Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Seaward wrote:
Seriously, the examples provided in White Dwarf include five separate enemy factions throwing models on the table with each other. There ain't gak fluffy about that. It's a fluff massacre, if anything.

It says you CAN do that BUT you won't have many friends (basically stating that just because it's legal doesn't mean you should do it).

To put it another way: just because you CAN jump off a bridge into freeway traffic doesn't mean you SHOULD do it. That's what they were saying.

All of their actual examples of what the staff wanted to do were all mono-codex army builds. We haven't really seen any real examples of the staff making up some crazy gak armies to date.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

rigeld2 wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Unbound isn't being sold as a "make up any gak you want" ruleset but instead a ruleset for making armies that match the ones in the books or the lore bits in the codexes. To accomplish what can't be done normally inside the FOC.

When the WD talks bout running a Leman Russ, some demons, a Carnifex, etc (don't remember the entire idiotic example) I'm going to say you're wrong.
It's completely about make up whatever gak you want. Sure, you'll be able to copy the books, but the advertised goal is to use whatever you have,no mTter what codex it's from.

I'm going to disagree as I don't think you really read what they wrote as I talked about with the "can" and "should" thing. Not to mention the examples of Unbound armies they've given that they've been planning having no cross-codex mixing.

Well, i have read this thread from beginning to here, and i have to say, there are some comments attempting to defend GW that are absolutely silly and nonsensical at best, and ignorant or negligent at worst.

1. i love the argument that WAAC and Fluffy are different. Game balance is balance. However they choose to balance (either through points exclusively, availability, extra requirements, so on and so forth) doesn't really matter. the ultimate goal is that with all things created equal, if both armies used their advantages and minimized their disadvantages, the win loss ration should come out to roughly 50/50 or something relatively close. Fluffy is a wonderful way of saying "its ok if i loose, I'm not cheesy like that guy" so it doesn't hurt your feelings when the army you have more money tied up in than your car gets ripped to shreds because you can't compete on game balance alone. i know, i have been there. on both sides.

2. Game balance only helps tournament players is another common piece of garbage i smell in these debates. Game balance helps all players. someone earlier said it best when they said that yeah, WAAC players will min/max their armies to get the best advantage out of their selections, but that doesn't mean that if i don't i should loose 85% of my games. a balance game system shouldn't care about WAAC and fluffy. good is good, balanced is balanced, and crap is crap. Again, i present to you Warmachine, Malifaux, Heavy Gear, hell, even Mechwarrior/Battletech is balanced better than this gak.

3. Well, in the fluff....I love these arguments as well. If you want fluff, read a book. if you want a narrative, put your army men on the table and role play with miniatures, make cool laser sounds while you are at it, i bet that ads to the experience. The sad reality is that fluff is a wonderful thing, and the fluff for 40k is insanely amazing, with incredibly rich stories and wonderful characters, but when i put a commissar on the table, i don't think of ciaphus caine. When i play a space marine captain, i don't think of Uriel Ventris. i think of models, and I'm not interested in how epic something plays out in my mind. i want to play a game and talk about the game afterwards. does that make me TFG, probably, but lets be real with each other, i don't know very many players at all that that talk about the fluff in their games, other than back story. Every player i know might mention tie bits, but it isn't ANYTHING that gets close to giving the "why we fight" speech or providing more atmosphere for the game. if you want that, you really should play the RPG. i think its more along the lines of a product that will give you that experience. Ill put it like this, i have yet to play a game where my opponent or myself set up our armies and began the game with "we are fighting over <somewhere planet 8 Epsilon> because you detected a distress signal and you captain decided..."

4. players should help balance the game. This is the funniest of all comments/arguments. This argument implies that if players don't have a solid rule base, or internal/external balance in the game that they should help to balance the game by making gentlemen's agreements and social contracts and such. That is the absolute worst argument i have ever heard in the defense of GW. It should never be left to gamers to balance the game. Gamers play the game. its our JOB to find the best combinations, the best strategies, the best use of resources and capabilities, the best units to give us the best opportunity to win. Its the GAME DESIGNERS JOB to make that difficult. If there is balance, players should find themselves asking difficult questions while creating their armies like "this has X gun, and its really good, but this unit has X special rule, and that really helps me against infantry. what to choose, what to choose..." In game systems where game balance is preset there shouldn't be one or two easy answers to questions like that. those questions should be difficult to answer because all of the options should provide value to the gamer. That is how game balance works. when all the units have value, players can customize their army in a balanced way to allow them to discover their play style without compromising the integrity of the game because i like to use bikes, or i like grav tanks, or i like big robotech shooty guys. In game systems without balance, that is completely dead. there are definitive builds that are clearly not just stronger, but STUPID stronger than their competition. Balance will never be a 100% thing, its impossible, but dang, when it doesn't happen, then FIX IT. support your product with FAQ's that limit/power level errata/re-cost units to make them balanced. of all the layers of GW fail, this one is by far the worse. When they release an FAQ that pretty much says "we don't know either, roll a D6" thats a wonderful hint that the game your investing thousands of dollars into (and it is thousands now with their newest pricing) is probably not a good game anymore.

5. ill attack this one and give my rant a rest - gentlemen's agreements and the social aspect of the game. I love this argument the most of all the arguments i hear most often to "explain away" GW's absolutely horrible attempt at releasing a game system for the last 2 years. In a game group, gentlemen's agreements won't last. sure, i know I'm going to get like 80 people reply saying how their gaming group has been together for 80 years, and they are the best, and everyone loves rainbows, and how they wear pink ribbons in their hair, and how they like to kiss all the boys....but the reality is this: very few gaming groups can handle this level of restriction to enforce fairness in game play. There are no local 40k players in my area anymore. 10 of them have converted over to Drop Zone Commander, Malifaux, AT88, and of course WarMachine. the people that still own their war hammer armies have put them on a shelf. No one plays. i have trouble finding a game when i want one, and i am normally one of the more chillaxed people in the gaming area. Why is this, well, its because of those gentlemen's agreements, so let me make this make a little sense from my perspective...

a gaming group forms and create a bunch of gentlemen's rules based on what is thought of as cheesy and agrees not to play it. one week, some player shows (player A) up to play a game and while he agreed to social contract of the game and abided by the rules, the army he played is found to be "cheesy". what does the group do? then say they won't play that particular group of models and/or combination of units again to make the game fair and balanced for all.

The next week, someone else (player b) shows up, and they bring something that they thought was fine, until their opponent get his $#17 stuffed in by them. what does his opponents do? do they declare it cheesy by committee?

then the breakdown happens. rules arguments and debates on "in game effectiveness" begin, and the situation begins to break down. player C decides to show up with something that violates the rules, because he doesn't want to loose like player A and player B's opponents did, and now its a 3 way argument as to what is "ok" and what isn't. on top of that, he doesn't think that what he is taking is broken at all, because after all, if i invested 800.00 in my knights formation army i wouldn't want it to be declared banned by committee, because after all, I INVESTED a $#17 TON OF CASH IN IT. i want to play the stuff i buy. thats why i buy it.

Make no mistake, this is a game. players play games to win. if you, mr fluffy beer and pretzel guy, didn't care about winning, then why bother playing? why roll any dice at all? why not just read a book, watch some TV, and go sing to "let it go" in the shower until your hearts content?

Because deep down, you move models on a table top because you WANT TO WIN. you play to WIN. you may not have the best army now for the job, but that isn't your fault, its the games fault. those black templars just aren't as cool as they were in 3rd edition. What are you supposed to do? if they didn't have all those cheesy units i would stand a chance. if only other people think like i do then we could form a group, and we would only play with lollipops and candy canes on our space marines and the world would be a better place for it....until the break down happens again.

Because you play a game to win. Winning is not a cuss word, and this GAK of a game is the ONLY game i have seen that almost WANTS to make players feel guilty about winning, or wanting to win. More to the point, if GW wants to increase the narrative qualities of their game, balance it and make the games closer in outcome. I don't remember any one every regaling me of stories about how their ultra TAUDAR army wiped someone off the table in 2 turns or 3. I remember people telling me epic stories about how the game came down to the wire and how the master crafted bonus on a lightning claw won the game.

EVERYTHING comes back to game balance and rules design.

I don't have a game group because of these simple truths to the game. The largest game group in my area, (within the first few months of 6th edition) broke up and shattered. Arguing over OP units and mechanics, as well as just generally poor rules and terrible writing means that the war hammer 40k group devolved in my area to a bunch of back-biting attack squigs, where the average game took 3+ hours because no one could agree on basic rules, let alone complex interactions.

simple point: Game balance is 100% the responsibility of GW. players have nothing to do with it other than break it from time to time, and its GW's responsibility to fix it when it does break. they have failed at both tasks miserably.

funny i write this as i am getting ready to ship out my ultramarines to go to someone in Tennessee. just 2 more armies to get rid of and this blight is over.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
It says you CAN do that BUT you won't have many friends (basically stating that just because it's legal doesn't mean you should do it).

Which is a cowardly position for them to take, a cop out where they abdicate any responsibility for the gak people are going to pull on the tabletop.

I remember the old days, when Fat Bloke or one of the other staffers would use the WD editorial to make some point about 'the spirit of the game' or why fluffy lists were good, or why it was about having fun rather than winning with a 'beardy' list. Well those days are long gone, and now the WD - the official mouthpiece of the entire GW hobby - is winking at behaviour that they even admit "won’t be very popular with your opponents."

40K is an entry level tabletop game, and attracts many newcomers to the hobby - many of whom are young and will follow the 'rules' like it was holy writ. GW has a responsibility to use that influence to encourage the best of behaviours, not to pander to and wink at the worst.

It even goes againt their own current (or is it now former?) creed. A newcomer, having soaked up the awesomeness of the background, studied his codex and carefully assembled his new Space Marine force, ready to get out there and battle in the name of the Emperor... finds himself faced with...

Space Marine Sternguard Veterans, a Bloodthirster of Khorne, a Tyranid Exocrine, a Tau Riptide Battlesuit and a unit of Eldar Guardians.

Yeah, try forging a fething narrative out of that.

then the breakdown happens. rules arguments and debates on "in game effectiveness" begin, and the situation begins to break down. player C decides to show up with something that violates the rules, because he doesn't want to loose like player A and player B's opponents did, and now its a 3 way argument as to what is "ok" and what isn't. on top of that, he doesn't think that what he is taking is broken at all, because after all, if i invested 800.00 in my knights formation army i wouldn't want it to be declared banned by committee, because after all, I INVESTED a $#17 TON OF CASH IN IT. i want to play the stuff i buy. thats why i buy it.

This is so true. It is as if you played here and described the evolution of gaming here.

remember the old days, when Fat Bloke or one of the other staffers would use the WD editorial to make some point about 'the spirit of the game' or why fluffy lists were good, or why it was about having fun rather than winning with a 'beardy' list.

how can it be more fun.At best you will lose all the time , at worse people will know what your army is and just won't play you , because fun is there for them to play against an army that will lose anyway . It would be a waste of time . Something like that happened to me. I started warmachine and so it happened that my faction didn't have key models sold out our store . So I was losing , but worse I could only make a 35pts game . after 4 months everyone that started with me moved to normal 50pts games and I was stuck at 35. My only option was to play against new people , which there were never many or I could technicly play against my boyfriend and lose everytime . The game started to be fun 7months later , when a random guy gifted me ~100pts of metal cygnar models , while we were away on a tournament in another city. Now I still don't have a stormwall , but I own enough models to make 3 good 50pts armies , and the game is fun. Before that it was not fun at all.

lazarian wrote:

1) Its not a dramatically vast tactical game, but it is complex. It is the most complex commonly played miniature game. Well over a dozen factions with 20+ options each, each option also having upwards to 2 dozen micro options. This is a complex game and were not fixing it. GW gives it their best guess and as a whole it largely pans out. Every option has myriad interactions that make it impossible to balance. Farseers are crap when joined to X, but great when allied to Y for instance.

i disgree. "interactions" is something that doesnt really happen in 40k. you give an example of a farseer with x or y. well, generally speaking, "buffing" units like farseers are far rarer in 40k than you give credit for. They're a lot less prevalent than in games like warmachine which is built around the concept of building combos, and stacking layers of buffs. 40k isnt similar. most units in 40k actually operate rather independently. your devestators dont care if your assault marines are 6" away or 12" away - the assault marines have no impact on how the devestators operate. what you have are variable equipment loadouts for the most part - definately not the same thing.

secondly - 20 factions? yeah, and fair enough. but how many of those are slight variations on a single theme - ie "Space Marines with different bling"? A lot of those armies have identical units, and "common" wargear - bolters, chainswords, powerfists, terminators etc. its not as vast as you claim.

thirdly why is it "impossible"? thats a cop out. its the purpose of playtesting - find the bugs and iron them out.

lazarian wrote:
2) Your ignoring my point on the second point. There are limitless magic cards, almost all of them (95%+) are horrible so there isnt much balance there. With that said my point is more to how basic and simple Magics gameplay is. You only have so many actions in a round and these actions practically write themselves depending on your card draw. 40K has too many moving parts in comparison. Any discussion that reaches for card games or video games ignores the structure that seperates these games. In 40k even something as simple as moving a unit 6.2 inches instead of 6 has a profound impact. Every little facet is in the hands of human elements, few human varieties are needed or useful for many computer or card games.

no i'm not. your claim was you only have so many actions in a round, and 40k offers more. I disagree. units pretty much move, shoot or assault. for a lot of things in the game, they have a very limited list of actions available to them. your ability to interact with the game through the game mechanics isnt as vast as you claim.

lazarian wrote:
3) The 'Illusion of Choice' doesnt really apply here. In my 20+ years of gaming ive seen virtually every unit played constantly. There are vast skill differences and goals from player to player. Those specific choices are used far more often than you think; especially since that variety allows you to tailor lists to different levels of opponents. I take pyovores with my Tyranids and Bloodletters with my Daemons regardless of internet wisdom if my opponent needs a fighting chance or wants a comical game. With all that said can you even point to an era that was ever balanced in 40k? Ive been playing since Rogue Trader and its always been painfully apparent not all armies are created equal. They have never been about competitive choices and they arent starting now. Warmahordes is more balanced but is 'soulless' to me due to lack of modeling opportunities, caster kills being boring and virtually no customization options for units. To me and to many others 40k is a 'hobby' precisely in part due to the chaotic whirlwind it encompasses, far more than a simple 'game'.

i disagree. YMMV, but when i played back in fourth, if someone said "Im a tau player", i didnt need to ask - straight up, i could guess about 75% of the contents of their army list. the "illusion of choice" is an accurate description however, as plenty options are simply not as good as other options. thats a problem. people get punished arbitrarily because they took unit x or codex y. it makes a lot of people bitter. playing down, or tailoring shouldnt have to be the modus operandi to give someone a "fighting chance".

I certainly cant and wont point to an era of perfect balance within 40k - its never been there.

regarding warmachine being soulless due to lack of modelling, i humbly request you google the "gun carriage to airship" conversion a guy did recently. trust me, there is plenty ace modelling and customisation going on within the game.

lazarian wrote:
5) Quality control may not help much in the game they have decided upon. You can create lists incorporating 4-6 different armies. Battle Brothers singlehandedly have made heavyweights out of the most random of unit combinations. Yes they might put the work into it however time and again they are pleading with you to not treat their game as a serious tournament simulator. They have a vision and those wanting things from them they cannot have do a disservice to their person by wasting time trying to tease blood from a very obtuse stone. Being able to join so many units together make it an impossibility to balance points in all honesty. What good is a support unit if its attached to its best case scenario, the second best, or the fifth best on their battle brother army? Markerlights are worthless in a marine force yet cost identical. Farseers do less good attached to howling banshees so forth and so on. Balance could only be truly achieved by making specific army parings cost X points, a complexity far out of the real of having your preteen target market in selecting an army.

rubbish. Quality control would help the game they've decided upon. thats its purpose. thats what quality control does in the real world. open it up to the community. let the broken combos be revealed with the new rules. time and again, they're asking us not to treat the game as a serious tournament simulator? Well, fine, but that misses the point - those same problems crop up in casual games as well. being cynical its a lazy cop out - they cant be bothered to write a proper set of rules, so they pass the mess on to their customers and leave them pick up the pieces. I've commented earlier that im all for house rules etc, but this only works with small groups. beyond this, it fragments the community, and those who pike pick up games and tournaments suffer as a result. personally, i dont see why this should be the case.

to be honest, amusingly i have quite a bit of sympathy for GW and the game they want to push. i respect the fact they have a "vision" they're trying to push. that said, i have no sympathy for the way they're doing it. i find it creates too many problems. "dont take the game too seriously"? Fine, then why am i being charged hundreds of pounds for the rules?

[quote=lazarian
Your comparison and comment about a 'culture of playtesting' is exactly the point. GW is all about forging a narrative and having GM's run games when able, just like Rogue Trader. Privateer Press is trying to be a hybrid E-Sport and has little room for ambiguity, or even creativity in my experience. Both are awesome games, both are vastly different games. Anti GW posts spend far too much time making this mistake over and over and over again.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
It says you CAN do that BUT you won't have many friends (basically stating that just because it's legal doesn't mean you should do it).

This is the problem with forcing players to 'fix' the problem every game, each player has a different idea of how to fix the game. In my experience, the changes that were put forward tended to be in the same vein as GW changes, over corrections for specific factions that negatively impacted other armies and units. Things like "one of each unit type max" to address SM and Eldar spamming specific units which had a huge impact on Tau and Necrons who only had one or two troop choices at that time. Hell, one of the ideas would limit Leman Russes based on their AV 14 without limiting Land Raiders because Land Raiders were transports.

Hell, most of the proposed fixes were to make up for their poor tactics. Trying to sort out that kind of biased crap each game is what led me to take a break in the first place.

You, sir, are my new hero. That sums up my experiences better than I could have said.

 snooggums wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
It says you CAN do that BUT you won't have many friends (basically stating that just because it's legal doesn't mean you should do it).

This is the problem with forcing players to 'fix' the problem every game, each player has a different idea of how to fix the game. In my experience, the changes that were put forward tended to be in the same vein as GW changes, over corrections for specific factions that negatively impacted other armies and units. Things like "one of each unit type max" to address SM and Eldar spamming specific units which had a huge impact on Tau and Necrons who only had one or two troop choices at that time. Hell, one of the ideas would limit Leman Russes based on their AV 14 without limiting Land Raiders because Land Raiders were transports.

Hell, most of the proposed fixes were to make up for their poor tactics. Trying to sort out that kind of biased crap each game is what led me to take a break in the first place.

I don't see Unbound as a means to push fixing the game on the players, I see it as opening more options like other games do. The issue really isn't taking away the FOC, it's a combination of poor balance with points and with a lack of restrictions on key aspects of armies (not limiting Riptides for instance to "1 per detachment" or "one per HQ in your army" or "one per Ethereal in your army"). Taking away FOC doesn't truly break the game anymore than what we have in 6th does, and mixing codexes into single lists isn't automatically result in broken armies (I can actually think of some interesting ideas achieved by mixing armies to represent, say different things in a Mechanicus army. You can truly do a good representation of a lot of little spin off things with Unbound that don't fit into any particular codex. You can also get silly and run an army of Bullgryns with Ogryns supporting them.).

Now, I'm not saying GW's approach of saying "it's legal, just don't be a dick about it" is right, but it certainly isn't endorsing things like people were claiming. I'm not saying people have to support GW, but taking things out of context and then BSing about what that thing is actually saying to make a point wins no brownie points with me. If someone wants to lay the smack down on GW verbally fine, but there is no reason we need to resort to misleading statements or hyperbole to do it. A good argument stands on it's own without such things and that's really all I'm asking for when people verbally beat down GW (or anything, me included): a good argument that supports their position, not a half-assed one that takes short cuts.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 snooggums wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
It says you CAN do that BUT you won't have many friends (basically stating that just because it's legal doesn't mean you should do it).

This is the problem with forcing players to 'fix' the problem every game, each player has a different idea of how to fix the game. In my experience, the changes that were put forward tended to be in the same vein as GW changes, over corrections for specific factions that negatively impacted other armies and units. Things like "one of each unit type max" to address SM and Eldar spamming specific units which had a huge impact on Tau and Necrons who only had one or two troop choices at that time. Hell, one of the ideas would limit Leman Russes based on their AV 14 without limiting Land Raiders because Land Raiders were transports.

Hell, most of the proposed fixes were to make up for their poor tactics. Trying to sort out that kind of biased crap each game is what led me to take a break in the first place.

I don't see Unbound as a means to push fixing the game on the players, I see it as opening more options like other games do. The issue really isn't taking away the FOC, it's a combination of poor balance with points and with a lack of restrictions on key aspects of armies (not limiting Riptides for instance to "1 per detachment" or "one per HQ in your army" or "one per Ethereal in your army"). Taking away FOC doesn't truly break the game anymore than what we have in 6th does, and mixing codexes into single lists isn't automatically result in broken armies (I can actually think of some interesting ideas achieved by mixing armies to represent, say different things in a Mechanicus army. You can truly do a good representation of a lot of little spin off things with Unbound that don't fit into any particular codex. You can also get silly and run an army of Bullgryns with Ogryns supporting them.).

Now, I'm not saying GW's approach of saying "it's legal, just don't be a dick about it" is right, but it certainly isn't endorsing things like people were claiming. I'm not saying people have to support GW, but taking things out of context and then BSing about what that thing is actually saying to make a point wins no brownie points with me. If someone wants to lay the smack down on GW verbally fine, but there is no reason we need to resort to misleading statements or hyperbole to do it. A good argument stands on it's own without such things and that's really all I'm asking for when people verbally beat down GW (or anything, me included): a good argument that supports their position, not a half-assed one that takes short cuts.

The pushing of balance to the players existed before Unbound by intentionally avoiding attempts to balance the game, just like rolling off when there is a disagreement because they can't be bothered to write clear rules that they still sell at a fairly high cost.

I can agree with that.

All arguments of balance aside, GW gas absolutely no clue about how to make good game design.

There is no reason that new codexes should be updated with content that is so overpowered that the other, older codexes for other armies that exist alongside them should be immediately downgraded toa weaker status until they themselves are re-released.

Having to tell a new player who likes Space Wolves that they will have to grin and bear fielding a sub-par army until they get a codex rewrite is the absolute dumbest, brain-hemmoraging inducing pile of horse crap possible for a game.

Codexes or army books should never have to be updated as often as they are on 40K. It seems like GW is obsessed with constantly tweaking or changing the abilities or each army entry in codexes just because they have nothing better to do.

But that's also true of the different editions. Each edition should be polishing the flaws of the last one. In an ideal world -that is, if they had a selection of well-designed and writted codexes in one addition, and the next edition changes something like 6th did with vehicles having hull points- than in theory it should be fast and easy to update a new printing of each codex by just rewording that section of the vehicle stats, maybe with slight modification of the points values if the new types of stats make them more or less effective.

But basic troop units should never have to be tweaked much, if at all, over the course of 5 straight editions.

But that's what you get when a game design team is replaced by a marketing team for a game like this.

Over the years the stats and rules for 40K has just become a shell game to keep people buying new stuff, which from a sales perspective is great but is the worst thing possible for game stability.

I don't think GW has a marketting team to push things, but arguing that it's the sales team or the upper management that's got their fingers in the pie is all semantics. Regardless it's clear that there is a major issue that someone is responsible for this mess, and I have a feeling it's someone pushing the design team to change things to push products.

There is a clear issue with that thinking that we need to be pushed to purchase things by making them good, when we'd continue buying EVERYTHING is it was ALL good. When a game has no real "bad" options there is no reason to change things to improve sales.

Of course it's just my conjecture because I don't work for the dev team and I don't know GW's internal politics but one thing is for sure: something is clearly wrong and needs to be addressed or it's only going to get worse.

This seems like one of those "just kidding" threads. I mean obviously you can't think that the designers of a game shouldn't have to think on balance... right? 40K is swiftly becoming the silliest game to play.

It takes forever to learn, there are silly combinations and the game is seemingly becoming LESS balanced which is crazy. GW doesn't care about balance because they rely on us to foolishly continue pouring money into the hobby. Don't fall into the trap of hating a player who builds broken legal lists... Hate the game that allows / encourages it.

Anyone who doesn't see the fluff-rape as anything other than a shady attempt at squeezing more cash out of its customers is just fooling themselves. If GW wanted Unbound to still have any meaning relating to the background they could have easily maintained the restrictions along allied factions at the very least, even while still breaking the FOC. For them to say you 'might not be popular' running a list made entirely legal BY THEM is the biggest pile of horse droppings one can imagine. I grow so sick of the thought police trying to spin what GW 'really intends' for their game, and it's up to the players to 'play nice'.

No, it is to bolster their short term profit. Period.

 Matt1785 wrote:
This seems like one of those "just kidding" threads. I mean obviously you can't think that the designers of a game shouldn't have to think on balance... right? 40K is swiftly becoming the silliest game to play.

It takes forever to learn, there are silly combinations and the game is seemingly becoming LESS balanced which is crazy. GW doesn't care about balance because they rely on us to foolishly continue pouring money into the hobby. Don't fall into the trap of hating a player who builds broken legal lists... Hate the game that allows / encourages it.

Even if the designers do think of balance they're beholden to the management who are beholden to stockholders.

And that's the problem. When management makes short term decisions to please stockholders the products pretty much always suffer. Good products are ultimately rewarded by the customers and will please the management and stockholders but when they lose sight of that (or just don't understand that) the customers ultimately suffer.

While fans aren't always the ones a company should be trying to market towards and draw in, much less pander to, that doesn't mean that ignoring the fans is good either. Fans are the thing that keep franchises alive, when they're low and bring new blood in. Completely shunning the fans is just as bad for a franchise as bending over backwards to their every whim and desire.

 lazarian wrote:

Spoiler:

Deadnight wrote:

 lazarian wrote:
The difficulty in this or any game balance discussion stems from the fact this game is rather complex as games go.

its complex, but dont mistake complexity for depth. 40k is not a very deep game.

 lazarian wrote:

CCG's and Video games have an exceedingly small amount of interactions you can do in comparison to tabletop games. Just think for a moment of the almost limitless variances of people and actions in tabletop games. Video games also dont have the personal attachment of individual units, you do not paint and model things so when patch 1.6 comes out it is irelevant if its adjusted slightly. Video games also have many times more runs played of it. I play 1-4 games of 40k a week, usually 1. A night of Starcraft may see you play many more, furthermore everything about the game is controlled and sculpted. Your no going to move things around just to have fun and get jumped by confusion.

Card games like Magic have only a handful of turn and only a handful of actions. You can only play 1-3 cards a turn typically (limited by drawing and available resources). Quite simply its a completely different animal than 40k which allows you to field dozens of units in altogether different combinations. Again think of the limitless ways you can screw up your turn in 40k, especially if your just enjoying it. Even battle reports by tourney players talk about how many mistakes they made, or seeing a mistake their opponent didnt capitalize on.

rubbish. there are thousands of magic the gathering cards. there are a vast amount of ways they interact. saying you only play 1-3 cards a turn is short sighted - units in 40k move/shoot/assault, and have six turns. 40k is not that complex. an assault squad will not function any differently if it is beside a tactical squad than a devestator squad. put two different magic cards together and you have a totally different combo than two other cards. same with warmachine.

 lazarian wrote:

40k simply has more stuff than even other miniature games. Every unit of consequence has a wide latitude of options. Warmahordes has a very easy time in a vacuum for balance since all the characters and main models have no options, simply take X. You cannot stress how easy it is relatively to balance if your chapter master is always a certain way. Those other options, no matter how aweful are taken by a person and seen as viable to someone, someone who may be one of the posters on a forum decrying something. Warmahordes is boring to me without this customization, its a great game, just not a great hobby like 40k
.

40k might have more stuff, but a lot of it isnt worth taking. Not because it cant be balanced, but because GW chooses not to. they have great designers. its just the corporate culture within gw prevents them showing their brilliance. outside of gw, andy chamers, allesio et al have done really fine work. 40k essentially doesnt have choice, it has the illusion of choice.

warmachine might lose out in the lack of customisation, but in many ways it offers far more "valid" choices in game than 40k. a different caster with the same set of units will play radically different to other casters with the same units. warmachine has a huge amount of complexity. fine, you dont have the illusory option of swapping pikes for swords, or a dozen other less than ideal choices, but you have hundreds of warcasters, warlocks, spells and feats. everything stacks. there is a huge amount of complexity in this game. boring? your mileage varies bud. when i played 40k, third ed boiled down to rhino rush, or shoot the rhino rush. fourth was skimmerspam and 6man las/plas. fifth was armourhammer. sixth was flyers and gunlines.

 lazarian wrote:

Look at the endgame tourney scene of 40k. Over half of the armies are currently involved in it, probably more with 7th. Include all the rules like dataslates and almost all armies are in the game. It may be a mess, but with allies your always guaranteed to see 6+ codexes at top tables. There are stronger codexes, however they can and always do seem to be beat when it comes down to it.
.

what is the list variety though? often times its taudar with inquisitors. having six codices in play at the top tables isnt indicative of variety when of those six codices, only a handful of builds are present.

 lazarian wrote:

The game is a random pile, with far to many variable to be balanced. As soon as you have unit interactions there is absolutely no way to determine how much stuff costs. You can shave or add points for some things however this isnt the game were getting. Were getting a game with 20+ units all which have hundreds of different combinations when you compare unit amount, wargear and transport options. You will make a wall of mistakes in making your list, or you will white wash your woefully unprepared opponent.

why not? Quality control. playtesting. its as simple as that. GW simply chooses not to playtest. i had friends back home that were part of the playtesting crowd during fourth and fifth ed. one guy leaked the fifth ed stuff, and GW went ape, and closed down all external playtesting, preferring to do it in house. that said, even when they did playtest, they didnt listen. i remember my buddies telling me how back in the day, with the fourth ed SM codex (the assault cannon spam one) they indicated to GW how assault cannons were OTT. their suggestions were assault 4, or assault 3 rending. not both. what did GW do? they ignored them.

No, GW dont have a playtesting culture. they're not interested in it. Other companies? sure. Look at privateer press. free worldwide beta test of the then "new" mk2 rules set they were developing, with a forum and site built up to receive commends and playtesting information. It allowed them to develop, and balance the game, and catch out any number of loose ends. it did a lot of good for the game, and really built up a lot of good will amongst its playerbase (we felt as though we were a part of something, we were actively contributing). Imagine this scenario with GW. free worldwide beta test. catch all the bugs. It could do a lot of good, but they're simply not interested in either (a) playtesting, or (b) listening to their consumers.

1) Its not a dramatically vast tactical game, but it is complex. It is the most complex commonly played miniature game. Well over a dozen factions with 20+ options each, each option also having upwards to 2 dozen micro options. This is a complex game and were not fixing it. GW gives it their best guess and as a whole it largely pans out. Every option has myriad interactions that make it impossible to balance. Farseers are crap when joined to X, but great when allied to Y for instance.

2) Your ignoring my point on the second point. There are limitless magic cards, almost all of them (95%+) are horrible so there isnt much balance there. With that said my point is more to how basic and simple Magics gameplay is. You only have so many actions in a round and these actions practically write themselves depending on your card draw. 40K has too many moving parts in comparison. Any discussion that reaches for card games or video games ignores the structure that seperates these games. In 40k even something as simple as moving a unit 6.2 inches instead of 6 has a profound impact. Every little facet is in the hands of human elements, few human varieties are needed or useful for many computer or card games.

3) The 'Illusion of Choice' doesnt really apply here. In my 20+ years of gaming ive seen virtually every unit played constantly. There are vast skill differences and goals from player to player. Those specific choices are used far more often than you think; especially since that variety allows you to tailor lists to different levels of opponents. I take pyovores with my Tyranids and Bloodletters with my Daemons regardless of internet wisdom if my opponent needs a fighting chance or wants a comical game. With all that said can you even point to an era that was ever balanced in 40k? Ive been playing since Rogue Trader and its always been painfully apparent not all armies are created equal. They have never been about competitive choices and they arent starting now. Warmahordes is more balanced but is 'soulless' to me due to lack of modeling opportunities, caster kills being boring and virtually no customization options for units. To me and to many others 40k is a 'hobby' precisely in part due to the chaotic whirlwind it encompasses, far more than a simple 'game'.

4) Tournament list variety is actually quite wide if you compare lists. Broad units are always taken but they are countered by other options. No two flying circus lists are identical. There are truly few auto includes and even then they wax and wane with various army books. How many Helldrakes are the backbone of a competetive Chaos army for instance? The answer is 1-3, always different list to list. Compare to Magic where only a handful of decks ever get played, or in video games where much less investment in any option leads most people to simply select the current strong option. Flavor of the month is a term used incessantly in computer PVP.

5) Quality control may not help much in the game they have decided upon. You can create lists incorporating 4-6 different armies. Battle Brothers singlehandedly have made heavyweights out of the most random of unit combinations. Yes they might put the work into it however time and again they are pleading with you to not treat their game as a serious tournament simulator. They have a vision and those wanting things from them they cannot have do a disservice to their person by wasting time trying to tease blood from a very obtuse stone. Being able to join so many units together make it an impossibility to balance points in all honesty. What good is a support unit if its attached to its best case scenario, the second best, or the fifth best on their battle brother army? Markerlights are worthless in a marine force yet cost identical. Farseers do less good attached to howling banshees so forth and so on. Balance could only be truly achieved by making specific army parings cost X points, a complexity far out of the real of having your preteen target market in selecting an army.


Your comparison and comment about a 'culture of playtesting' is exactly the point. GW is all about forging a narrative and having GM's run games when able, just like Rogue Trader. Privateer Press is trying to be a hybrid E-Sport and has little room for ambiguity, or even creativity in my experience. Both are awesome games, both are vastly different games. Anti GW posts spend far too much time making this mistake over and over and over again.

1. Games Workshop doesn't give anything a best guess. thats just stupid. its a multi-million dollar company making rules for how to use one of their two main stay product lines. I promise, its anything but a "best guess". what it more likely than not is, is negligence created from an ever increasing push to increase their bottom line and get investors off their @$$. the decisions GW are making in terms of game balance are not being made to better the game, they are being made to show everyone a new shiny that is super powerful and awesome, and so you have to have it, and the 50.00 book with them, and the data slates, and while your at it, do you need some of the paint from our new paint line, where we have changed what you previously had so there isn't true parity anymore? your going to run out of devlan mud at some point right, why not switch over to agrax earth shade now...

2. quit attempting to compare digital entertainment or card games to a miniatures game. they are not the same thing by a mile. in that thought, you are also comparing a collectible system to a non collectible system. the whole point of having a collectible system is that you have a "rare" card that is better than a common. you know that going in. its not a secret and its not hid behind the thought of "well, make it fluffy, and play a fluffy deck with all of these commons and uncommons and you won't win but the games will be fun, and in the spirit of green mana and the cards that you would use make sense in the story line". Additionally, a tenth of an inch doesn't really make much difference in a game where moving 6.2 inches just means your that much closer to getting blasted to pieces from someone playing a deathstar that you hopelessly cannot fight.

3. I love it when people talk about playing during rogue trader. its great. because i did too. my first GW book was a Warhammer 40,000 compendium with the ultramarines on the cover where one of them had "color me cobalt' on his shoulder pad. I played then, and to compare that game to the game that is out now is complete and utter nonsense. The game wasn't really a game then, it was a loose set of rules that REQUIRED mediation with all kinds of weird and different stuff you could take in your army of imperial marines. that was the rogue trader days. it was barely organized into a game at that point, and was in its infancy in an environment where no one knew what a miniatures game should be and what it was. i can also tell you that in 2nd edition, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th, there has never been balance in this game. you say everything got used in rogue trader, i remember buying 3 land raiders in a box for 15.00 and letting them all sit there because you dared NOT use a transport, they were death traps. i remember elder pirates and harlequins, and goff rockers and daemon possessed weird boys, squats and all sorts of other stuff that never saw play because they were stupid or didn't work, or there rules didn't even exist for them before the model came out. please tell me about the balance in the game from so many years ago, because i played then too, and i don't see it at all. we can walk forward to 2nd edition, as my friends liked to call it "hero hammer" with warp jump generator - vortex grenade wielding tech marines who heroically sacrifice themselves to take out the biggest, baddest thing in the opponents army. or the crystalline targeting matrix and star engines, allowing the falcon to break EVERY RULE for vehicle movement and shooting, or the first introduction of neurons, with 5 unit choices, who did one thing, kill anything with an armor value amazingly well. 3rd edition was probably the closest thing to balanced, but lets not forget about the wonder sweeping advancing raptors with a chaos lord leading them, all of who worshipped slaneesh, that could ride a table to the edge with anyone...the list goes on and on. and you know what, it just keeps going. this game hit its heyday in balance in that 3.5 edition (3rd edition rules with the newly released close combat rules update really made it 4th edition) and that is when it peaked. rogue trader tournaments were a thing...people were excited to play, and many of the codices had lots of good choices as to the units they wanted to play and how they played them. 5th went back to true LOS and things started to go down hill from there again, and the modifications to the vehicle rules just made sure that the game devolved into who had the best transports for the cost that you could shoot out of. 6th edition was broken as hell from the beginning, and shows no signs of recovering at all, and it won't, and 7th edition just looks like its advertising "buy what you want, and play it. army selection be damned".

4. i don't know what variety your talking about . there are like two or three really good lists that make up the top tables of any major tournament unless the TO takes it upon himself to ban/restrict stuff. sure, there are six armies represented between the two players, but tis the same lists, and that doesn't make it healthy at all.

5. i do not buy into the "its too hard to balance with all of the wonderful options". thats pure gak. balancing would cause an immediate reduction in sales and thus it wouldn't happen. if you want to see balance in the game, it can happen, but it will temporarily slow down sales for GW and thus they won't. its just too easy to make a data slate that sells for 5 or 7 bucks online, and then have the rules so you can include all of these different units you normally wouldn't have in your army, and then get the sales from that. its short term gain at the expense of the long term product evolution and fan base.

companies like privateer press, "soulless" as they may be, understand that they don't have to be cheaper, they don't have to be better looking, hell, they don't even have to offer the range of customization that anyone else does. they know that to get players buying their products, they need to produce a great game with rules that can stand up to a lot of scrutiny. rules that can be played competitively, and rules that alleviate the most amount of frustration or complication from the player base.

the end result is a game that is amazingly deep, and complex, with relatively simple rules for a miniatures game. I am happy to see Warmachine on such a huge explosion. it seems the more gak GW releases the more Warmachine gets bigger and bigger. Fine by me, i like going to huge tournaments 6 or 7 times a year and playing the game often in an environment where its balanced, and i don't have to worry about whether or not my opponent is going to take an army designed to rip my head from my neck...i can just assume he will, and i will do the same.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
it should also be noted that balanced games increase sales. Balanced games play well, and because they are balanced, people do play units, and buy units that give them advantages or add to their amy because its NOT a complete wast of money. As i look through War Room right now, i have yet to see any units for either my Khador B3 list, P or E Sorscha lists, my Circle Kromak, Krueger (P&E), EMorvanna, or Morshar lists that wouldn't fit in somewhere. Those units may not work with EVERY caster, but they will work with one or two of them, and that is game balance.

Privateer Press is like a curse word to GW enthusiasts i have noticed...i guess i just answered the question i had as to why.

If we look beyond the small insular bubble of the 'GW hobby (tm)'.

All the good game companies are quite clear on the type of game they are selling and the focus of their rules.

Rules for narrative game play do not use point values , and tend to use scenario driven lists or historical type OOBs.

Rules that use point values and force organisation charts are there to show new players what results in enjoyable random pick up games.

So any rule set that is using point values and any form of restriction in force composition should result in enjoyable random pick up games.
This is what most players assume.

They simply assume to get a quick enjoyable random pick up game they should just have to use the PV and F.O.C restrictions set out by the rules.
Any other type of narrative driven game is JUST DOWN TO PLAYER AGREEMENT.

So if players are engaging in a narrative scenario, the level of balance is completely decided by the players.Along with everything else before the game starts.
This takes quite a bit of time, but can be loads of fun.(In my experience.)

So if players are limited to random pick up games in clubs /stores.They need game developers to play test enough to arrive at restrictions that allow enjoyable pick up games without hours of negotiation and agreement before they start to play.

if the game 'developers' can not be bothered to play test the system enough to arrive at well defined rules that deliver enjoyable random pick up games.
They should not assign PV to any thing, and be honest about the lack of compatibility with pick up games with the players.

Rather than blaming the players for not playing the game the 'right way'.Or implying the players should do the developers job for them.

 jasper76 wrote:
If you want balance in a 40k game, play the same army list vs. the same army list.

Once you start jamming all the different 40k Special Rules from different units and codices, and how they react to different units, there's no getting around it, you just unbalanced the game.

This alone pretty much sums up the whole argument... well done. 40k has become paper, rock, scissors, spock, lizard. Somedays you get a good draw on which army you face, and others you don't. Regardless though, the games will always seem a tad imbalanced. Think about how many games you've played that have literally come down to the last bottom half of the round, not many in my experience which tells you that its not always a balanced game.

Think the game would be better with a lot more 'lists' wot work from, with restrictions that vary, think FoW force charts - I run Grenadiers, there are dozens of lists to select from with them, all with different options and restrictions, some have cheap flak guns, some only have pricey ones, some can have tigers, some have no armour at all

Balance is bad because somehow making a Riptide less OP and and Penitent Engine somewhat useful will make the game boring.

Put a Blood Angel army against a Tau and see how fun unblance is for either player. (Well, some people think its fun to steamroll their opponent.)

Well, seeing as it took a group of dedicated fans to improve Epic: Armageddon to a state that is far better than what GW ever produced it as............

 jasper76 wrote:
If you want balance in a 40k game, play the same army list vs. the same army list.

Once you start jamming all the different 40k Special Rules from different units and codices, and how they react to different units, there's no getting around it, you just unbalanced the game.

Except now with all the random tables each codex has access to, two identical armies will no longer be identical as soon as they hit the table. One person rolls good and gets the best powers/trait/buffs meanwhile the other guy rolls useless stuff and just wasted points.

 Madcat87 wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:
If you want balance in a 40k game, play the same army list vs. the same army list.

Once you start jamming all the different 40k Special Rules from different units and codices, and how they react to different units, there's no getting around it, you just unbalanced the game.

Except now with all the random tables each codex has access to, two identical armies will no longer be identical as soon as they hit the table. One person rolls good and gets the best powers/trait/buffs meanwhile the other guy rolls useless stuff and just wasted points.

Because apparently it makes perfect narrative sense that your General is a schizophrenic so unstable that you can't tell what specialty he'll have THIS TIME until moments before the bullets start flying and that all your psikers have random selective amnesia that makes them remember different powers each time they wake up in the morning...

 Galorian wrote:

 Madcat87 wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:
If you want balance in a 40k game, play the same army list vs. the same army list.

Once you start jamming all the different 40k Special Rules from different units and codices, and how they react to different units, there's no getting around it, you just unbalanced the game.

Except now with all the random tables each codex has access to, two identical armies will no longer be identical as soon as they hit the table. One person rolls good and gets the best powers/trait/buffs meanwhile the other guy rolls useless stuff and just wasted points.

Because apparently it makes perfect narrative sense that your General is a schizophrenic so unstable that you can't tell what specialty he'll have THIS TIME until moments before the bullets start flying and that all your psikers have random selective amnesia that makes them remember different powers each time they wake up in the morning...

Didn't you know that every time a scientist wakes up the gods have to roll on a d6 chart to determine what field he specializes in?

 Kain wrote:

 Galorian wrote:

 Madcat87 wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:
If you want balance in a 40k game, play the same army list vs. the same army list.

Once you start jamming all the different 40k Special Rules from different units and codices, and how they react to different units, there's no getting around it, you just unbalanced the game.

Except now with all the random tables each codex has access to, two identical armies will no longer be identical as soon as they hit the table. One person rolls good and gets the best powers/trait/buffs meanwhile the other guy rolls useless stuff and just wasted points.

Because apparently it makes perfect narrative sense that your General is a schizophrenic so unstable that you can't tell what specialty he'll have THIS TIME until moments before the bullets start flying and that all your psikers have random selective amnesia that makes them remember different powers each time they wake up in the morning...

Didn't you know that every time a scientist wakes up the gods have to roll on a d6 chart to determine what field he specializes in?

You kidding? We first have to roll on the amnesia table to see if we even get a specialization or default to "Procrastination"...

 Galorian wrote:

 Kain wrote:

 Galorian wrote:

 Madcat87 wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:
If you want balance in a 40k game, play the same army list vs. the same army list.

Once you start jamming all the different 40k Special Rules from different units and codices, and how they react to different units, there's no getting around it, you just unbalanced the game.

Except now with all the random tables each codex has access to, two identical armies will no longer be identical as soon as they hit the table. One person rolls good and gets the best powers/trait/buffs meanwhile the other guy rolls useless stuff and just wasted points.

Because apparently it makes perfect narrative sense that your General is a schizophrenic so unstable that you can't tell what specialty he'll have THIS TIME until moments before the bullets start flying and that all your psikers have random selective amnesia that makes them remember different powers each time they wake up in the morning...

Didn't you know that every time a scientist wakes up the gods have to roll on a d6 chart to determine what field he specializes in?

You kidding? We first have to roll on the amnesia table to see if we even get a specialization or default to "Procrastination"...

I know right? When i woke up I found that a bad roll changed me from a paleontologist to an astrologer.

I guess the rerolls on my conman checks is nice but I miss all the blessings to my respectability score.

 Kain wrote:

 Galorian wrote:

 Kain wrote:

 Galorian wrote:

 Madcat87 wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:
If you want balance in a 40k game, play the same army list vs. the same army list.

Once you start jamming all the different 40k Special Rules from different units and codices, and how they react to different units, there's no getting around it, you just unbalanced the game.

Except now with all the random tables each codex has access to, two identical armies will no longer be identical as soon as they hit the table. One person rolls good and gets the best powers/trait/buffs meanwhile the other guy rolls useless stuff and just wasted points.

Because apparently it makes perfect narrative sense that your General is a schizophrenic so unstable that you can't tell what specialty he'll have THIS TIME until moments before the bullets start flying and that all your psikers have random selective amnesia that makes them remember different powers each time they wake up in the morning...

Didn't you know that every time a scientist wakes up the gods have to roll on a d6 chart to determine what field he specializes in?

You kidding? We first have to roll on the amnesia table to see if we even get a specialization or default to "Procrastination"...

I know right? When i woke up I found that a bad roll changed me from a paleontologist to an astrologer.

I guess the rerolls on my conman checks is nice but I miss all the blessings to my respectability score.

You think that's bad? Try waking up to a final exam in wave function theory and rolling up "Trivia expert"...

 ashcroft wrote:
Disclaimer 1: I'm not trying to exonerate GW of all responsibility, There are issues, but it's not a one-way street.

Disclaimer 2: Alternative title for this topic would have been "Competitive 40K would require a whole different ruleset."

There's a lot of debate about 'balance' in 40K - mostly to do with pick up games - and it reminds me a lot about the never ending arguments about PVP (Player vs Player) in MMOs.

In any MMO which has optional PVP there will be two types of player in a pvp zone - the casual player, who has built his character according to personal preference and what they find fun, and the pvp player or powergamer/min-maxer, who has built his character to be absolutely optimised, either doing the number crunching himself or getting the current flavor of the month build from the internet. Is this sounding at all familiar?

If a casual/fluffy player enters a pvp zone and goes one on one against someone running an optimised/min-maxed uber build, then the casual is going to lose, almost always. Doesn't matter if they are more skilled as a player - the superior gear, stats, attack rotation of the min-maxer will usually be the deciding factor. In much the same way a fluff list is, more often than not, going to take a beating from an optimised tournament ready netlist.

There's very little that GW can do to prevent this. If other games are better balanced it's in no small part due to a couple of things - either the armies are more inherently equal to begin with (such as most historical wargames, or for that matter 30K with its marine vs marine set up), or they have a smaller playerbase, or both. A big game like 40K will have more WAAC players simply because it has more players overall. Fiercely competitive players in MMOs are almost always drawn to the big games and the high pop servers - and in tabletop gaming 40K is the big, high pop game.

The only way for GW to force balance onto 40K would be to drastically reduce the options available to the players - in terms of units that can be fielded, missions that can be played, the way and the quantity of terrain that is deployed. Everything. Is 40K as well balanced as a tournament game like Starcraft? Not in the slightest, but Starcraft has only 3 races. I daresay if GW squatted everyone except the Ultramarines, the Eldar and the Tyranids they could balance those 3 codexes better against each other.

GW isn't twisting anyone's arm to force them to spam Riptides, or Wave Serpents or deathstar units. Just because the rules don't say you can do something does not mean you either have to or should do it. Some of the responsibility has to lie with the players to actually agree about what makes an enjoyable game for all concerned, rather than waiting for GW to dictate from on high a set of draconian restrictions to force the game to be what any particular player wants it to be.

That's what I think anyway.

Blizzard spent roughly a decade activly ballancing Starcraft trough playtesting and player feedback, the amount of factions are largely irrelevant compared to "forge a narrative" make rules up with barely any internal playtesting nor proof reading, being performed ""ballancing""

.Clear rules that everyone understands is not to much to ask for neither is asking for what you put on the table is worth their actual points or atleast serve a purpouse.

And then theres TFG that just invalidated your arguments, the rules "proper" rules are needed so you can have enjoyable games with strangers with minimum fuzz, because not all of them is going to be nice persons...

Personally I despise comp play, but it does have one quality to it, it shows whats broken and whats not broken, its such a waste GW ignores this potential just at their doorstep.

Bishop F Gantry wrote:
Clear rules that everyone understands is not to much to ask for neither is asking for what you put on the table is worth their actual points or at least serve a purpose.

I agree, up to a point, but there are a lot of variables involved in assessing how many points a unit is worth. Many (most?) of the current killer builds are based on combining units that outwith those combos would not be so powerful... so do you cost them according to their individual worth, or how they work when put together in certain very specific combinations? Additionally a CC unit is worth less in an open battlefield opposite a gunline than it is in a crowded battlefield with a lot of LoS blocking terrain.

And then theres TFG that just invalidated your arguments, the rules "proper" rules are needed so you can have enjoyable games with strangers with minimum fuzz, because not all of them is going to be nice persons...

I think this point actually makes my argument. GW can't fix the community, and the rules set will never be so airtight that TFG will not be able to find loopholes to use to his advantage.

Could GW do more? Certainly, though I think it's increasingly apparent that they are distancing themselves ever further from the idea of 40K as a tournament ready rules set.

Tournaments aside - and in a way they are not the main problem since the organisers can set limits in advance, and everyone involved will know (to a point) what to expect - one of the problems is that GW's vision (such as it is) is of a game played between friends, who can be expected to talk out points of contention amiably, whereas for many players the game is mostly played between strangers, in pick up games where such a consensus is often not going to exist.

Not only is it possible for a ruleset to be unabusable, its actually not that hard to do. GW just don't want to put in the effort. All you have to do is take the time to do 3 things.

1. Write the rules from the point of veiw of someone who will very strictly adhere to them, not a guy playing with his mate's using the rules as a guide line. That will never be enough on its own so you move to step 2.

2. Take the rules you now have and give them to the people who know how to abuse them. Those people who get labled as 'tfgs' for bringing something too strong, they should be asked to show those too strong combos before the rules go into circulation so that they can be tweaked and fixed. Then hand them the new rules and repeat untill they are satisfied there is nothing abusable left. That again won't catch everything so finally we move to step 3.

3. FAQs. Once the rules are released keep an eye on them. Interact with the community. If people are complaining that a loophole has gotten through steps one and two simply FAQ/errata it out of the game. Then continue doing that for the life of the rulebook.

Its not a quick process, but its also not actually all that hard either. Nothing needs to be perfect, just good enough that there is no clear 'best' unit within a codex to spam or combo that is more powerful than it should be because the game designers didn't realize it could be done.

If GW wants to charge laughably more for their rules than their competition I expect at least that much.