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So some things have happened in the past that suggest to me GW knows they're making gakky rules that aren't balanced.

I imagine it's part of a business ploy to sell more of something but I definitely think it's deliberate.

An example that sticks out in my mind is dire avengers.
Following the Eldar codex release dire avengers got changed from 10 to 5 man.
It is coincidence then that dire avengers are commonly taken in 5 man squads with a wave serpent.

What do you guys think?

I think they just can't balance things. There's instances of new models being overpowered but there's also instances of new models being crap. It's too hit and miss for there to be any kind of pattern.

There have been models that NEVER sold well because they were crap in the game for years and years. And GW never buffed them. Like Vespids.

They are bad a balance! There I said it! On multiple occasions they have stated they are a miniature making company not rule makers so enjoy your amazing models and if something is rampantly overpowered you can make edits to the rules as stated in the BRB until they nerf it back down. And to answer you question no they probably don't know how bad they have broken it because of all of the conflicting information they get on a daily basis.

Counter-argument: if GW's authors knew how bad the rules are they'd commit suicide in shame. They haven't done so, which means they don't know how laughably bad their work is.

Look at the new Tyranids for example. All new models, so presumably they wanted to sell them, and yet apart from the drop pod all of the others were mediocre/bad.

 Peregrine wrote:
Counter-argument: if GW's authors knew how bad the rules are they'd commit suicide in shame. They haven't done so, which means they don't know how laughably bad their work is.

I think that's a little OTT, lol.

I dunno, there are definitely some weird things, like making the 'new hotness' in space marines and Tau also their new models, instead of fixing some basics.
In Tau broadsides and Riptides were clearly made to be better, can't sell those rail versions of broadsides, people have them, let's make a new version (any money we see rail make a comeback in the future). Centurions for example seem like broadsides +1; more shots, better AP and ability to move.

Never give to malevolence what can be explained by incompetence.

 Psienesis wrote:
Never give to malevolence what can be explained by incompetence.

I don't think Peregrine's oddly obsessive anti-GW campaign still deserves this caveat.

He's entiteld to his opinion as we all are.

Boniface wrote:
I think that's a little OTT, lol.

Not by much. Publishing a rulebook this bad is the kind of incompetence that would get you fired in any other company/industry and probably end your career. Maybe not everyone would commit suicide in response to that, but it should certainly inspire that level of shame in the authors.

I dunno, there are definitely some weird things, like making the 'new hotness' in space marines and Tau also their new models, instead of fixing some basics.
In Tau broadsides and Riptides were clearly made to be better, can't sell those rail versions of broadsides, people have them, let's make a new version (any money we see rail make a comeback in the future). Centurions for example seem like broadsides +1; more shots, better AP and ability to move.

On the other hand you have the Tau flyers, new models with terrible rules. I think there's a lot of confirmation bias involved in the whole "GW makes overpowered stuff to sell models" thing, and the truth is that GW just sucks at writing rules in general. We remember the times they screw up memorably and make a new model an expensive must-buy, and we mostly forget the times they screw up and make terrible new units.

 ImAGeek wrote:
He's entiteld to his opinion as we all are.

He is.

Being of the opinion that the moon is made of cheese once or twice may well be explained by nescience, benefit of doubt and all that. Ranting about it for years on end cannot.

He's still entitled to it though.

Oh good, right on schedule we have the "you're not allowed to have negative opinions" post that no thread on GW would be complete without.

 Peregrine wrote:
Oh good, right on schedule we have the "you're not allowed to have negative opinions" post that no thread on GW would be complete without.

You are allowed to. I just don't believe your opinions can only be attributed to incompetence alone anymore these days, hence why I disagree with Psienesis.

Psienesis meant GW bad balance was down to incompetence, not Peregrines negative opinion. Also, how is having a negative opinion incompetance...

 ImAGeek wrote:
Psienesis meant GW bad balance was down to incompetence, not Peregrines negative opinion. Also, how is having a negative opinion incompetance...

I don't think it is.

If it were grounded in mistakes of inference and other cognitive abilities, it wouldn't persist over years and years in such an obsessive fashion, nor would it be expressed in obviously aggressive terms such as those suggesting suicide for GW game-designers for the (neither entirely flawless, nor entirely meritless) product they put out.

Such downright violent expressions, doubly so, given how long he's been at it, suggest a psychologically driven obsession/substitution that is no longer exclusively driven by simply an objective assessment of a set of tabletop-gaming rules, but a more personal beef he has with either the company or the game, possibly but not necessarily grounded in some extremely negative past personal experience related to GW/40K.

Thus, malevolence, not incompetence. Not dissimilar to how people work themselves into an obsession to smear ... Apple, Microsoft, certain Football-clubs, etc.., etc.., etc.. It's a strange human phenomenon for sure.

as others have said for every new model thats a centurion, you get a mutilator.

I think it's just greed in terms of maximising profit-margin by minimising costs. Rules testing and game-balancing, done well, cost time and thus money. The GW board think the models and books will sell however bad the rules are, so now rules are knocked out by a temp and customers have to house rule around the mess. The recent FAQ update would seem to back this up, certainly far less effort was put into providing the update than the thread just on here discussing it.

I think they do know, they just don't care or believe their own hype.

As others have said, if they did it on purpose to sell models, they would not have made so many new models have unplayable rules, and most of the OP units being old models that most players of the army already have multiples of.

Look at Wraiths in the new Cron dex, they were already pretty good so I imagine most people had them, yet they made them even better.

Not completely.

Oldstyle Whip Coils were much better than the new version.

 Peregrine wrote:

Boniface wrote:
I think that's a little OTT, lol.

Not by much. Publishing a rulebook this bad is the kind of incompetence that would get you fired in any other company/industry and probably end your career. Maybe not everyone would commit suicide in response to that, but it should certainly inspire that level of shame in the authors.

This. This suggests to me it is intentional, otherwise you're right, the rules writers would be ashamed or fired.

I dunno, there are definitely some weird things, like making the 'new hotness' in space marines and Tau also their new models, instead of fixing some basics.
In Tau broadsides and Riptides were clearly made to be better, can't sell those rail versions of broadsides, people have them, let's make a new version (any money we see rail make a comeback in the future). Centurions for example seem like broadsides +1; more shots, better AP and ability to move.

On the other hand you have the Tau flyers, new models with terrible rules. I think there's a lot of confirmation bias involved in the whole "GW makes overpowered stuff to sell models" thing, and the truth is that GW just sucks at writing rules in general. We remember the times they screw up memorably and make a new model an expensive must-buy, and we mostly forget the times they screw up and make terrible new units.

I agree with you mostly. I wonder if they intend to stagger the new stuff more. Like make something blatantly powerful to get loads of sales. Make something else a bit less powerful so it's new and still sells but then ramp it up at a later time to get more sales during a lull.

I just find it hard to believe any company would do it by accident.

Martel732 wrote:
There have been models that NEVER sold well because they were crap in the game for years and years. And GW never buffed them. Like Vespids.

GW did buff Vespids. Its just that everything else in the Tau codex got buffed as well so they didnt become more attractive.


A good example however would be Rough Riders that actually got worse in the latest AM dex.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

LordBlades wrote:
Look at the new Tyranids for example. All new models, so presumably they wanted to sell them, and yet apart from the drop pod all of the others were mediocre/bad.

Exocrine and Flyrant sell like hotcakes.

I don't think thats it at all. GW is out of touch with their customers is all. We don't want a beer and pretzels game where losing can be part of the fun. We want a cutthroat futuristic battle simulator. We want brood-wars on the tabletop. We want to win. Thats all.

 Xenomancers wrote:
I don't think thats it at all. GW is out of touch with their customers is all. We don't want a beer and pretzels game where losing can be part of the fun. We want a cutthroat futuristic battle simulator. We want brood-wars on the tabletop. We want to win. Thats all.

You say that like you can't have both. You can have a tight, competitive ruleset that is enjoyable on multiple levels, even to the casual player. WM/H, Malifaux and Infinity do this fairly well.

GW is too stupid to do anything like this intentionally. For every riptide/wraithknight/centurion kit, there's a Logan Clause on his sleigh to show you that which new model will be powerful and which will be useless is chosen at random. I honestly don't think the codex authors understand what will be spammed and what will never be taken. When the 7th edition of your core rulebook has 10x more errors, contradictions and confusing wordings than the 2nd edition, it shows either incompetence, apathy or a combination of the two.

 Xenomancers wrote:
I don't think thats it at all. GW is out of touch with their customers is all. We don't want a beer and pretzels game where losing can be part of the fun. We want a cutthroat futuristic battle simulator. We want brood-wars on the tabletop. We want to win. Thats all.

I want a fair fight, honestly fought, where I don't lose or win because of a difficult to interpret rule or that the Codex author rolled a 6 when he started writing my faction's latest book, but because I made better or worse decisions than my opponent and with maybe a hint of luck.

If that's what you meant by the above, then fair enough, but I think you'll find far more people want an entertaining and fair game than want to win all the time.

 Toofast wrote:
GW is too stupid to do anything like this intentionally. For every riptide/wraithknight/centurion kit, there's a Logan Clause on his sleigh to show you that which new model will be powerful and which will be useless is chosen at random. I honestly don't think the codex authors understand what will be spammed and what will never be taken. When the 7th edition of your core rulebook has 10x more errors, contradictions and confusing wordings than the 2nd edition, it shows either incompetence, apathy or a combination of the two.

I just don't see how someone who writes the rules couldn't see the obviously powerful stuff. It takes a lot of people who've been playing a while about 5 minutes to spot and compare the units in their entirety. Someone who's been doing this for years must be able to spot the same trends.
Maybe I'm wrong.

Boniface wrote:


I just don't see how someone who writes the rules couldn't see the obviously powerful stuff. It takes a lot of people who've been playing a while about 5 minutes to spot and compare the units in their entirety. Someone who's been doing this for years must be able to spot the same trends.
Maybe I'm wrong.

These are the same people that nerfed the Chaplain and buffed the Librarian because in their 'test' games, they found the Chaplain to be overpowered, and that none of them ever took a Librarian because they felt it was too weak.

They are quite literally that incompetent. They play the game in their own little bubble and never ever even consider that some players may look to optimize their lists in the slightest.