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I do see a lot of the word "incompetent" thrown around, but in the defense of the Game Designers, they're working in a very tight spot...

After all, Forge World is a different team from GW, and who knows who made Chapter Approved. Did they cooperate for the first time ever? Did FW submit points changes expecting them to be edited but they were accepted without question? Did GW's game designers do them? Was there marketing involved in trying to push Apoc by nerfing fun units in regular play?

I think to call the game designers "incompetent" is uncalled for, without having more data on what happened.

I think it's entirely possible that the whole thing was written by Warhammer Community based on facebook comments, lol.

I'm almost certain the entirety of Chapter Approved's points changes were not done by the Game Designers alone; presumably, they are following someone else's directives.

Look, I can admit that they could be probably be under-manned and for sure the schedule is tight.
But is quite a long time that they cannot put out a decent ruleset to save their life. 8th is better than the previous 2 edition but at the cost of good elements of the game. And the more they add complexity to their system, the more they are overwhelmed by it, or forget completely some army.
8th was a good chance to reset but is going off rail quickly and some basic concept like how they translated areas effects and template is inherently flawed. So much that they have to hotfix so many of the tanks and similar units.
And speaking of Forgeworld, I think that GW played a number of them with CA. Again, I would argue, after that time they wrote the 6th edition guard codex.

 Kaiyanwang wrote:
Look, I can admit that they could be probably be under-manned and for sure the schedule is tight.
But is quite a long time that they cannot put out a decent ruleset to save their life. 8th is better than the previous 2 edition but at the cost of good elements of the game. And the more they add complexity to their system, the more they are overwhelmed by it, or forget completely some army.
And speaking of Forgeworld, I think that GW played a number of them with CA. Again, I would argue, after that time they wrote the 6th edition guard codex.

I think a "decent ruleset" is subjective. After all, I really enjoyed playing every edition except perhaps 7th, but I played the Horus Heresy and had a blast with 7th, so I'd consider it decent. I've been having a huge amount of fun in 8th, so it's decent too, to me. And I super love the way they translated templates / area of effect weapons, but to each their own I suppose.

And I think the Game Designers aren't "overwhelmed" by complexity or "forget" armies. I don't even know what you mean by "overwhelmed", and as for "forgetting" armies, I'm almost positive it isn't the Games Designers who decide when armies get released or fixed. I don't think they sit at their desk and go "I'll work on SOB this year, we'll release the new SOB Dex in march!"

 Unit1126PLL wrote:


And I think the Game Designers aren't "overwhelmed" by complexity or "forget" armies. I don't even know what you mean by "overwhelmed"

They can't handle all these units and rules and end up being unable to balance the game, forget mechanics when writing a rule, not consider a given rule interaction, and so on. They write a system too complex for their skill to handle. This is a fact, and it keeps happening.

and as for "forgetting" armies, I'm almost positive it isn't the Games Designers who decide when armies get released or fixed. I don't think they sit at their desk and go "I'll work on SOB this year, we'll release the new SOB Dex in march!"

Ask Grey Knight and Ork player if they think they are treated equally.
Now, you make a point that, say, codex release is not in the hand of the design team but
(I) in the moment the rules are written, such rule writing can be badly be well executed. And it's on the design team
(II) even if the decision of releasing/updating or not a given faction in a given moment is not to the designers, and their tight/difficult work schedule is due to mismanagement, I'd argue that the blame for the mess is still within GW.

 Kaiyanwang wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:


And I think the Game Designers aren't "overwhelmed" by complexity or "forget" armies. I don't even know what you mean by "overwhelmed"

They can't handle all these units and rules and end up being unable to balance the game, forget mechanics when writing a rule, not consider a given rule interaction, and so on. They write a system too complex for their skill to handle. This is a fact, and it keeps happening.

and as for "forgetting" armies, I'm almost positive it isn't the Games Designers who decide when armies get released or fixed. I don't think they sit at their desk and go "I'll work on SOB this year, we'll release the new SOB Dex in march!"

Ask Grey Knight and Ork player if they think they are treated equally.
Now, you make a point that, say, codex release is not in the hand of the design team but
(I) in the moment the rules are written, such rule writing can be badly be well executed. And it's on the design team
(II) even if the decision of releasing/updating or not a given faction in a given moment is not to the designers, and their tight/difficult work schedule is due to mismanagement, I'd argue that the blame for the mess is still within GW.

Yes, the first one I understand what you mean now and I agree with. I'd perhaps argue that it's less outright "incompetence" and more, perhaps, their ambition getting the best of them, but yes.

The second point (or two points as you have it divided up) is ... well, let me address it the way you have it there.

(I) Yes, this is true, but I haven't actually seen any example of rules being badly executed. I think that's subjective, again, but in my opinion, the rules in general seem to function just fine - they may not be balanced, but again, that could be due to myriad factors. It's entirely possible that Grey Knights, for example, was designed and playtested versus weaker Index lists, while Astra Militarum was designed and playtested alongside similar-release-date codices like Eldar and Tyranids. Whether or not this is on the Design Team depends on who determined the playtest schedule and how they conducted the playtest.

(II) Oh, yes, it's absolutely GW's fault. I'm not white-knighting for GW here, I'm just asking people not to bandy about words like "incompetent" that can have serious career ramifications if these rules designers ever want to actually move beyond GW. They may be mismanaged, mistreated, and are probably underpaid, but they're not automatically incompetent. There's a lot that goes in to balancing and releasing the codices, and things like Chapter Approved, and I guarantee you that most of the stuff isn't really that related to game design and has more to do with marketing/mismanagement (i.e. making the big scaries unplayable in Matched Play really pushes Apocalypse).

I think that we either agree or have to agree to disagree on the rest, but I am honestly baffled by the decisions on FW.
Not everything was increased right? The Spartan got better, right? The dreadclaw?
Maybe there is a logic behind, dunno. The spartan and the dreadclaw are close enough to LR and pods to be considered Kosher?

If I had to guess at the logic (and this is completely a guess) - it is easier (and kinder to the playerbase) to start from scratch rebalancing something by making it completely unusably expensive, then decreasing the points incrementally until you start seeing the unit in tournaments or at events in the numbers you were hoping for.

E.g. Hypothetical Unit X needs rebalancing, but I don't know how to do it, but I know I'd like to see ~30% of all Imperial Guard lists include it. So I'm going to make it 2000 points, which means 0% of Guard lists at events include it. So now I make it 1500, six months later - still 0. Then I make it 1000, then eventually 800, then 600, then it starts to show up in 10% of lists, so I be more careful: 550, 15%. 500: 20%. 450: 30%.

Turns out the unit is really worth 450 points, but it's better to start from 2000 and go down than start at 150 and have the entire meta shift and fracture around Hypothetical Unit X, and then go up.

That's just a wild guess though.

Honestly, the more I hear about CA, the more I think it deserves its price point. There's a ton of new rules, missions, apoc, stratagems, etc, that's worthy of a book imo.

Though, I do feel like the points adjustment should be posted somewhere in their errata section.

 Kap'n Krump wrote:
Honestly, the more I hear about CA, the more I think it deserves its price point. There's a ton of new rules, missions, apoc, stratagems, etc, that's worthy of a book imo.

Though, I do feel like the points adjustment should be posted somewhere in their errata section.

Exactly. I don't mind paying for new missions, new relics, new stratagems, all that. I do mind paying for points fixes.

We've known since 8th editions release that a yearly Chapter Approved would be published with updated point costs.

Chapter Approved has more than enough new material to justify it's cover price. It's basically the Warhammer 40,000 8.1 update.