There is no such thing as a hobby without politics. "Leave politics at the door" is itself a political statement, an endorsement of the status quo and an attempt to silence dissenting voices. 
   
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Vallejo, CA

Bottle wrote:I think it's only you and Zwei that think it is a better test of skill to take a handicapped list to a tournament.

It's not that unintuitive. Consider an example:

Two chefs are brought forward to make two different meals, and they are to be judged by a panel of perfect, impartial judges in a score from 1 to 100. The first chef produces a meal that scores an 83, and he had complete pick of any ingredients he wants, and they're all guaranteed to be fresh. The second chef also scores an 83, but he only had access to ingredients that came from a hot dog rack at a gas station. Which is the better chef?

Of course the second one is. The first can make good food from good ingredients, while the second can make good food from total garbage. It takes more skill to do the latter than the former. The first is competent, while the second is the true master.

The same is true for 40k itself. Do you need to have more or less skill to win a game with a list that's weaker than your opponent? More, of course. Bringing taudar to the table is like juicing up on steroids - anyone can bulk up quickly with the finest chemistry has to offer, but it takes a person with skill and determination to achieve the same results without the same advantages.

Plus, a person who is competitive isn't a person who is trying to win - they're a person who is trying to compete. A proper competition requires a serious chance of losing. In fact, the victories get progressively sweeter the longer the odd are of you pulling it off. A person who just wants to win will take the easiest path afforded. A person who wants to compete will ratchet up the difficulty level as high as he can get away with to keep honing his skills.

To bring it back to 40k, playing a tau gunline is like swordfighting against a target dummy while playing a khorne berzerker army is like practicing your swordfighting 3 against 1.

Once again, I'd note that you'd have to have a system whereby a player could choose to fight a practice dummy or play on hard mode of 3 against 1. Making everything equal removes that choice.


Your one-stop website for batreps, articles, and assorted goodies about the men of Folera: Foleran First Imperial Archives. Read Dakka's favorite narrative battle report series The Hand of the King. Also, check out my commission work, and my terrain.

Abstract Principles of 40k: Why game imbalance and list tailoring is good, and why tournaments are an absurd farce.

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 Ailaros wrote:
To continue the analogy, the player who shows up with an ork list is deciding to run the marathon on foot, while the person with the taudar is deciding to run the marathon on horseback, while the person with the foot DE list is running the marathon with 100-pound weights strapped to his legs.

And you seriously think this makes for a better playing experience for all those involved?





She's a complete and total noob at strategy games, and because I'm not, I tend to horribly slaughter her at them for no other reason than I'm used to thinking that way.

The interesting thing here is that you choose to believe that she sucks at strategy games because she lacks experience, rather than that she sucks at strategy games just because she sucks at strategic thinking.

A lot of people do, and experience won't necessarily fix that. I've played Chess against people who have been playing the game just as long as I have, and who suck at it. That's not a lack of experience, that's just not being good at thinking in the way that is required to make you good at Chess.


What I want is for 40k to be a glorified dice game. A game where a newbie isn't comprehensively slaughtered game after game for the first few years when playing against someone better than them.

The thing is, in the current imbalanced system, this is exactly what happens, because the newbie buys an army based on which models they like the look of, and this has a reasonable chance of winding up with a collection of miniatures that perform absolutely rubbish as an army.



Moreover, I also want it to be a game where you can't just look at the two army lists and know exactly who should win.

Which, again, would be more likely under a system where any two armies are more or less equal, rather than now, where you can hold upa Taudar list, and an Ork Footslogger list, and not really need to roll any dice...



. Remember that part about there being a pool of players who are competitive - who actually WANT a challenge. If the game was so perfectly balanced that every list had an equal chance of winning, then how would those people be able to handicap themselves without doing something incredibly crass like giving themselves fewer points.

What's the difference practically between giving yourself fewer point, and deliberately choosing less effective units?



. Without making the armies different, choosing orks vs. choosing tau has about as much difference as choosing the shoe or choosing the dog in monopoly. You're creating the illusion of choice, and nothing more.

Absolutely. Except for the fact that it's completely false.

The Ork army is still going to play differently to the Tau army... they're just going to have an even chance of winning. Because, you know, game.



Likewise, consider MTG. Would that game be improved by all combination of cards being equal? I could bring a deck of 75 any randomly-selected cards and it would be the same as 75 cards chosen carefully by a player, and the only difference was how you played the deck? This would make MTG a lot worse as well, because it's those player choices that are critical to the game itself.

Weren't you saying a few pages back that downloading a netlist isn't particularly skillful?

If a part of playing the game well involves players making a good deck, or writing a good army list, but that part of the game can be circumvented by just downlaoding a list from the net, does it really have any meaning as a part of the game?


For a third example, consider MTG or 40k if it had the rule where both players were required to build a deck of identical cards, or an army of identical models. That way, your choice of deck or lists would give you an exactly equal chance of winning (player skill excluded). Would you want to play every game as a mirror match? Of course you wouldn't. People were already talking about how everyone showing up with the same deck or the same armies makes everything worse.

And it certainly does. Which is why one army being substantially better than every other is bad. It makes taking any other army a poor choice. Sure, it doesn't 'require' players to all use that army... but it certainly encourages them to do so.

Put all armies on an even playing field, and that goes away.


The game shouldn't force everyone else to make what is largely regarded as the wrong, more boring decision.

Yes, that's exactly the point.

The weird part is that you think it's a point that supports your argument for an imbalanced game, rather than doing the exact opposite.

 
   
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 Peregrine wrote:
Simple: because maybe making Riptides 0-1 makes stealth suits a 0-3 option instead of a 0-0 option that nobody ever takes. By restricting a small number of overpowered units you make room for a lot of other options to become viable choices, and diversity is improved. Now, obviously it would be best to re-balance Riptides so that they don't need a 0-1 restriction to be fair, but that's something only GW can do. Things like 0-1 restrictions are just the community's best tool for getting the desired results when the people with the ability to make proper changes are unwilling to invest the effort.


True as all that might be, we both know why 0-1's were removed from Codices.

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This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/09/23 20:05:14


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Personally, I want to win a battle because I used superior strategy/tactics (or was extremely lucky) and not because I can pick 3 overpowered units while my opponent is using a codex that's 2 editions out of date. That's why we need balance. There shouldn't be any "bad" units, there should be units that are good in some situations and not in others, but all are viable and can find a use in an army based on theme. Some might require more strategy than others, but you should be able to take whatever units you want that fit your theme and do well if you know what you're doing.

That's what I like about a game like Warmachine/Hordes: All units are viable. You might use some units more than others because of the list you are running, but there are no real units that are just bad and will make you lose simply because you made the wrong choice and decided to take them at all instead of taking the unit that's way OP that everyone else takes because it's the clear "winner" in unit choices.

A game is broken the moment there's a unit that you always want to take, and a unit that you never want to take, because then why have that inferior unit exist in the game at all? To trick people into buying them only to find out they're garbage?

That's how 40k should be. I want balance so I have the choice of taking let's say a Riptide, or Crisis Suits, or Stealth Suits and depending on my playstyle all three are viable; maybe I'm playing an advanced scout force and Stealth squads make thematic sense; I shouldn't be punished because I want to field them. Or balance to where I can include a squad of Howling Banshees because they fit my army theme and not be penalized because I took the wrong unit. The game is too much about listbuilding, and not enough about strategy and tactics. A superior player with an inferior army will lose to an inferior player with a superior army almost every time, and that's IMO a bunch of crap.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2014/03/03 02:15:48


- Wayne
Formerly WayneTheGame 
   
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Vallejo, CA

WayneTheGame wrote:Personally, I want to win a battle because I used superior strategy/tactics (or was extremely lucky) and not because I can pick 3 overpowered units while my opponent is using a codex that's 2 editions out of date.

Then don't pick 3 overpowered units. You have control over that. You don't have to pick an army list that makes winning easy.

You're asking the rules to save you from yourself...

insaniak wrote:
Ailaros wrote:To continue the analogy, the player who shows up with an ork list is deciding to run the marathon on foot, while the person with the taudar is deciding to run the marathon on horseback, while the person with the foot DE list is running the marathon with 100-pound weights strapped to his legs.

And you seriously think this makes for a better playing experience for all those involved?

If someone was happier running the marathon with weights, then it would be a better experience for the person wearing the weights, yes.

insaniak wrote:
What I want is for 40k to be a glorified dice game. A game where a newbie isn't comprehensively slaughtered game after game for the first few years when playing against someone better than them.

The thing is, in the current imbalanced system, this is exactly what happens, because the newbie buys an army based on which models they like the look of, and this has a reasonable chance of winding up with a collection of miniatures that perform absolutely rubbish as an army.

But in an imbalanced game, the newbie can pick a stronger army to make the game easier for them. It takes 30 seconds and an internet connection to figure out what the most powerful armies are.

Meanwhile, if you took away the ability for a noob to play a strong list and a veteran to play a weak list against him, you're taking a situation that's bad for new players and making it worse. Forcing a newb and a vet to compete at the same level is going to lead to a lot more frustration for the newb.

insaniak wrote:
. Without making the armies different, choosing orks vs. choosing tau has about as much difference as choosing the shoe or choosing the dog in monopoly. You're creating the illusion of choice, and nothing more.

Absolutely. Except for the fact that it's completely false.

The Ork army is still going to play differently to the Tau army...

So? You've still managed to bring the game down to one of nothing but moving pieces.

I mean, a chess player playing black is going to play differently than a chess player playing white (white rarely uses a sicilian defense, for example), but that doesn't mean the game isn't more shallow.


insaniak wrote:
Likewise, consider MTG. Would that game be improved by all combination of cards being equal? I could bring a deck of 75 any randomly-selected cards and it would be the same as 75 cards chosen carefully by a player, and the only difference was how you played the deck? This would make MTG a lot worse as well, because it's those player choices that are critical to the game itself.

Weren't you saying a few pages back that downloading a netlist isn't particularly skillful?

If a part of playing the game well involves players making a good deck, or writing a good army list, but that part of the game can be circumvented by just downlaoding a list from the net, does it really have any meaning as a part of the game?
insaniak wrote: Which is why one army being substantially better than every other is bad. It makes taking any other army a poor choice. Sure, it doesn't 'require' players to all use that army... but it certainly encourages them to do so.

Put all armies on an even playing field, and that goes away.

Once again, though, you're forgetting about the player.

If two players choose to have a game where their lists are of equal strength because they both brought the same list, the fault lies with the players choosing to bring the same list. By making everything equal what you're doing is forcing everyone to do the same as if they were bringing the same list. You're sinking everyone to the lowest common denominator.

Downloading netlists doesn't take much skill, but that doesn't mean we should take all skill out of list building. Don't punish the good for the sins of the bad.


Your one-stop website for batreps, articles, and assorted goodies about the men of Folera: Foleran First Imperial Archives. Read Dakka's favorite narrative battle report series The Hand of the King. Also, check out my commission work, and my terrain.

Abstract Principles of 40k: Why game imbalance and list tailoring is good, and why tournaments are an absurd farce.

Read "The Geomides Affair", now on sale! No bolter porn. Not another inquisitor story. A book written by a dakkanought for dakkanoughts!
 
   
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 Ailaros wrote:
Bottle wrote:I think it's only you and Zwei that think it is a better test of skill to take a handicapped list to a tournament.

It's not that unintuitive. Consider an example:

Two chefs are brought forward to make two different meals, and they are to be judged by a panel of perfect, impartial judges in a score from 1 to 100. The first chef produces a meal that scores an 83, and he had complete pick of any ingredients he wants, and they're all guaranteed to be fresh. The second chef also scores an 83, but he only had access to ingredients that came from a hot dog rack at a gas station. Which is the better chef?


While I like this analogy, I also have a small discrepancy I'd like to point out.

It's certainly a solid analogy regarding List Build Vs. Skill, because, like you say, A person with an Overpowered list and less skill very well can keep up with someone with a weak list and a great deal of skill.

The only thing is that, unlike in your analogy, list choice is player controlled, while you seem to make it forced on Chef 2 to cook from Gas-station ingredients.

In "Competitive" 40k, you can absolutely be hampered by your list-choice and army-choice, which will cause your skill to produce less results even against weaker opponents, but it is still your choice to bring said list/army. Every player has the right, as well as the access to Lists of equal strength to their opponent; whether they choose to buy/model/paint/play said army is up to them.

It's easy to blame the army for being weaker than another, but if that weakness is that big of a deal, then you need a different army that compete at the higher levels where the former army cannot. So yes, using premium ingredients Chef 1 scored a 83, and if Chef 2 used premium ingredients, he may have scored a 96, which begs the question: Which matters more to Chef 2, leveling the playing field and showcasing his skill through triumph, or handicapping his resources and choosing to test himself in seeing if he can still keep up/triumph.

Just my input.
-TheCaptain

Dakka member since 2012/01/09 16:44:06

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 Ailaros wrote:
Then don't pick 3 overpowered units. You have control over that. You don't have to pick an army list that makes winning easy.


Yeah, it's just great that the guy who takes three Riptides because giant robots are cool has to buy a different army so they don't win too easily. This is so much better than a game in which you can take any three units you want and not worry about ruining your opponent's fun.

If someone was happier running the marathon with weights, then it would be a better experience for the person wearing the weights, yes.


Except the thing you keep refusing to understand is that most people don't enjoy your kind of masochism. They want to play a game/run a race/whatever and try their best to win, they don't want to have to go through some elaborate handicapping ritual to prove how superior their skills are.

But in an imbalanced game, the newbie can pick a stronger army to make the game easier for them.


Yeah, why give newbies free choice of which armies to take when you can lock them into a single power build?

Meanwhile, if you took away the ability for a noob to play a strong list and a veteran to play a weak list against him, you're taking a situation that's bad for new players and making it worse.


Here's a hint: you can always play with fewer points. Play 1000 points vs. 1500 points in a balanced game and you've given the newbie an advantage, but since you haven't destroyed game balance to do it you can then play balanced 1500 vs. 1500 games without masochistic "hard mode" rituals.

I mean, a chess player playing black is going to play differently than a chess player playing white (white rarely uses a sicilian defense, for example), but that doesn't mean the game isn't more shallow.


Seriously, please try to learn the difference between symmetry and balance. Chess is "shallow" because it's a symmetrical game where both sides are equal, not because both sides have a roughly equal chance of winning. A balanced game with diverse strategies does not suffer from that problem.

By making everything equal what you're doing is forcing everyone to do the same as if they were bringing the same list.


Sigh. Do you understand the difference between "all options are viable" and "all lists, no matter how poorly constructed, are equally good"? For example, let's say rough riders and Vendettas are equally balanced in some abstract sense. Both are appealing options in the appropriate list, but that doesn't mean they're interchangeable. The rough riders might be better in a list with other infantry units, while the Vendettas might work best with mechanized troops. No, this doesn't let you make every single choice and still have the same chance of winning, but it lets you pick at least some of your favorite units and still have a viable list as long as you're reasonably smart about picking the rest of your units.

Downloading netlists doesn't take much skill, but that doesn't mean we should take all skill out of list building. Don't punish the good for the sins of the bad.


Do you know why netlists exist? Because of poor balance. The main reason netlisting is so common is that it's easy to identify the best option, which is usually the one that abuses the most of the overpowered balance mistakes. In a balanced game netlisting is much less relevant since there's no clear best list to copy.

There is no such thing as a hobby without politics. "Leave politics at the door" is itself a political statement, an endorsement of the status quo and an attempt to silence dissenting voices. 
   
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 Ailaros wrote:
Then don't pick 3 overpowered units. You have control over that. You don't have to pick an army list that makes winning easy.

Which brings us back to the point where players feel like they can't use the models they want to use because of those models having over-powered rules...


But in an imbalanced game, the newbie can pick a stronger army to make the game easier for them...

Provided they don't wind up playing against a better player with a similar list... which they will, in a tournament environment, and are likely to in any more competitive casual environment.

And provided, being a newbie to the hobby, they actually know to look online for list ideas, and know where to look even if they do.




Meanwhile, if you took away the ability for a noob to play a strong list and a veteran to play a weak list against him,...

...then you wind up with a situation that you get with pretty much every strategy game ever made, where a new player won't be as good as a more experienced player. You keep presenting this like it's a problem. It's not. It's the whole nature of competition.

Yes, the new player might lose a few games until they become a better player. That's a system working exactly as it should.


Forcing a newb and a vet to compete at the same level is going to lead to a lot more frustration for the newb.

Only if the newb is going into it expecting to be as good as the vet. Which would be silly, and naive.

Personally, when I'm just learning a new game, and I'm playing against someone more experienced than myself, I take that as a learning experience. I don't expect to be as good at something the first time I do it as someone who has been doing it for 20 years.



By making everything equal what you're doing is forcing everyone to do the same as if they were bringing the same list.

Sure. Except for the fact that they have different lists.

So if by 'the same' you mean 'completely different' then yes, I totally agree.

 
   
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 Ailaros wrote:
Jidmah wrote:In a well balanced game, the tau player could plonk down however many riptides he wishes without ruining the game for anyone and/or getting insulted as TFG.
In a well balanced game, no single unit should be able to make half the armies in the game obsolete, even if taken in quintets.
In a well balanced game, a combination of as little as three army choices should not generate nigh-invincible units.
In a well balanced game, using a mono-build list like croissants of doom should easily be counter-able by every army in the game.

Okay, but think about it for a moment. How are we really defining balance?

Because what it looks like here is that a well-balanced game is one wherein a player can take any combination of units and do more or less just as well as another player taking any other combination of units.

Do you really want a game like this? Because if there are no strong units and weak units, strong armies and weak armies, or strong combinations and weak combinations, then what does it matter what you take? In a way, your choices become irrelevant. You're just taking different-shaped models.

In this world of balance, you take away the meaningfulness of a player's decision. List building becomes pointless.

It would just make the game worse.

Oh no, you misunderstood me there. You interpreted this as every list being able to beat riptide spam, pentadrakes et cetera. That's not what I meant to say. I'll explain the lines in detail to make my point more clear:
- You just should not be able to just pick the most efficient unit from your codex and be able to kill everything with it.
- There should be a hard-counters to every type of unit, not just some. If the helldrake is the hard-counter to space marines, then space marines should also have access to a hard-counter to helldrakes - one of their anit-air options should be able to blow a helldrake straight out of the sky, barring unlucky dice. This choice must be equally difficult to fit in your list as the unit it is countering. Right now we have a hard-counter in a slot mostly useless to CSM which can only be countered by either spending much more points (storm ravens) and/or wasting multiple valuable heavy support slots with dedicated anti-air. Hard-counters also should not be great at killing wide bandwidth of unit, but rather just the ones it's supposed to be countering (good example of this are grav guns - awesome at killing armored targets, terrible at killing horde units). Age of Empire2 had this implemented almost to perfection in their latest patches. Against any type of unit you had unit that would take close to no damage from it and tear it to shreads in a blink of an eye. However, that exact unit fell flat on its face when not fighting the target it was supposed to. This way you had all-round units like knights and archers and counter-units like pikemen and spear throwers. While a knight would do well against anything but a pikeman, a pikeman would do awesome against knights (and other cavalry), but not against anything else.
- If there are combos, they should be hard to pull off and easy to break, for every codex. In case of the grimoire, it should be really easy to kill the grimoire bearer to break it (take away all his saves?), or limit such levels of durability to once per game. Paladins with FNP and named monstrous creatures really should be pinnacle of survivability, not somewhere in midfield. If there is a rule that forces you to arrange five units of pink horrors to a pentagram in order to summon Tzeench himself, that's ok - the opponent can easily stop it and if you manage to pull it off, you can tell everyone about it for weeks. And the best part - gasp - you're forging a narative!
- If my opponent has all planes, and I brought one or two of dedicated anti-air units, he should be the one losing the game, not me. If my imperial army wasted a slot of artillery or heavy tanks in order to bring a unit that's mostly useless if there are no targets, it better should tear right through anything in the sky that's not extremely heavily armored. Of course, the necrons should be able to just take out the trio of hydras, but that would require points spent in something other than night scythes.

I'd argue the other side, that in order for a player's decisions about what to bring to be meaningful, he has to be able to "fail" at list building. He has to be able to make bad choices. Furthermore, he has to be able to make choices that he KNOWS will be weaker than other choices, but still wants to take them anyways.

Because when you sit down to play chess, whether you play black or white is scarcely relevant (to anything but the opener). In order for a player to have serious choice, they need to be able to bring a different kind of army, and for that to have a real impact. They need to choose not to play taudar, for example, which means they need to have a choice that's actually different than taudar, and if taudar is the best, then that requires you to have things which are worse.

Now, yes, this can obviously lead to extremes, and you don't need to tell me that tau lists can be pretty boring to play against, but still, 40k needs imbalance to be 40k. The only question is striking the correct level of imbalance.

And what is that correct level? As best I can tell, it's to provide a relatively smooth power curve in such a way where a person can play with exactly as powerful of an army as they want, and be able to have some expectation of what the result of the game will be by comparing it to the power level that their opponent brought. And 40k already does this pretty well.

But the thing is, though, that it has to be a player choice. Yes, people can complain that we shouldn't be forced to balance the game ourselves, but we MUST be required to balance the game ourselves in order for our choices to have meaning. It's just part of the cost to get the advantages.

If you don't want to have to sit down with your opponent and hash things out, then play a game where both armies start out equal to each other, like chess or stratego or go. That way you'll get what you want, but you also won't get 40k.

It takes "some assembly required" to have the freedom to assemble the game the way you want.

I fully agree with everything you said. Think of it this way: You should not lose because your opponent brought Riptides/Drakes/Serpents/Unkillable Deathstar of Doom. You should lose because you brought a random selection of non-synergistic units from your codex, you forgot to bring something to kill tanks, you played worse than your opponent or because your warphead teleported Thrakka and his bodyguard of 10 MANz into a rock.

That sounds like the exact opposite of what you're talking about. I can't think of someone who wants a challenge any less than someone who is playing for the purpose of winning (which is the point of tournaments in the first place).

Maybe we should call them competitive players rather than tournament players. You always try to win a tournament, since you paid an entry fee and you want to win one of the prizes.
In a regular competitive game, you are looking for the challenge and you would tune down your army to get that challenge. When I face the necron kid from one of my stores who always tailors his army against mine in pick-up games, I don't obliterate him for foolishly taking a sub-optimal HQ, just because he happens to love the model (the guy who randomly turns into a C'Tan). I even dis-attached my warboss from his unit, just to fight his HQ one on one, to see how awesome he really is when "the stars align".
In tournaments? Sorry, out of luck. I'll bunch up his immortals around the HQ between battlewagons, stack templates on them and have them evaporated by 100+ wounds, while my warboss tears up his ghost arks. No cinematic show-downs when you are able to win $80 worth of models.

7 Ork facts people always get wrong:
Ragnar did not win against Thrakka, but suffered two crushing defeats within a few days of each other.
A lasgun is powerful enough to sever an ork's appendage or head in a single, well aimed shot.
Orks meks have a better understanding of electrics and mechanics than most Tech Priests.
Orks actually do not think that purple makes them harder to see. The joke was made canon by Alex Stewart's Caphias Cain books.
Gharkull Blackfang did not even come close to killing the emperor.
Orks can be corrupted by chaos, but few of them have any interest in what chaos offers.
Orks do not have the power of believe. 
   
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I literally cannot fathom how pepole claiming to be experienced and skilled players cannot understand that having balanced point costs for models will not prevent the existence of weaker and stronger combinations...

Boggles the mind.

I simply cannot think of anything to say about this other than "you obviously don't understand this game as well as you claim you do"...

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 Jidmah wrote:
- There should be a hard-counters to every type of unit, not just some.


Absolutely not. Hard counters are bad because games that involve them aren't fun. The player whose strategy got hard-countered isn't going to have any fun pulling useless models off the table until the game ends, and the player who brought the counter isn't going to have any fun mindlessly rolling dice as their choice of counter wins the game for them. Having lots of hard counters in the game reduces it to rock/paper/scissors, where all that matters is who brought the right hard counter. Even if you're theoretically winning a perfect 50% of your games an equally perfect 100% of them will be fun-destroying massacres. You might as well just play "flip a coin to see who wins" and then spend a couple hours pushing models around the table and making gun noises.

There is no such thing as a hobby without politics. "Leave politics at the door" is itself a political statement, an endorsement of the status quo and an attempt to silence dissenting voices. 
   
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 Zweischneid wrote:
 Alpharius wrote:
Big Z lost me at "(see all those inferiour, far-less fun "balanced" games like Warmachine, Infinity, etc..)".

So much for logic, proof, fact based anything, etc.


Fair enough. Once Infinity/Warmachine surpass 40K as a consequence of their superiour rules swaying gamers all around the world to their side, I'll happily eat my words.

If you have a better "non-subjective" measure than aggregate popularity, let me know. Other than that, your opinion of Warmachine & 40K seems no less biased than my opinion of 40K & Warmachine.


Yes, because 40k is totally as popular as it is because of its gloriously fun imbalance. That's sarcasm, by the way. I don't love 40k for the gameplay, I love it for the setting, the mythos, whatever. I love it because I got into a committed relationship with it and I'm trapped, even though there are consistently things I hate. That said, 40k is popular because it is effectively the original. It's the Windows of tabletop wargaming. Is Call of Duty better than Dark Souls because it has more fans? Hardly.

To the idea that 40k has nothing to do with anything other than probability: no, unless you think that one Guardsman could be reasonably expected to kill a full Tactical Squad in melee. It could happen, but the player who starts with one Guardsman on the table compared to the other player's ten Space Marines is going to lose. It's only when, in a complete vacuum, we put ten Marines vs ten Marines that it becomes pure chance - in a vacuum. Of course, games don't take place in vacuums, and pure randomness is generally filtered out through the number of rolls one has to make. For a Space Marine to kill another Space Marine with a bolter, he has to roll To Hit, he has to roll To Wound, and the other Marine has to take his armour save, which rounds it out and makes things overall rather statistical. Are you honestly suggesting that Terminators are no tougher than Scouts because of the possibility (in face of a relative statistical unlikelihood) for a Terminator to fail an armour save?

To the idea that imbalance makes it fun: no. That is actual nonsense. You are suggesting that, should we both be using the same Codex to play against each other (which would be entirely balanced, as we would have access to everything the other does - this doesn't account for internal balance, of course, but that's a different issue), one player should get +25%, +50%, +100% more points than the other, otherwise it won't be fun.

Balance benefits strategy and skill. In Halo, for example, a standard Deathmatch sees a Red and Blue team, each consisting of 6 players, fight each other to the death. It is fun, and played for fun - there is no actual benefit to winning a game other than the satisfaction, but loss is still enjoyable as long as the game itself was. Would it be fun if, say, the Blue Team all spawned with double shields, infinite grenades, sniper rifles, and rocket launchers? Because that's what it's like when one army is objectively better than another. Bring Orks vs Tau or Eldar or Taudar or a Revenant Titan and watch as all skill becomes completely irrelevant. Skill in list-building, in playing, in strategy means nothing when your opponent can field something that you can't, and that something is either impossible for your Codex (never mind your build, since few games begin with advance knowledge of an opponent's build) to beat, or something so crushingly points-efficient that your opponent may as well be playing with a higher points limit than you, or something capable of deleting mass amounts of your points every turn, or something that is all of these things, and say it is fun. Is it fun to play Sisters of Battle and know, no matter how hard you try, no matter how skilled you are at list-building, that you will be easily defeated by any unskilled idiot who learns about 2++ rerollable invulnerable saves or some other insurmountably powerful build? Perhaps we'll do Space Marines vs Space Marines, but all of mine get Str 9 AP1 Bolters with no chance to their points cost because "imbalance makes the game fun".

People keep comparing this to real sports (pretending, for a moment, that 40k is a "sport" in any sense, which is laughable). I'm not going to hunt the thread for the quote, but someone suggested that sport players don't handicap themselves to get a challenge. This is because they are all equally human - the challenge is pushing their bodies and minds to achieve performance. None have the option of showing up to the match on a motorcycle with a device that can pull the ball from forty metres away and launch it even further. None have the option of showing up with a minigun to murder the opposing team with and score freely. Instead we have balance; two groups who are all given the same opportunities as the others, competing with all of their prowess, training, and tactics to ultimately put balls in nets. How about we play tennis, and I'll bring a gun (along with the necessarily rules adjustments to allow me to shoot you mid-game and continue playing and scoring while you are incapacitated)?

Also, balance does not equal symmetry. There is a really great multiplayer in Dead Space 2. One team is the Necromorph (space zombies), the other is human. The human team tries to complete an objective while the Necromorph team try to slow them down and eventually stop them. The Necromorph respawn rapidly and have the aid of computer-controlled mobs, while the human team is small but individually very powerful. This is an asymmetrical game, but it is balanced well. If it were not balanced well, then the purpose of the game is moot - why play, if one team is going to automatically win by virtue of being that team? If two of X are worth one of Y, then the ratio of X to Y should be 2:1, not 1:2.

The short version is: let's play a game. We each get a d6, and whoever gets the highest number wins. Oh, and I get 2d6 - didn't you know that imbalance is what makes a game really great and popular?

EDIT: I have written a new codex. It is as follows:

Force Org: Take what you want.

HQ
A small tortoise: 10pts
WS1 BS1 S1 T1 W1 I1 Sv -

Special Rules: Small Tortoise - A small tortoise cannot be wounded or removed from play in any way. It can score objectives, and automatically gains 2 VP for every turn it is on the board.
Cute Face - Every phase, any model that can draw line of sight to a small tortoise must immediately Go To Ground and take 5d6 Wounds or Hull Points with no saves of any kind allowed. Wounds caused in this way inflict Instant Death, and if the model cannot Go To Ground after taking these Wounds then it is immediately removed from play and awards its point value in Victory Points to the small tortoise's player. Hull Points removed in this way automatically cause an Explodes! result on the vehicle damage chart.
A small tortoise is both a Monstrous Creature and a Gargantuan Creature because, if robots can be Monstrous Creatures, then what's even the point in distinguishing them from Walkers except that MCs are just better?

My amazingly well-made list that I spent hours on:

HQ
A small tortoise
A small tortoise
A small tortoise
A small tortoise
A small tortoise
A small tortoise
A small tortoise
A small tortoise
A small tortoise
A small tortoise
A small tortoise
A small tortoise
A small tortoise
A small tortoise
A small tortoise
A small tortoise
A small tortoise
A small tortoise
A small tortoise
A small tortoise

So fun!

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2014/03/03 10:19:47


Sieg Zeon!

Selling TGG2! 
   
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 Peregrine wrote:
 Jidmah wrote:
- There should be a hard-counters to every type of unit, not just some.


Absolutely not. Hard counters are bad because games that involve them aren't fun. The player whose strategy got hard-countered isn't going to have any fun pulling useless models off the table until the game ends, and the player who brought the counter isn't going to have any fun mindlessly rolling dice as their choice of counter wins the game for them. Having lots of hard counters in the game reduces it to rock/paper/scissors, where all that matters is who brought the right hard counter. Even if you're theoretically winning a perfect 50% of your games an equally perfect 100% of them will be fun-destroying massacres. You might as well just play "flip a coin to see who wins" and then spend a couple hours pushing models around the table and making gun noises.


Did you actually read my post, or just jump to conclusions after reading that sentence? Considering how your post isn't remotely about what I wrote, I'm guessing second. You don't create hard-counters to strategies. You create hard-counters to units.

A helldrake right now is a hard-counter to a strategy, basically everything from a marine codex not involving TDA or metal bawkses. Due to 5++, IWND, four hull points and AV12 it is way too durable for a hard-counter, since even dedicated anti-air units can't reliable take it down. A helldrake done as I described in my post would be down to AV10 and three hull points - because a hard counter is not supposed to be good against anything besides its target. Most infantry still struggles to hurt it due to being a flyer and 5++, however, storm ravens/talons (all-round units) have a good chance of killing it and anti-air tanks (hard counter) can easily take it out.

So, in order to reliably baleflame marines, you need anti-air capability of your own and something to take out light vehicles in the backfield, suddenly turning your mono-build into an army made out of at least three elements supporting each other, on top of the obligatory troops and HQ. Or you could rely on all-round units to be able to handle everything well and rely on your generalship to keep them away from their respective hard-counters.

Also note that WH40k already contains such a hard-counters, most of them are just done very badly. Melta hard-counter vehicles, plasma hard-counters terminators, purifiers hard-counter assault hordes, helldrakes hard-counter MEQ, SitW hard-counters psychers, etc. It wouldn't be exactly something new

7 Ork facts people always get wrong:
Ragnar did not win against Thrakka, but suffered two crushing defeats within a few days of each other.
A lasgun is powerful enough to sever an ork's appendage or head in a single, well aimed shot.
Orks meks have a better understanding of electrics and mechanics than most Tech Priests.
Orks actually do not think that purple makes them harder to see. The joke was made canon by Alex Stewart's Caphias Cain books.
Gharkull Blackfang did not even come close to killing the emperor.
Orks can be corrupted by chaos, but few of them have any interest in what chaos offers.
Orks do not have the power of believe. 
   
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Games Workshop needs to hire IceFrog.
   
 
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