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I have seen people explain that certain gear/weapons/units are more expensive for certain armies over other because that army specializes in something else so therefore they need to pay a premium for weapons/gear/units in other parts of the game. Likewise I have seen people explain to me that because an Army gets more use out of a specific type of weapon/gear/unit that it has to be costed higher then other factions because that is that armies specialization.

Example 1:

Orkz need to pay high points for Lootas because Orkz aren't a shooting army so it makes sense that they have to pay a high price to get decent shooting.

Example 2: Orkz need to pay 25pts or more for a Power Klaw because they are a melee oriented army and get more use out of that weapon then other factions would.

So which is it? Do we need to pay higher prices for ranged weapons because we aren't a ranged army or do we need to pay higher prices for close combat weapons because we are a melee army?

I do believe that the costs are weighed differently based around the core concept of a certain army as well as other underlying factors such as availability and alternatives when it comes to what a faction has.

As for your exact question...I don't think anyone can really tell you why exactly GW does what they do unless they release a designers notes journal or writing to let us know what went on in their head and why they thought something should be priced (or even excluded/included).

I can see the confusion though. Take the Chaos stuff recently.

People were grumbling because EC got something that didn't double down on their already obnoxious range and dismissed a really solid ability that made them a bit more flexible and shored up a weakness to give them some variety.

Then comes along WE where berzerkers straight up double downed on what they do (obviously didn't think we'd see them compliment their range element just that they made it clear they are about attacking and damage and not say,giving them something that would weather heavy ranged fire).

From what I can tell. They flip a coin to help them make these decisions.

Ork PK is 25 pts because it makes you S10, very few armies have this in melee, typically caps at S8, which is a big difference when you look at the toughest units in the game.

They might go down the same way that SM PF's went down in their codex release

If it goes by SM pricing, they will be +5 points of a SM powerfist.

I don't think GW is bipolar, I'm pretty sure they're schizophrenic. At times you can't tell which one of them is talking to you. Is it the GW that insists on removing units from codexes because they don't have a model? Or is it GW who create an entirely new unit without a model and then tells you how to convert it in their flagship magazine? One of them is crazy but which one? Perhaps it's the third GW th other two don't know about yet?

They're never consistent. Even when they promise to be better and to try and get things right, they're not consistent. You can see from how they behave and how they deal with the community that they are too fractured internally, that none of them knows what's going on. They issue rules that don't work in relation to other rules in the game and they don't know how half the rules even work. It's like they delegate certain nuggets of rules to different people but they don't fill them in on what the other guys are doing. One guy writes the rules for how weapons operate but they guy writing the rules for how the Black Legion works hasn't read those rules and misunderstands how the game plays.

Hence the ad for a rules writer. I don't think they're looking for somebody to come up with cool and interesting mechanics or new idea's for 40k, I think they're looking for somebody who actually understands their rules, how the game is really played (not how they play it after hours with their weird house rules and gentleman's codes) and most importantly how things interact together, how one change impacts another etc ect. They clearly can't their heads around this. GW is full of idea's men, people with great idea's, but they' don't really get how to build their rules properly. Sure changing morale to battleshock sounds like a great idea to speed up the game and spice things up, but when you dissociate characters from units and need rules to stop them being one-shotted turn 1 every time, well now your rules to protect characters interfere with your rules to morale when you can't get rid of Commissars and feckin Conscripts are more unmoveable than Space Marines. And that's not to mention how small units are less affected by morale now than large units, when anyone with a basic understanding of psychology and/or military training will tell you that large bodies of soldiers will always have a higher morale than smaller ones. They just threw battleshock in as a mechanic and didn't study the ramifications of it. It should have been added in ON TOP of traditional fleeing off the table morale, as a special feature of some units. Commissars should be stopping Conscripts from RUNNING AWAY, not dying in combat. Being stuck in combat by that psycho Commissar who's gonna shoto them if they run, that should be triggering the battleshock effect they SHOULD be subjected too for being stuck in combat against a vastly superior opponent. But because they removed running away they've left with only one part of what would have been a great morale phase system. And thus Conscripts are super strong (unless you're WE and then you laugh your ass off at them).

Yeah, GW really needs to get on this. They're stating intent to want to make 40k great again, but they're struggling to follow through with it in their haste to get everything out RIGHT NOW. They really should have put the codexes on simmer until next year, sorted out the niggles in 8th ed first, issued a 1.5 version of the rules around xmas and then got to work putting out codexes. They could have used the time up till xmas putting out models and rules for them on par with the indexes.

8th is still in the playtest stage and it needs some tweaks still. But which one of GW's faces do you tell that to?

Don't try to find logic within the mechanics

This game isn't intended to be competitively balanced, it's intended to be sales driven balanced.

Yeah, generally I'm inclined to the "pay based on what it does" route. Paying a premium for a subpar unit because your army is meant to be poor at it just advantages factions that can draw for multiple sources. Paying a premium for chaff units as CSM (cultists) doesn't really hurt that bad because we can ally in demons or R&H in a different detachment.

In the same vein, nids and orks could both be said to be melee armies and pay a premium for long range shooting, but nids now have GSC and even IG to draw from. Orks don't.

This is without even touching on how badly the imperium as a whole screws with this design philosophy.

I'm not sure bipolar means what you think it means.

 More Dakka wrote:
Ork PK is 25 pts because it makes you S10, very few armies have this in melee, typically caps at S8, which is a big difference when you look at the toughest units in the game.

They might go down the same way that SM PF's went down in their codex release

And the difference between S8 and S10 this edition is miniscule compared to last edition. Last edition double strength meant instant death on any multi wound characters/units, it also meant Auto-penetrating AV10 and glancing AV14 on 4s compared to needing a 3 to pen for S8 and a 6 to glance on AV14. And at that time ork PKs and Imperial Power Fists were the same price. They have now nerfed this so that the only advantage on S10 Vs T8 is Vs T5 models and T8 models. Everything else is the same. Of course Orkz are also already paying for the increase in strength on their base models so they are doubling down on that.

But lets go to the other point you didn't comment on. So if Orkz need to pay MORE for having better CC abilities why are they also paying MORE for worse shooting options?

A great example of that would be Lootas who are 17pts each and carry a S7 -1 AP weapon that does 2 damage base and fires D3 shots. Now that sounds relatively cheap when compared to imperial units but then you factor in everything else like buffs and durability and you quickly realize this is a waste of points because it basically needs a Trukk to survive since cover no longer benefits them nearly as much. So we pay 153pts for 9 models which shoot D3 S7 -1 AP shots which averages 18 shots, 6 hits and 4 wounds and against a 3+ save thats 2 dead Model For 149pts a Marine player can take a dev squad with 4 plasma cannons which D3 shots at S7 -3 AP 1 damage which averages 8 shots, 6 hits and 4 wounds at -3 AP that means 4 dead Marines. So for less they do two times as much damage and are SIGNIFICANTLY more durable, and again, thats before we add in buffs and other things like Signum, cherub and cover which benefits space marines even more now.

So again, we are paying more for the same weapon in CC, our models just have higher base strength and we are paying MORE for our ranged weapons which are worse then imperial equivalents.

This game isn't intended to be competitively balanced, it's intended to be sales driven balanced.

This basically. Sales > rules.

The Ork example is way too generalized and kinda bad as an example of GW's two-faced-ness.

Lootas give Orks a weapon they normally do not see (i.e: something reliable that can take on most targets). Ork Weapons generally are not reliable. To negate a race's own drawback thus comes with a higher cost. This is NOT because Orks are a melee army, it's because it would turn Lootas into Auto takes (which, to be honest, looks like they already are).

Similarly, the PK must be higher cost in comparison to other Ork weapons, or else it would be, once again, an autotake (a problem that has happened with every edition, where the big choppa simply never saw play). Arguably, it also still suffers from this.

Both weapons cost more not because they are a "ranged weapon in a melee army" nor because a "melee army gets the most benefits out of them". It's because they are both desirable to Orks over the other choices.

A better example of GW's dovetailing would have been the whole "Understrengthed units" thing before they updated the FAQ. That was a more clear example of two guys fumbling with the rules without communication, since two different intents cropped up even without debate. Or, like Demantiae pointed out, taking away options from one army because a kit did not exist for it (Rifleman Dreadnoughts) while simultaniously advertising something that can only be obtained via a conversion (Grand Master Dreadknights).

As for why I think they're disjointed, I honestly can only guess that they are so compartmentalized that communication is a problem. It also seems they don't seem to have outside help, as while there are some synergies, it seems they completely ignore other ones. This is how we got the conscript blob issue; the playtesters probably thought the Conscript's crap stats would turn people off them so bad that they didn't consider people would field them in numbers, hence felt it was ok that they'd benefit from the officers just as much as normal guard.

However some of their errors are very much normal for games, as nothing could be 100% idiot proof on release; Wizards recently had a Trumpian-cofefe moment when they ended up banning a card before it was even released because it's interaction with another card essentially broke the game (some cat thing? I don't remember but my friends were whining about it hard). And Wizards is usually held up as the bar for game designers to aspire to.

Them hiring rules writers is a good way to go, but they need to put them into their own department and leave them alone from outside meddling. The worst is having a bean counter on the staff watching over everyone's shoulders. And again, they need a unified design document, which requires (at the very least) a unified design language with proper keywords and terms, as well as the "Jedi Curve" dictating at least a basic idea of unit interactions, power levels and costs.

(if you don't know what the Jedi Curve is, it's essentially a parabolic curve designed to dictate what the power is for each object in the game relative to it's cost Extra Credits does a far better job of describing it in one of their card game episodes. Note that Wizards apparently has a different curve for each color; a 6/6 creature with no effect will have a completely different cost if it's in blue (which has draws) than if it was in Green (which can generate mana to pay for the cost). but a 2/2 with no effect would be more or less identical in all colors.)

How exactly is D3 shots considered reliable? And Lootas haven't been auto-includes for some time now. This edition they are actually worse because you can no longer put them in cover and expect them to survive a bit. Conversely you can put those same Devestators in cover and now they magically get terminator armor.

The initial index's are a tester, when the individual codex's come out they are what will be balanced. That is how you should think eg. atm maybe some good some bad, when some get codex's we are so screwed.... but in 8 months when they all released hopefully balanced. They are using the index's as a test for the new codex's.

That's my perception anyway.

Long range, high strength, and D3 still averages at least 2 shots a piece. And they've been in my ork army up until I got my green tide assembled (where the formation's costs kicked them out). In general most Ork weapons are close ranged, and few of them are high strength with large volumes of fire (at least not without a risk of blowing up in the user's face). And I don't believe the loota's weapons are the only ones complained about for that reason either (most weapons that get their cost complained about generally are weapons that are desirable).

Also the terminator comparison is largely moot because people complain Terminators are "too fragile" as well in this edition (the fandom can be just as two-faced as well). And Devastators (unless they're bolter jockeys) are not that much cheaper than Terminators.

Why did the title change?

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Why did the title change?

Because I have angered the Mods in the past and they are always looking for ways to ban me. So on the off chance anyone might get offended I changed the title.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
Long range, high strength, and D3 still averages at least 2 shots a piece. And they've been in my ork army up until I got my green tide assembled (where the formation's costs kicked them out). In general most Ork weapons are close ranged, and few of them are high strength with large volumes of fire (at least not without a risk of blowing up in the user's face). And I don't believe the loota's weapons are the only ones complained about for that reason either (most weapons that get their cost complained about generally are weapons that are desirable).

Also the terminator comparison is largely moot because people complain Terminators are "too fragile" as well in this edition (the fandom can be just as two-faced as well). And Devastators (unless they're bolter jockeys) are not that much cheaper than Terminators.

Terminators are squishy? Well I mean they are but they are paying top points to be durable and they aren't. A Devestator meanwhile is paying top points to be a glass cannon which it isn't because it has a 3+ save and when he hides in cover he goes up to a 2+ Which means you either need to dedicate twice as much firepower to removing them OR you need to dedicate anti vehicle AP-2+ weapons on them. So for a similar price to a terminator they have 2+ armor and have a massive ranged weapon that can take out elite infantry or vehicles.

Lootas average 2 shots each that is true but that doesn't make them reliable. An Auto-cannon ALWAYS shoots 2 (unless its the space marine special one which is 2D3) that is reliable.

As far as auto-include, that might be your preference but in competitive lists they are hardly ever seen. SO saying they were an auto-include is false. Tankbustas are an auto-include and not because they are good ranged weapons either, simply because they are LITERALLY the only worthwhile anti-tank ranged weaponry we have.

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
The Ork example is way too generalized and kinda bad as an example of GW's two-faced-ness.

Lootas give Orks a weapon they normally do not see (i.e: something reliable that can take on most targets). Ork Weapons generally are not reliable. To negate a race's own drawback thus comes with a higher cost. This is NOT because Orks are a melee army, it's because it would turn Lootas into Auto takes (which, to be honest, looks like they already are).

Similarly, the PK must be higher cost in comparison to other Ork weapons, or else it would be, once again, an autotake (a problem that has happened with every edition, where the big choppa simply never saw play). Arguably, it also still suffers from this.

Both weapons cost more not because they are a "ranged weapon in a melee army" nor because a "melee army gets the most benefits out of them". It's because they are both desirable to Orks over the other choices.

(if you don't know what the Jedi Curve is, it's essentially a parabolic curve designed to dictate what the power is for each object in the game relative to it's cost Extra Credits does a far better job of describing it in one of their card game episodes. Note that Wizards apparently has a different curve for each color; a 6/6 creature with no effect will have a completely different cost if it's in blue (which has draws) than if it was in Green (which can generate mana to pay for the cost). but a 2/2 with no effect would be more or less identical in all colors.)

This design philosophy does not and cannot work in 40K as it exists. There are two reasons: In MTG colors are both mixed freely and there are major drawbacks for spreading yourself too thin. In 40K armies cannot be mixed freely and there are only token disadvantages for mixing.

Trying to balance armies like this would either require major drawbacks for mixed armies, even if they are different detachments or for every army to be mixable to an equal degree. You could also balance based on the widest possible faction, but that'll be even worse in some ways.

Otherwise this only hurts armies like orcs/tau/necrons, while imperium, chaos, or even elder just cherry pick without suffering any of the disadvantages.

Unified flat costs based on a unit's ability is the only way 40k can be balanced without and overhaul to the ally/keyword system.

The Jedi Curve as it's built for MTG definitely would not work for 40k for the reasons you've stated,, but nothing says they can't make one of their own (and rightly should).

Every game would have a baseline to work from, and going lower and higher along the curve, especially when we have points as a balancing cost.

For example, they could dictate that the basic profile of a guardsmen costs so and so points. Then the faction would add on maybe one or two points per wound/toughness/strength/etc. Weapons can be built up similarly. Then obviously +1 wound and +2 wounds and so forth would start pushing the cost of the model up the curve, with different factions, rules, and so forth affecting the base cost.

Not only does such a system help make rules creation easier, but it also makes it easier to see and explain why something costs as much as it does. And while it's not foolproof (the MTG Curve ended up producing stuff like Arcbound Ravager and Karn Liberated), it does help them catch potential gamebreakers early on.

EDIT: also I won't be trying to produce anything even remotely applicable to 40k because 1.) it takes far too long to account for the hundreds of units in the game right now and 2.) I ain't doing it for free Just giving an example of how it can work.

You see, the point I'm again objecting to is the idea you can consider faction when determine points. Right now, that's itself going to imbalance things. You either disadvantage larger factions by balancing all of imperium as one army, making a pure SM force lackluster, or disadvantage smaller armies who don't have other options.

Considering faction as part of balance just doesn't work right now. It can't be part of 8th edition's balance for it to actually be balanced. It must be based purely on what the unit can do

I can see why that would be an issue. However I still think a Jedi Curve would help with the design. GW seems to already started something similar with the power levels. They just need to refine the system more.

As for balancing large ally-able factions with smaller ones, this is where GW's old Formation and Detachment concepts could have worked to help. If I were to work out a system on the curve for it to be used, I'd say that a unit applied in the most broadest sense of the faction (i.e: marines with Knights and guardsmen) would have to land somewhere under the curve, while applied in a restricted fashion (mono-ultramarine force) would have to land equally above it. And trying to close that gap for each unit would the aspiring goal of the designers (although by it's very nature means that it cannot be achieved).

cavebear56 wrote:

From what I can tell. They flip a coin to help them make these decisions.

That's unfair. I've been making a card game with my brother, and the number of times we've been stuck, looking at each other in silence because we were both waiting for the other to make a decision on something has been eye-opening.

Bitching about a single rule or point value in a vacuum is one thing. Having to stare down at a blank piece of paper and make a decision about something core to a design is hard. Making a decision that will impact that big-picture vision of how something is supposed to work is hard.

It's hard because you know that decision you're trying to make will have far-reaching ramifications, and you're not sure what they'll all be. It's a decision you're going to have to balance around, and it's not one that can be easily changed.

The price of an Ork powerklaw goes back to this. There was a decision made, at one point, that orks would be a primarily melee army. The decision was made that their shooting will suck by design. But what does that mean? What does it mean to have poor shooting when 95% of the anti-vehicle weapons in the game are guns? Does it mean that orks are weak against vehicles? What about vehicle heavy armies? What about all vehicle armies? Can they handle them? Should they be able to handle them? What does "handle" mean in this context? Are there rules in play that make Orks deceptively strong against vehicles? Can they blow them up more easily than is apparent? Do they even have to? Can vehicles claim objectives? How important are objectives to the game? Have we even written the objective rules yet? Should we write them and then come back to Orks, or should we write Orks and keep them in mind when we write objectives?

But once the book is published..."Powerklaws are too expensive! Drop the price 10 points and they're perfect! Was that so hard? This book was written by an idiot!"

The 25 points for the klaw is a legacy from the time where powerfists ruled the battlefield and the difference between S8 and S10 was very significant. I suspect that they will fix it, or no one will ever take a power klaw again. 25 points is bonkers

 Ratius wrote:

This game isn't intended to be competitively balanced, it's intended to be sales driven balanced.

This basically. Sales > rules.

Yes. They reduced the cost of powerfists to sell all the new primaris that use them. The same for the ironclad over redemptors.

Makes perfect sense.

 Ratius wrote:

This game isn't intended to be competitively balanced, it's intended to be sales driven balanced.

This basically. Sales > rules.

Which breaks down the EXACT moment you realize that A) all the fancy new primaris kits that are coming are largely worse than the older equivalents people already have a million of despite having 2 chances to get it right and B) How, exactly does a 25 point powerclaw make money? Is it something like 1. 25pt powerclaw 2. ??? 3.??? 4. Profit?

Hate it however you want but the 'it's sales guh hurk a dur' thing has never made any sense. At no point in the history of warhammer has GW understood their own rules well enough to make something good on purpose without breaking the game or bad on purpose without tanking that unit's sales.

My opinion is, over the years, Ork playtesters have simply gotten used to overcosted options, and have learned to do more with less. Ork gamers, like the Orks in the game, are used to piecing together an army out of what other forces would consider garbage. It's so odd for Orks to have a useful, efficient unit that it feels wrong to design one for them.

Also, as already mentioned, many point costs are just based on how things worked in previous editions. This really hurts the power klaw, but it hasn't only affected Orks. I think infantry costs in general are still based on 7th edition (or really, 3rd edition). With the new damage table, AP 0 weaponry, and save modifiers, I think guardsmen (ignoring the conscripts fiasco) are much closer to space marines than the points indicate.

Orks also hurt here, because their shooting is overcosted even without hit modifiers, but they're priced like hit modifiers don't exist. Meanwhile the modifiers are being handed out like candy.

I'd go with "we are". Games Workshop have never really justified their points decisions beyond the vaguest of ideal "we're trying to make a good game", with occasionally an employee claiming how they think the game SHOULD work. Any actual claim of what id GW's work ethic or game philosophy is entirely guess work from the fan base, sometimes as a projection of how THEY think the game should work.

A good example being the 5th edition Mind Shackle Scarab. They could easily break assault units in half by themselves for very few points, and when people complained the excuse from others was "Well, necrons aren't an assault army, so we need something to defend to even the odds"

It really just an attempt to justify the rules when GW make a mistake (and they CAN make mistakes, regardless of how good they are or their attentions, and it's okay to admit that)

You also have to take into account the most likely users of these weapons.

Power fists are generaly taken by Sergeants and Terminators who have 2 attacks each and Str 4.

Power Claws are taken by Nobs who have 3 attacks each and Str 5.

Hence the discrepancy in points between the Power Fist and the Power Claw.

The SM have also had the price of their powerfist adjusted, while Orks haven't, since the SM codex came out, and all the Sx2 antitank melee weapons are overcosted.

While it looks like sometimes they account for the different base quality of the model, as IG Powerfists were 10 points and SM Powerfists were 20 [I don't know what they are now], sometimes they didn't, as Sisters and Space Marine Eviserators are both 22 points.

I believe SM fists are now 12. The Eviscerators are better than powerfists I believe, but they're still SUUUPER overpriced for mostly S3 models.

 daedalus wrote:
I believe SM fists are now 12. The Eviscerators are better than powerfists I believe, but they're still SUUUPER overpriced for mostly S3 models.

Eviserators are better by precisely 1 point of AP.

However, there's a huge difference between S6 and S8: Most tanks are T7.