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What I don't like about the idea that the game is poorly worded to encourage "forging a narrative" is the rules don't seem, to me, to promote a narrative or cinematic style of play. To throw out a random odd example, why do my models in each unit have to stay within 2" of each other? Why can't Brother Redshirticus engage in a heroic rearguard action to try and take as many of the oncoming gaunts as possible before being overwhelmed, buying his squad time to retreat to a new firing position? One of the things I find really perverse about 6th edition is it has a high level of complexity while not achieving a high level of fidelity - the games feel really abstract even as they bog down in convoluted rules.

There's also a distinct lack of rules that have narrative hooks or encourage narrative play. People have touched on it in this thread, but the entire "forge a narrative" in 6th edition seems to consist of making up explanations for the game events after the fact (have you ever seen a GW shop employee run a demo game for some kids? like that). Look Out, Sir! is an interesting case, maybe? The first time I met it, it was a strategy card (from Dark Vengeance in 2nd ed?) that you could play and basically a trooper would take a hit for an officer. That's evocative. An entire squad of space marines jumping in front of Marneus Calgar and getting blown to pieces one after the other isn't narrative, it's just stupid. 6th edition doesn't promote narrative play at all, it just uses it as an excuse to try and paper over its flaws.

But hey guys, did you know this thread was originally about point handicaps to achieve balance, not whether balance was good or not?

I actually think this is a really interesting question. I gave up on 6th edition soon after getting into it and landed in the loving-but-firm embrace of Warmachine. The thing is, while Warmachine doesn't have the same rules issues as 40k, it does have issues with certain units being stronger than others. That's seen as obviously bad in a system that puts such a premium on balance, and the question becomes - how do you fix this? The original question suggested point handicaps for different factions based on their win rate, but as pointed out by koooaei way back on page 2, that actually forces everyone to run whatever silly overpowered combo they have access to, because otherwise you're getting handicapped for a level of power you're not using. It actually exacerbates the internal army balance problems by making the regular options even weaker, and one of the reasons good balance is desirable is it broadens the variety of units that you can run.

So what to do? If it was a computer game then as the designer you'd probably tweak the units somehow to pull the outliers from both directions closer to the middle. If you're a tabletop game company, you can't just magically change everyone's unit stats in the books - or can you? GW has their digital codices now and Warmachine has an app with all the stats of all the models in it (and all the rules, though piecemeal) that you can even use to track your army list and its models' health. Those can be updated whenever needed. I'm not sure how many wargamers are in the position that they couldn't get a required-for-gameplay app if they wanted to. I'm sure some would have vociferous objections! (and you do run into issues if you don't have a backup - e.g. you turn up for a game and whoops your opponent didn't get a chance to charge their phone today and it won't last out the game).

But if that's not an option, what do you do? I think there are a couple of general cases of in-army imbalance. One is that a unit can just be too strong or too weak for its point cost. I think most people agree tactical marines are in that position? The other case is where a unit isn't too strong on its own or in general, but it synergises powerfully with certain other units. This tends to cause Death Star units.

What I'm finding appealing is the idea of just adjusting the point costs of units. A game developer who wanted to could release, say, an adjusted list of unit point costs and it would be quite easy to download the cost sheet and pencil in the new costs. It's relatively easy to check your opponent's list before the game to make sure they have their costs right - much easier than actually FAQing a model's rules. You could probably fix the vast majority of a miniature game's internal balance problems, albeit not always in the optimal way, via simple adjustments to the point costs of units, and I think the cost to that would be minimal (you could even have a regular release schedule, say quarterly or half-yearly? even yearly, so it was easier for players to keep track of the changes).

A tactic that Privateer uses that can work well and that GW could emulate is to release other units that boost the power of weaker units. For instance, a lot of heavy infantry units were seen as rather weak. To address that, Privateer released some officer attachments for those units that you can add that boost the power of the unit. Straightforwards, doesn't require rules revisions, the company gets to sell a model, everyone gets new tactical possibilities, it's great. Except it doesn't fix the problem that the original unit is still poor without the added officer and it adds to the complexity of the game (and excess complexity is a huge problem in Warmachine and in 40k, though in 40k's case most of it is in the rules I think rather than the model variety).

Another possibility could be to just patch some models' rules in errata or FAQs. The advantage of this is you can do literally anything. Privateer hates doing this but they have had to do it before with certain spectacularly overpowered models. The problem is this can be quite awkward for the players. Nobody wants to be in the middle of a game and, hey, didn't they change her ability? I don't think so, why? Let's spend ten minutes trying to find, download and reference some document. Maybe this could be mitigated by a regular, infrequent release cycle. They could also be released in publications like White Dwarf (or whatever it's called now) as well as offered for free on the website. They could even have custom stickers in the publication to put on your old unit info over the old part.

Another consideration is that someone who's not a developer of these games could also do this. Adjusted points costs are probably the simplest thing that can be done and feel the least house-ruley. It would be pretty easy to conform to them for an event. On the other hand, they don't fix certain units (unless you jack their price way up and thus make them useless out of their specific overpowered probably-deathstar niche).

Do you like any of these ideas? How have they worked for you in the past? Do you find them too inconvenient? Can the inconvenience be mitigated sufficiently? Would you be willing to play a game or tournament with adjustments to the points costs of specific units?

A lot of awesome ideas, exalted.

Something to get around the whole issue of updating paper books vs people stealing the rules would be putting a code or something inside to allow registering your codex online. From their webpage, you can then simply download replacement pages for all codices you have registered, so you can print them out and put them in your book. E-codices would simply update automatically. If you do this regularly, say every three month or after each codex release and not just balance stuff, but sometimes add new relics or (non-model) options, people would look forward to it, waiting for new changes. If they release a change log along with it, people intentionally skipping nerfs to their uber-unit would also be easily caught. Since you need an account to order from GW anyways, it also wouldn't be that much infrastructure to add for them.

 HiveFleetPlastic wrote:

Spoiler:

What I don't like about the idea that the game is poorly worded to encourage "forging a narrative" is the rules don't seem, to me, to promote a narrative or cinematic style of play. To throw out a random odd example, why do my models in each unit have to stay within 2" of each other? Why can't Brother Redshirticus engage in a heroic rearguard action to try and take as many of the oncoming gaunts as possible before being overwhelmed, buying his squad time to retreat to a new firing position? One of the things I find really perverse about 6th edition is it has a high level of complexity while not achieving a high level of fidelity - the games feel really abstract even as they bog down in convoluted rules.

There's also a distinct lack of rules that have narrative hooks or encourage narrative play. People have touched on it in this thread, but the entire "forge a narrative" in 6th edition seems to consist of making up explanations for the game events after the fact (have you ever seen a GW shop employee run a demo game for some kids? like that). Look Out, Sir! is an interesting case, maybe? The first time I met it, it was a strategy card (from Dark Vengeance in 2nd ed?) that you could play and basically a trooper would take a hit for an officer. That's evocative. An entire squad of space marines jumping in front of Marneus Calgar and getting blown to pieces one after the other isn't narrative, it's just stupid. 6th edition doesn't promote narrative play at all, it just uses it as an excuse to try and paper over its flaws.

But hey guys, did you know this thread was originally about point handicaps to achieve balance, not whether balance was good or not?

I actually think this is a really interesting question. I gave up on 6th edition soon after getting into it and landed in the loving-but-firm embrace of Warmachine. The thing is, while Warmachine doesn't have the same rules issues as 40k, it does have issues with certain units being stronger than others. That's seen as obviously bad in a system that puts such a premium on balance, and the question becomes - how do you fix this? The original question suggested point handicaps for different factions based on their win rate, but as pointed out by koooaei way back on page 2, that actually forces everyone to run whatever silly overpowered combo they have access to, because otherwise you're getting handicapped for a level of power you're not using. It actually exacerbates the internal army balance problems by making the regular options even weaker, and one of the reasons good balance is desirable is it broadens the variety of units that you can run.

So what to do? If it was a computer game then as the designer you'd probably tweak the units somehow to pull the outliers from both directions closer to the middle. If you're a tabletop game company, you can't just magically change everyone's unit stats in the books - or can you? GW has their digital codices now and Warmachine has an app with all the stats of all the models in it (and all the rules, though piecemeal) that you can even use to track your army list and its models' health. Those can be updated whenever needed. I'm not sure how many wargamers are in the position that they couldn't get a required-for-gameplay app if they wanted to. I'm sure some would have vociferous objections! (and you do run into issues if you don't have a backup - e.g. you turn up for a game and whoops your opponent didn't get a chance to charge their phone today and it won't last out the game).

But if that's not an option, what do you do? I think there are a couple of general cases of in-army imbalance. One is that a unit can just be too strong or too weak for its point cost. I think most people agree tactical marines are in that position? The other case is where a unit isn't too strong on its own or in general, but it synergises powerfully with certain other units. This tends to cause Death Star units.

What I'm finding appealing is the idea of just adjusting the point costs of units. A game developer who wanted to could release, say, an adjusted list of unit point costs and it would be quite easy to download the cost sheet and pencil in the new costs. It's relatively easy to check your opponent's list before the game to make sure they have their costs right - much easier than actually FAQing a model's rules. You could probably fix the vast majority of a miniature game's internal balance problems, albeit not always in the optimal way, via simple adjustments to the point costs of units, and I think the cost to that would be minimal (you could even have a regular release schedule, say quarterly or half-yearly? even yearly, so it was easier for players to keep track of the changes).

A tactic that Privateer uses that can work well and that GW could emulate is to release other units that boost the power of weaker units. For instance, a lot of heavy infantry units were seen as rather weak. To address that, Privateer released some officer attachments for those units that you can add that boost the power of the unit. Straightforwards, doesn't require rules revisions, the company gets to sell a model, everyone gets new tactical possibilities, it's great. Except it doesn't fix the problem that the original unit is still poor without the added officer and it adds to the complexity of the game (and excess complexity is a huge problem in Warmachine and in 40k, though in 40k's case most of it is in the rules I think rather than the model variety).

Another possibility could be to just patch some models' rules in errata or FAQs. The advantage of this is you can do literally anything. Privateer hates doing this but they have had to do it before with certain spectacularly overpowered models. The problem is this can be quite awkward for the players. Nobody wants to be in the middle of a game and, hey, didn't they change her ability? I don't think so, why? Let's spend ten minutes trying to find, download and reference some document. Maybe this could be mitigated by a regular, infrequent release cycle. They could also be released in publications like White Dwarf (or whatever it's called now) as well as offered for free on the website. They could even have custom stickers in the publication to put on your old unit info over the old part.

Another consideration is that someone who's not a developer of these games could also do this. Adjusted points costs are probably the simplest thing that can be done and feel the least house-ruley. It would be pretty easy to conform to them for an event. On the other hand, they don't fix certain units (unless you jack their price way up and thus make them useless out of their specific overpowered probably-deathstar niche).

Do you like any of these ideas? How have they worked for you in the past? Do you find them too inconvenient? Can the inconvenience be mitigated sufficiently? Would you be willing to play a game or tournament with adjustments to the points costs of specific units?

I can remember GW used to add in extra stuff via FAQs/Errata.

In the FAQ for the Warhammer Dark Elf Army book from 2 books ago GW:

1) Gave Black Guard their Eternal Hatred rule (Hatred against everything in all rounds of combat)

2) Increased the Leadership of Cold One Knights to 9

3) Increased the amount of chariots you could take as a single Special choice

4) Increased the Cauldron of Bloods range

5) Allowed Assassin's to deploy as scouts

6) Made Hydra apprentices movement match that of the Hydra

7) Added wargear options for the Beastmaster

8) Gave Executioners heavy armour so they were more worth their points and matched the model

9) Points decrease on Warriors

10) Some rule clarifications such as stating that Wicth Elves kept Hatred despite being immune to psychology etc.

And they did all this by working with members of Druchii.net to test ideas and find out what members of the community felt wasn't working or needed clarification.

Such a different time...

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
I can remember GW used to add in extra stuff via FAQs/Errata.

In the FAQ for the Warhammer Dark Elf Army book from 2 books ago GW:

1) Gave Black Guard their Eternal Hatred rule (Hatred against everything in all rounds of combat)

2) Increased the Leadership of Cold One Knights to 9

3) Increased the amount of chariots you could take as a single Special choice

4) Increased the Cauldron of Bloods range

5) Allowed Assassin's to deploy as scouts

6) Made Hydra apprentices movement match that of the Hydra

7) Added wargear options for the Beastmaster

8) Gave Executioners heavy armour so they were more worth their points and matched the model

9) Points decrease on Warriors

10) Some rule clarifications such as stating that Wicth Elves kept Hatred despite being immune to psychology etc.

And they did all this by working with members of Druchii.net to test ideas and find out what members of the community felt wasn't working or needed clarification.

Such a different time...

Make sure you're sitting down for this....

But those changes were made in conjunction with Druchii.net. Yes, GW co-operating with the internet in how to fix an army book. This really happened.

EDIT: I see you put that in the OP... Got ahead of myself.

It's a shame GW don't try to update their stuff like that anymore. Here's a Blizzard reps post from today regarding balance in Starcraft 2, with some proposed fixes up for discussion based largely on the overall play in certain matchups, not the basic unit level effectiveness which is already very good. Then they get put onto a test map for players to try before going live (or not going live). Keep in mind, the balance is already pretty good, this is just further refining it. Can always strive for better balance, and the game is better because of it.

Thank-you for the kind comments!

 Jidmah wrote:
Something to get around the whole issue of updating paper books vs people stealing the rules would be putting a code or something inside to allow registering your codex online. From their webpage, you can then simply download replacement pages for all codices you have registered, so you can print them out and put them in your book. E-codices would simply update automatically. If you do this regularly, say every three month or after each codex release and not just balance stuff, but sometimes add new relics or (non-model) options, people would look forward to it, waiting for new changes. If they release a change log along with it, people intentionally skipping nerfs to their uber-unit would also be easily caught. Since you need an account to order from GW anyways, it also wouldn't be that much infrastructure to add for them.

That is quite an interesting idea! I really like the idea of redeeming a code from your physical codex to get the automatically-updated digital version as well.

 Accolade wrote:
I think GW would be loathe to move away from paper copies of rules since it supplies their LE market. I think apps that publish rule updates and FAQs would be a tremendous step forward though, and would gladly accept their use.

Well, it's good that someone would! I mainly worry people wouldn't be able to keep track of them, either because they're too hard to remember or because it's hard to make people aware updated rules are available.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
I can remember GW used to add in extra stuff via FAQs/Errata.

In the FAQ for the Warhammer Dark Elf Army book from 2 books ago GW:

...

And they did all this by working with members of Druchii.net to test ideas and find out what members of the community felt wasn't working or needed clarification.

Such a different time...

How did that work out? Did people accept and use the updated rules? Were they easy to remember? Did they know they existed? One of the major difficulties I imagine would occur with changing rules would be remembering changes to other people's armies, since there are so many and knowing what your opponent's stuff does is so important too. But maybe it's not a significant burden, especially compared to the problems it's trying to solve.

 Yonan wrote:
It's a shame GW don't try to update their stuff like that anymore. Here's a Blizzard reps post from today regarding balance in Starcraft 2, with some proposed fixes up for discussion based largely on the overall play in certain matchups, not the basic unit level effectiveness which is already very good. Then they get put onto a test map for players to try before going live (or not going live). Keep in mind, the balance is already pretty good, this is just further refining it. Can always strive for better balance, and the game is better because of it.

Spoiler:

We’d like to share our current thoughts and gather more detailed feedback from you on the current state of HotS balance.

PvT
Following the balance patch and then the Season 2 map update, we’re seeing that this matchup has gotten much better. However, we do believe the matchup is still slightly in favor of Protoss. Whether this is actually the case or another balance adjustment is needed remains in question.

ZvT
This matchup may have shifted slightly in-favor of Zerg recently. While we believe full army vs. army-play is fine, Zerg players seem to be getting to the later stages with an advantage more often than not. We’re investigating whether we can make a slight tweak earlier in the game to keep Zerg economy from scaling too quickly.

We believe ZvP is in a good place with a lot of diversity.

While we don’t currently believe that we need to take action hastily, we’d like to continue discussions with you and prepare well-tested changes, if they’re needed. There’s not a clear problem, and we may not issue a balance patch at this time, but we’re constantly on the lookout for signs that we need to get a balance test map going.

With that said, we have a couple of proposed changes that we could test. Please keep in mind, as always, this is an open discussion and nothing is even close to final. We do not yet have a balance test map.

Option 1:
- Terran infantry level 2 upgrade costs down from 175/175 to 150/150.
- Terran infantry level 3 upgrade costs down from 250/250 to 200/200.

The main thought behind this option is to allow Terran to pressure both Protoss and Zerg a bit more, so that they can keep up in army strength throughout the game. As you can see, saving 25/25 per upgrade at level 2 isn’t huge, but because it affects the core Terran army, we believe it will be fairly big in-game.

Option 2:
- Remove the transformation servos upgrade.
- Allow Hellions to transform to Hellbats when Hellbats are enabled with the armory.

This option addresses the concern that PvT is trending better than we expected, and ZvT worse than expected. At this point, we’re fairly certain that Protoss isn’t struggling against Terran (which runs contrary to pro feedback we’ve been receiving), but we’re also receiving pro feedback on ZvT that indicates we might want to have a bigger change lined up.

We saw the strength of not having this upgrade for the transform in the early HotS beta. However, since then, Hellbats have had their damage reduced and require the blue flame upgrade to be at their max strength. The main cool factor of reverting this upgrade is: being able to save the initial Hellions that players use to harass vs. not being able to do so will have a huge impact on the rest of the game. This means that players who are capable of microing well will be rewarded heavily.

Again, we want to hear what you think as we explore the possibilities. Thank you very much for your feedback.

It's definitely very interesting. A lot of game developers are pretty open with discussing the mechanics these days. GW does supposedly have those columns now and then that discuss design a little bit, even if people don't always like what they have to say!

I don't know. The state of 40k sort of confuses me because they've made great rulesets before, like the Lord of the Rings, Epic and whatever else, so apparently they do have the ability to do it well. Just for some reason they don't!

 HiveFleetPlastic wrote:

How did that work out? Did people accept and use the updated rules? Were they easy to remember? Did they know they existed? One of the major difficulties I imagine would occur with changing rules would be remembering changes to other people's armies, since there are so many and knowing what your opponent's stuff does is so important too. But maybe it's not a significant burden, especially compared to the problems it's trying to solve

It was a print out from the website which could be cut and pasted into the army book in the right places.

 HiveFleetPlastic wrote:
(...)

Great stuff, exalted. You gave me a lot of things to think about.

 Yonan wrote:
It's a shame GW don't try to update their stuff like that anymore. Here's a Blizzard reps post from today regarding balance in Starcraft 2, with some proposed fixes up for discussion based largely on the overall play in certain matchups, not the basic unit level effectiveness which is already very good. Then they get put onto a test map for players to try before going live (or not going live). Keep in mind, the balance is already pretty good, this is just further refining it. Can always strive for better balance, and the game is better because of it.

Spoiler:

We’d like to share our current thoughts and gather more detailed feedback from you on the current state of HotS balance.

PvT
Following the balance patch and then the Season 2 map update, we’re seeing that this matchup has gotten much better. However, we do believe the matchup is still slightly in favor of Protoss. Whether this is actually the case or another balance adjustment is needed remains in question.

ZvT
This matchup may have shifted slightly in-favor of Zerg recently. While we believe full army vs. army-play is fine, Zerg players seem to be getting to the later stages with an advantage more often than not. We’re investigating whether we can make a slight tweak earlier in the game to keep Zerg economy from scaling too quickly.

We believe ZvP is in a good place with a lot of diversity.

While we don’t currently believe that we need to take action hastily, we’d like to continue discussions with you and prepare well-tested changes, if they’re needed. There’s not a clear problem, and we may not issue a balance patch at this time, but we’re constantly on the lookout for signs that we need to get a balance test map going.

With that said, we have a couple of proposed changes that we could test. Please keep in mind, as always, this is an open discussion and nothing is even close to final. We do not yet have a balance test map.

Option 1:
- Terran infantry level 2 upgrade costs down from 175/175 to 150/150.
- Terran infantry level 3 upgrade costs down from 250/250 to 200/200.

The main thought behind this option is to allow Terran to pressure both Protoss and Zerg a bit more, so that they can keep up in army strength throughout the game. As you can see, saving 25/25 per upgrade at level 2 isn’t huge, but because it affects the core Terran army, we believe it will be fairly big in-game.

Option 2:
- Remove the transformation servos upgrade.
- Allow Hellions to transform to Hellbats when Hellbats are enabled with the armory.

This option addresses the concern that PvT is trending better than we expected, and ZvT worse than expected. At this point, we’re fairly certain that Protoss isn’t struggling against Terran (which runs contrary to pro feedback we’ve been receiving), but we’re also receiving pro feedback on ZvT that indicates we might want to have a bigger change lined up.

We saw the strength of not having this upgrade for the transform in the early HotS beta. However, since then, Hellbats have had their damage reduced and require the blue flame upgrade to be at their max strength. The main cool factor of reverting this upgrade is: being able to save the initial Hellions that players use to harass vs. not being able to do so will have a huge impact on the rest of the game. This means that players who are capable of microing well will be rewarded heavily.

Again, we want to hear what you think as we explore the possibilities. Thank you very much for your feedback.

Wow. I am crying in happyness at the level of professionalism and commitmentt this letter shows. That´s the way things should be done.

Perhaps one day GW will go bankrupt and a company such as this one will get the rights on 40k. Or perhaps one day GW will care this hard about quality and customer feedback. That would be amazing.

 HiveFleetPlastic wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
I can remember GW used to add in extra stuff via FAQs/Errata.

In the FAQ for the Warhammer Dark Elf Army book from 2 books ago GW:

...

And they did all this by working with members of Druchii.net to test ideas and find out what members of the community felt wasn't working or needed clarification.

Such a different time...

How did that work out? Did people accept and use the updated rules? Were they easy to remember? Did they know they existed? One of the major difficulties I imagine would occur with changing rules would be remembering changes to other people's armies, since there are so many and knowing what your opponent's stuff does is so important too. But maybe it's not a significant burden, especially compared to the problems it's trying to solve.

GW eventually updated the army book (you could tell them apart as the updated one had a red border around the cover.) and these changes were quite pubic as they were also published in White Dwarf. This was done around 12-13 years ago when WD still meant something.

Well, Blizzard has been balancing games for decades now, that kind of professionalism is expected from them, and one reason for their games (Warcraft, World of Warcraft, Diablo) selling so exceptionally well.
But they aren't exactly alone. Check the homepages of League of Legends(MOBA/Riot Games), Dota2(MOBA/Valve), Magic the Gathering(TCG/Wizards of the Coast), Payday (Coop-Shooter/Overkill Software) or The Dark Eye (P&P/Ulisses Games). You'll find posts like the one above everywhere, and these are only the games I actually play! Game developers caring for their games, fine tuning them, asking their gamers for opinions and sharing their thoughts on why they did what have become the standard. GW and a huge chunk of their customerbase have failed to realise this.

GW is a sub-standard gaming company, no amount of awesome models and forged narratives makes that fact go away. Their customers are frustrated with their third-rate product, and rightfully so.

 Jidmah wrote:
GW is a sub-standard gaming company, no amount of awesome models and forged narratives makes that fact go away. Their customers are frustrated with their third-rate product, and rightfully so.

Lord of the Rings was (and is) an awesome ruleset...probably one of the best I've ever played. I mention this as an example that GW (or at least Rick Priestly) ARE capable of producing first-rate, well-balanced gaming systems.

But nobody plays it....they must be playing 40k for some reason.

 jasper76 wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
GW is a sub-standard gaming company, no amount of awesome models and forged narratives makes that fact go away. Their customers are frustrated with their third-rate product, and rightfully so.

Lord of the Rings was (and is) an awesome ruleset...probably one of the best I've ever played. I mention this as an example that GW (or at least Rick Priestly) ARE capable of producing first-rate, well-balanced gaming systems.

But nobody plays it....they must be playing 40k for some reason.

Plenty of people still play it and buy it, they just get on with things instead of the endless 40K cycle of debating everything. It might have something to do with Rings being a more or less complete game, so theres no fuss about new broken things.

I don't think GW have the talent to produce a good new system any more. Dreadfleet being the last "new" thing I can think the current lot produced.

Doesn't help that LoTR suffers from various other problems. For starters, they don't advertise like they used to. Secondly, the Hobbit isn't as big as LoTR and is arguably overpriced for what you get. Another factor goes to their appeal being limited. Whilst LoTR is popular, the films that really brought it back into many people's lives that would have never read Tolkien's novels have long since passed from being new. You can't really make as many custom armies either or at least many likely don't find it as appealing. Compare that to a game that gets new releases at least almost every other month in terms of models and rules, tons of dataslates, supplements, multiple new books, and is the most supported by GW endorsed video games (ignoring debatable quality).

Theres a good chance 7th ed will fix this whole thread.

Just GTFO Ratius.

Sorry been away for awhile coming into this late: I always thought competitive 40K was fine its casual 40K that was broken. just my opinion.

I mean, you go to a Adepticon or a Nova type venue with a subpar list or certin armies expect to get stomped or do ehhh. However, when 2 competitive lists go at it, there is no real trump list in my opinion. i was suprised to see some lists getting into the top 25 at at Adepticon.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ratius wrote:
Theres a good chance 7th ed will fix this whole thread.

Just GTFO Ratius.

I highly doubt it, but I'll cross my fingers too.

 StarTrotter wrote:
Doesn't help that LoTR suffers from various other problems. For starters, they don't advertise like they used to. Secondly, the Hobbit isn't as big as LoTR and is arguably overpriced for what you get. Another factor goes to their appeal being limited. Whilst LoTR is popular, the films that really brought it back into many people's lives that would have never read Tolkien's novels have long since passed from being new. You can't really make as many custom armies either or at least many likely don't find it as appealing. Compare that to a game that gets new releases at least almost every other month in terms of models and rules, tons of dataslates, supplements, multiple new books, and is the most supported by GW endorsed video games (ignoring debatable quality).

I agree with everything you say here.

My main point was that its clear from LOTR that GW is (or maybe was) indeed capable of producing a well-balanced-yet-still-fun-as-hell ruleset.

Maybe it was all just Rick Priestly all along...

Or maybe they just put a lot more effort in it because the owner of the IP they paid so much for would kick the living daylight out of them if they screwed it up.

There is always one table playing LOTR at one of my GW stores, so there are players around to play it. However, the LOTR doesn't really provide something unique at first glance, it's just one of many. Before I'd start LOTR, I'd rather move towards Warmachine/hordes, because those warjacks and casters look a bit more badass than the LOTR minis.

I wouldn't quite say that their support of the IP is that great. At least in my shop, or the ones near me, they either basically didn't exist or were crammed into a corner in a small selection of units. Along with that, they haven't really done much to support the Hobbit nor have they really tried advertising again. As per me, I've never once seen a LotR game at a store. The only exception was when I was a kid and LotR was still the thing and only because my dad purchased it to paint and play a few games here and there.

 Jidmah wrote:
Well, Blizzard has been balancing games for decades now, that kind of professionalism is expected from them, and one reason for their games (Warcraft, World of Warcraft, Diablo) selling so exceptionally well.
But they aren't exactly alone. Check the homepages of League of Legends(MOBA/Riot Games), Dota2(MOBA/Valve), Magic the Gathering(TCG/Wizards of the Coast), Payday (Coop-Shooter/Overkill Software) or The Dark Eye (P&P/Ulisses Games). You'll find posts like the one above everywhere, and these are only the games I actually play! Game developers caring for their games, fine tuning them, asking their gamers for opinions and sharing their thoughts on why they did what have become the standard. GW and a huge chunk of their customerbase have failed to realise this.

GW is a sub-standard gaming company, no amount of awesome models and forged narratives makes that fact go away. Their customers are frustrated with their third-rate product, and rightfully so.

You say that but there is far more threads whining about balance in WoW, whining about blizzard as a money grabbing company, whine whine whine than there is about 40k, Check any of the facebook post comments, mmochap, official forums....

No matter how open Blizzard are about there product, how many public forums for conversation are provided, no matter how many adjustments, no matter how hard they work on upgrades they still invite a crap ton of hate.

 Nem wrote:


You say that but there is far more threads whining about balance in WoW, whining about blizzard as a money grabbing company, whine whine whine than there is about 40k, Check any of the facebook post comments, mmochap, official forums....

No matter how open Blizzard are about there product, how many public forums of conversation is provided, no matter how many adjustments, no matter how hard they work on upgrades they still invite a crap ton of hate.

Morton's fork.

Regardless of the quality of their product, at least they have an official forum and attempt to reach out to an unpleasable fanbase, unlike a certain other company we all talk about on here...

Even EA, Satan incarnate as far as companies go in some people's opinion have an official forum.

*nvm*

 Nem wrote:
You say that but there is far more threads whining about balance in WoW, whining about blizzard as a money grabbing company, whine whine whine than there is about 40k, Check any of the facebook post comments, mmochap, official forums....

No matter how open Blizzard are about there product, how many public forums for conversation are provided, no matter how many adjustments, no matter how hard they work on upgrades they still invite a crap ton of hate.

Missed the point by a landslide.

First, of course they have more whiners than in WH40k, considering how the number of players in every single one of their product lines vastly outmatches the WH40k playerbase. The forums of all the other companies I named don't look a lot different by the way.

Second, they still listen to those "whiners". Blizzard has done a lot in World of Warcraft to make it a more enjoyable game since its launch, even if you chose to ignore the dumbing down part. Consolidation of potions and flasks, a wyvern rider in every quest hub, linked auction houses, a PvP system that did not have "lose your job" as minimum requirement to compete, no more 3 hour waits for battlegrounds, dungeon finder, et cetera. I remember times where one one spec per class was playable, times when I could continuously stun-lock a player for almost two minutes, times where some classes outdamaged others by magnitudes, and you only brought them along because they were nice people. Blizzard listened World of Warcraft was a very well balanced game when I left it, I highly doubt it is remotely anywhere near the train-wreck WH40k is right now. They also know when to ignore baseless whining, like they did in that reply about the Protos vs Zerg matchup.

Third, even if the loud minority from the forums were right (they aren't), at least Blizzard is attempting the to change the game for the better and communicates what it is doing and why. Unlike our favorite not-a-gaming-company, which is about to spring a complete new version on its customers with no warning or explanation whatsoever.

TL;DR: Haters gonna hate.