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 MagicJuggler wrote:


If the game were competitive, there wouldn't be so many obvious discrepancies (Take Brimsto...I mean Pink Horrors!). Not to say that a game will be perfectly balanced (banning Akuma is common and Old Sagat is an interesting edgecase), but cycling units is innately a sign of the game itself being broken rather than units per se.

GW isn't cycling units. They're slapping things as they pop up.

Worse, they're listening 100% to and reacting to feedback from the very people who are continually looking for exploits/loopholes/min-maxing combos. They're never going to catch up, because the competitive ITC crowd is going to be one step ahead of them.

Wayniac wrote:
Worse, they're listening 100% to and reacting to feedback from the very people who are continually looking for exploits/loopholes/min-maxing combos. They're never going to catch up, because the competitive ITC crowd is going to be one step ahead of them.

Catch and 'fix' the excess, leave that which is powerful but fine. The point isn't to nerf what is the best, but that which is 'to good'.

Ordana wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
Worse, they're listening 100% to and reacting to feedback from the very people who are continually looking for exploits/loopholes/min-maxing combos. They're never going to catch up, because the competitive ITC crowd is going to be one step ahead of them.

Catch and 'fix' the excess, leave that which is powerful but fine. The point isn't to nerf what is the best, but that which is 'to good'.

Making a unit a never-take instead of an auto-take is not a fix.

 MagicJuggler wrote:

Ordana wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
Worse, they're listening 100% to and reacting to feedback from the very people who are continually looking for exploits/loopholes/min-maxing combos. They're never going to catch up, because the competitive ITC crowd is going to be one step ahead of them.

Catch and 'fix' the excess, leave that which is powerful but fine. The point isn't to nerf what is the best, but that which is 'to good'.

Making a unit a never-take instead of an auto-take is not a fix.

Progress of a sort.

Wayniac wrote:
Worse, they're listening 100% to and reacting to feedback from the very people who are continually looking for exploits/loopholes/min-maxing combos. They're never going to catch up, because the competitive ITC crowd is going to be one step ahead of them.

So the ITC people are not the ones looking for exploits/loopholes/min-maxing combos?
Don't we want them to address those things?

Stormravens, smite spam, brimtones, and conscripts weren't problems that needed addressing?

I'm sure they'll always be a step behind, because it's basically impossible to predict the future and changes need to be in place for a few months anyway to prevent knee-jerk reactions.

Yeah, I would think that ideally the people who are actively looking for exploits, loopholes, and other ways to break the game without actually breaking the rules are the exact type of person they should be listening to, if their goal is to actually address these issues with the game as they pop up. You won't learn gak from the casual player who just plays with whatever they have, makes up their own rules, never plays competitively, and always says that everything is fine because they play the "right" way.

Nothing necessarily wrong with that kind of player, but they aren't going to do much to help when other players just get fed up and quit playing (and buying) one day because they're tired of playing against min/max combos and "broken" stuff. You need people to break the game in order to fix it...in fact that's basically what playtesters are supposed to do, if I'm not mistaken.

 Sidstyler wrote:
Yeah, I would think that ideally the people who are actively looking for exploits, loopholes, and other ways to break the game without actually breaking the rules are the exact type of person they should be listening to, if their goal is to actually address these issues with the game as they pop up. You won't learn gak from the casual player who just plays with whatever they have, makes up their own rules, never plays competitively, and always says that everything is fine because they play the "right" way.

Nothing necessarily wrong with that kind of player, but they aren't going to do much to help when other players just get fed up and quit playing (and buying) one day because they're tired of playing against min/max combos and "broken" stuff. You need people to break the game in order to fix it...in fact that's basically what playtesters are supposed to do, if I'm not mistaken.

You are not mistaken. That is exactly what playtesters are supposed to be doing.

nou wrote:
What have always puzzled me in this context is that at least scenario-related rules like that can be made 100% ballanced if you just play double match with reversed roles. Faction-specific scenarios/scenery are a bit tougher to account for, but there is pretty much nothing against "forging a narrative" in which those features suit other factions as well. This is the very area of 40K where all blame is on the players and not on GW. This puzzles me even more in 8th, where not only "competetive" or "tournament" mindset but very matched play rules strip so much flavour away...

a) not all have time for 2 games in row. Especially with 8th ed that seems to take even longer than ever
b) many of those scenarios might not work that well with just flipping side. Say one side is supposed to have bigger army. Are you expected to carry 2 army lists? Could get tricky to carry.
c) Obviously swapping armies literally(as in I play with your models, you play with mine) is not going to fly well. Now my models aren't painted that well that I would worry too much. However resin models if they break I expect them to pay back but that requires being able to trust on his words. And what about guys whose painting is good enough it would really be of bummer if you scratch their models(this btw is one reason why one of the most stupid ideas GW had with AOS was measure to base which could literally force players to put models on top of other players models! NOBODY does that period to my models and I don't do that to others. That's just basic politeness to ensure you don't damage other players bases or models. Not to mention the way my bases are made they aren't flat so putting other base over one isn't as easy as it might sound)

tneva82 wrote:

nou wrote:
What have always puzzled me in this context is that at least scenario-related rules like that can be made 100% ballanced if you just play double match with reversed roles. Faction-specific scenarios/scenery are a bit tougher to account for, but there is pretty much nothing against "forging a narrative" in which those features suit other factions as well. This is the very area of 40K where all blame is on the players and not on GW. This puzzles me even more in 8th, where not only "competetive" or "tournament" mindset but very matched play rules strip so much flavour away...

a) not all have time for 2 games in row. Especially with 8th ed that seems to take even longer than ever

This is a confusing statement for me. Not the 2 games in a row bit. I agree with that because... sometimes you just don't have time. But 8th takes WAY less time than 7th. Games that took 4-6 hours in 7th take me 1.5-2 hours in 8th. 8th is miles easier, no charts, no random rolls, no random damage tables, no 3 different books to understand a single datasheet. How are your 8th games taking longer?

It is good to keep in mind that all balancing is always going to be a game of "catching up". This most of us know who have been playing computer games for the past decades. You can only playtest so much before releasing it into the wild as you have a finite supply of playtesters. Plus, when they release a new model, they screw up the entire balance and synergy of the army. Pretty much the same what happens in LoL and HotS when they introduce a new hero.

The big problem is that I would love point balancing from GW to be faster. I would love if they just had a "patchnotes" first Monday of the month or every other month that had all the points of the games updated. That would, however, sell less books so I doubt they will ever do that.

Regarding scenarios I personally would love to see "GW-approved" table setups that could be used to balance the game against. It would at least give us(and them) a general idea what to go for.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

This is a confusing statement for me. Not the 2 games in a row bit. I agree with that because... sometimes you just don't have time. But 8th takes WAY less time than 7th. Games that took 4-6 hours in 7th take me 1.5-2 hours in 8th. 8th is miles easier, no charts, no random rolls, no random damage tables, no 3 different books to understand a single datasheet. How are your 8th games taking longer?

I agree that 8th is much shorter, but for some reason battles against IG take ages due to the fact that they can now split-fire at will and that often means that the player agonizes over every single lasgun and mortar decision. Maybe tneva82 is playing with or against IG a lot?

It depends of what armies you're playing. Orks for example are quite popular as a horde army in 8th edition and each mek gun counts as an independent unit once deployed even if they were part of the same battery. Moving all those infantries, throwing lots of dice, split firing, etc contribute to make the game longer, in 7th edition orks tipycally didn't have that many bodies and rely on transports.

According to my experience there's no real difference between 7th and 8th in terms of time required to play a game. It's just easier to table opponents or to force them to concede when you play codex vs index.

tneva82 wrote:

nou wrote:
What have always puzzled me in this context is that at least scenario-related rules like that can be made 100% ballanced if you just play double match with reversed roles. Faction-specific scenarios/scenery are a bit tougher to account for, but there is pretty much nothing against "forging a narrative" in which those features suit other factions as well. This is the very area of 40K where all blame is on the players and not on GW. This puzzles me even more in 8th, where not only "competetive" or "tournament" mindset but very matched play rules strip so much flavour away...

a) not all have time for 2 games in row. Especially with 8th ed that seems to take even longer than ever
b) many of those scenarios might not work that well with just flipping side. Say one side is supposed to have bigger army. Are you expected to carry 2 army lists? Could get tricky to carry.
c) Obviously swapping armies literally(as in I play with your models, you play with mine) is not going to fly well. Now my models aren't painted that well that I would worry too much. However resin models if they break I expect them to pay back but that requires being able to trust on his words. And what about guys whose painting is good enough it would really be of bummer if you scratch their models(this btw is one reason why one of the most stupid ideas GW had with AOS was measure to base which could literally force players to put models on top of other players models! NOBODY does that period to my models and I don't do that to others. That's just basic politeness to ensure you don't damage other players bases or models. Not to mention the way my bases are made they aren't flat so putting other base over one isn't as easy as it might sound)

@ a) you can always make a photo of terrain layout and play a rematch next week, recreating terrain. With typical FLGS terrain even having exact same pieces isn't usually necessary. I've done this many times. No real problem unless you only play one-off pickup games with strangers.
@ b) just make so that a smaller list is a subset of the larger that is standard 2000pts you would carry nevertheless. No real, unsolvable problem here either.
@ c) that is indeed doable only with trusted friend / frequent play companion, but is perfectly avoidable, see above.

The issue with letting high-end competitive players dictate changes is that it's a double-edged sword. Yes, in theory those types of players should be the ones you want to listen to for balance, because they are the ones breaking things. However, it seems that they have a vested interest in NOT balancing the game, because they feel list building and finding exploitative combos are the key skill in Warhammer, so would you trust people to balance the game when they don't want the balance in the first place, because they feel finding the loopholes/min-maxing to be of utmost import?

Wayniac wrote:
The issue with letting high-end competitive players dictate changes is that it's a double-edged sword. Yes, in theory those types of players should be the ones you want to listen to for balance, because they are the ones breaking things. However, it seems that they have a vested interest in NOT balancing the game, because they feel list building and finding exploitative combos are the key skill in Warhammer, so would you trust people to balance the game when they don't want the balance in the first place, because they feel finding the loopholes/min-maxing to be of utmost import?

Which is why most companies don't rely exclusively on feedback from players.

Still, competitive feedback is generally better for fixing balance and rules issues, but you still want to have your paid, professional game developers to go over everything again with a fine toothed comb. GW is still struggling with that aspect, clearly.

Plus, its entirely unknown the amount (if any) playtesters are actively seeking to NOT balance the game. I'd argue that most dedicated, competitive minded gamers would work towards the best balance so that their victories are more attributed to their skill, not in the game's inherent flaws. The outliers to this wouldn't be significant enough to somehow skew the game in a meaningful way. Any issues that would continue in the game would be entirely on the fault of the devs, who ultimately have the final say anyways.

Wayniac wrote:
The issue with letting high-end competitive players dictate changes is that it's a double-edged sword. Yes, in theory those types of players should be the ones you want to listen to for balance, because they are the ones breaking things. However, it seems that they have a vested interest in NOT balancing the game, because they feel list building and finding exploitative combos are the key skill in Warhammer, so would you trust people to balance the game when they don't want the balance in the first place, because they feel finding the loopholes/min-maxing to be of utmost import?

No. Players who want list building to be a major element are going to work for balance, because list building is not a brag-worthy skill element if it is easy. If you have blatantly unbalanced stuff then why would anyone respect you for your skill in taking the blatantly overpowered thing that everyone knows you take if you want to win? It narrows the skill and respect gap between the top competitive players and the netlisting hordes who copy the obvious best list. What that player wants is the ability to identify the best thing and use it to their advantage, but for figuring out that strategy to be difficult. And that means improving balance by removing overpowered outliers and narrowing the power range to a point where fewer players are able to simply take the obvious thing and win. Sure, the self-interested competitive players might not get you all the way to perfect balance, but they're going to get you a lot closer than GW has ever come. And then you have the competitive players with an ego investment in being right about game balance, whether it's to impress everyone or simply to solve the interesting puzzle. Those players are going to give you accurate feedback on balance because the alternative is to admit that they aren't right.

The most dangerous player type for balance feedback is casual players, not competitive players. They tend to lack the rules and metagame knowledge to give accurate feedback, and are often single-faction players who are extremely prone to bias in favor of their pet faction. The last thing you want is something like a casual IG player who loses all the time against competitive players because they don't ever invest enough time to learn to play well saying "buff infantry squads to 3ppm and make plasma free, IG are too weak".

 Lance845 wrote:

This is a confusing statement for me. Not the 2 games in a row bit. I agree with that because... sometimes you just don't have time. But 8th takes WAY less time than 7th. Games that took 4-6 hours in 7th take me 1.5-2 hours in 8th. 8th is miles easier, no charts, no random rolls, no random damage tables, no 3 different books to understand a single datasheet. How are your 8th games taking longer?

I find that up to around 1750, games are easily playable in a couple hours. Hit 2000 points, what seems to be the most popular points bracket, the length of a game jumps to 3-4 hours for some reason even with experienced players.

So I missed a lot during my weekend, but yeah.

Peregrine, I remember going around and around with you about what my Armoured Battlegroup should run way back in 5th. I had to have 10 tanks, because that's what's fluffy for a "regulation" Imperial Guard armoured company, and I think you hated me for it and said "why would you even ask for advice" even though I had 400-500 odd points left over, which is what I was asking about.

At the end of the day, CAAC is bad because they'd see those 10 Leman Russes (or 3 Superheavy Tanks now, in my case; boy how times change) or <insert fairly competitive but not that great list here>, and throw a hissy fit.

ON THE OTHER HAND,

you can also have people like Peregrine who, instead of helping me make my list a bit better with the extra 400-500 points while respecting my wishes about what the core of the list was, completely decide that I must be an incompetent fop unworthy of their attentions because I had the audacity to not bow to their every whim when it came to optimizing my list. So instead of improving my 10-LRBT list to make it a more fun and interesting list with a good 25% of the points left to spend, I instead got embroiled in an argument and probably ended up with a less fun list at the end.

*shrug* both extremes are bad.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
So I missed a lot during my weekend, but yeah.

Peregrine, I remember going around and around with you about what my Armoured Battlegroup should run way back in 5th. I had to have 10 tanks, because that's what's fluffy for a "regulation" Imperial Guard armoured company, and I think you hated me for it and said "why would you even ask for advice" even though I had 400-500 odd points left over, which is what I was asking about.

At the end of the day, CAAC is bad because they'd see those 10 Leman Russes (or 3 Superheavy Tanks now, in my case; boy how times change) or <insert fairly competitive but not that great list here>, and throw a hissy fit.

ON THE OTHER HAND,

you can also have people like Peregrine who, instead of helping me make my list a bit better with the extra 400-500 points while respecting my wishes about what the core of the list was, completely decide that I must be an incompetent fop unworthy of their attentions because I had the audacity to not bow to their every whim when it came to optimizing my list. So instead of improving my 10-LRBT list to make it a more fun and interesting list with a good 25% of the points left to spend, I instead got embroiled in an argument and probably ended up with a less fun list at the end.

*shrug* both extremes are bad.

This. They guy stomping on some player who plays an Imperial Fist army with centurions, whirlwinds and land speeders with Ynarri Dark Reaper spam is just as bad as the guy throwing a fit and leaving a game because their opponent brought Mortarion in a pure Death Guard list.

Wayniac wrote:
The issue with letting high-end competitive players dictate changes is that it's a double-edged sword. Yes, in theory those types of players should be the ones you want to listen to for balance, because they are the ones breaking things. However, it seems that they have a vested interest in NOT balancing the game, because they feel list building and finding exploitative combos are the key skill in Warhammer, so would you trust people to balance the game when they don't want the balance in the first place, because they feel finding the loopholes/min-maxing to be of utmost import?

Keep in mind that the majority of players will never know how much balancing has happened, because the playtesters have all signed NDA's prohibiting them from discussing most of their involvement. It's a bit disingenuous to throw shade on them like this, because for all we know they caught 99 other problems, but commissars/dark reapers/storm ravens/etc. made it through the rounds.

It should also be noted that just because playtesting is done, does not necessarily mean identified issues are acted on.

Having done video game QA many moons ago, QA finds all sorts of issues that make it into games and programs because Dev either doesn't care, doesn't have the resources to fix it, or simply never gets told.

 Vaktathi wrote:
It should also be noted that just because playtesting is done, does not necessarily mean identified issues are acted on.

Having done video game QA many moons ago, QA finds all sorts of issues that make it into games and programs because Dev either doesn't care, doesn't have the resources to fix it, or simply never gets told.

Having been on the developer/design side of the same process, I confirm that from the other end. The issues are there and sometimes they get shipped anyways for any number of reasons.

Edit: We thank you for your service! Games QA can suuuuuuck.

strepp wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
The issue with letting high-end competitive players dictate changes is that it's a double-edged sword. Yes, in theory those types of players should be the ones you want to listen to for balance, because they are the ones breaking things. However, it seems that they have a vested interest in NOT balancing the game, because they feel list building and finding exploitative combos are the key skill in Warhammer, so would you trust people to balance the game when they don't want the balance in the first place, because they feel finding the loopholes/min-maxing to be of utmost import?

Keep in mind that the majority of players will never know how much balancing has happened, because the playtesters have all signed NDA's prohibiting them from discussing most of their involvement. It's a bit disingenuous to throw shade on them like this, because for all we know they caught 99 other problems, but commissars/dark reapers/storm ravens/etc. made it through the rounds.

This. Even companies like WotC, who do ridiculously amounts of play testing and QA loops for MtG drop the ball from time to time. Last minute changes, "play testing meta" (when play testing evolves a meta that does not match the actual meta after release) or combos that no one has thought about have caused major balance issues multiple times in the last two decades - and WotC has been doing what GW just started doing now since combo winter almost killed the game in 1998.

I thought it was the ITC organisers and top players who playtested 8th and would continue to do so for future releases or did I read that wrong? I'm sure that was on one of the early Warhammer Community posts for 8th.

Broken combos should be patched. This is something MTG does after every release. There is a restricted /banned list for a reason.

Or are we to believe that non-competitive players want Dark Reapers to be insanely broken? What happens if in your casual gaming group, someone makes a dark reaper list just by chance. "These models are my favorite. I'm going to bring 20 of them!" What do you do?

Just because tournament and competitive play highlights these issues, doesn't mean they wouldn't come to light eventually anyway. You don't have to be a genius to spot an undercosted unit.

 Marmatag wrote:
Broken combos should be patched. This is something MTG does after every release. There is a restricted /banned list for a reason.

Or are we to believe that non-competitive players want Dark Reapers to be insanely broken? What happens if in your casual gaming group, someone makes a dark reaper list just by chance. "These models are my favorite. I'm going to bring 20 of them!" What do you do?

Just because tournament and competitive play highlights these issues, doesn't mean they wouldn't come to light eventually anyway. You don't have to be a genius to spot an undercosted unit.

"They can't be someone's favorite model because the models are bad and made of Finecast so it won't happen".

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
Broken combos should be patched. This is something MTG does after every release. There is a restricted /banned list for a reason.

Or are we to believe that non-competitive players want Dark Reapers to be insanely broken? What happens if in your casual gaming group, someone makes a dark reaper list just by chance. "These models are my favorite. I'm going to bring 20 of them!" What do you do?

Just because tournament and competitive play highlights these issues, doesn't mean they wouldn't come to light eventually anyway. You don't have to be a genius to spot an undercosted unit.

"They can't be someone's favorite model because the models are bad and made of Finecast so it won't happen".

Because the second hand market and long time players don't exist do they?

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Peregrine, I remember going around and around with you about what my Armoured Battlegroup should run way back in 5th. I had to have 10 tanks, because that's what's fluffy for a "regulation" Imperial Guard armoured company, and I think you hated me for it and said "why would you even ask for advice" even though I had 400-500 odd points left over, which is what I was asking about.

I didn't hate you for it, but it was a perfect example of a very irritating trend. You get completely stuck on the idea of having exactly one list (usually based on misconceptions about how the fluff works) and then defend it to the death, finding a reason why every suggestion anyone gives you (whether it's how to improve your win rate or how to make the game more enjoyable for your opponents, or even how to improve the fluff) is unacceptable and you need to continue playing the exact list that you're using.

As for the thread in question, you posted a list with zero scoring units in it (back in 6th, when only non-vehicle troops could score), not a list that was a bit less than tournament-optimized. That's a list that automatically loses every game you play, a completely non-viable option. Even dumping your entire remaining points into scoring units would just get you to the level of "my opponent is not wasting their time by slaughtering me", not to the point of being a good list outside of the absolute weakest environments. And sure, playing very weak lists because of stubborn loyalty to a fluff concept, as incorrect as it may be, is something you have a right to do. But it's annoying when people post threads in the tactics section, the place where you seek advice on how to win the game, and then ignore any advice on how to win the game that isn't "do what you're already doing". Maybe you personally weren't guilty of it that time, but a lot of those threads seem to be coming from people who have zero interest in tactics discussion and just want to hear people tell them how awesome they are at 40k and how all of their ideas are the best ever.

I'm fairly certain it was the army list section, not the tactics section.

And as for what I wanted to hear... I'm fairly certain I was asking what to do with the last 400-500 points. That can range from "what is optimal" (which is how you see it) to "what is cool-looking" or "what is fluffy" or "what would you like to see, mr Random Internet Guy?".

It was asking what 4 or 500 points of stuff would compliment 10 tanks (3 Vanquishers, 5 Battle Tanks, 2 Demolishers), and I was asking mostly anyone, not just optimizers.

And yes, I did damn near lose every game I play. And you know what? I never met anyone who hated playing me except the CAACs who just tore their own eyes out at the idea someone could use 10 LRBTs. The most competitive player in my area tabled me effortlessly with Grey Knights in 5th (not that he had to, as I couldn't score), and then turned around and told me it was the most enjoyable game he'd ever had.

So I'll continue to play unoptimized lists (or even lists that lose every game, try not to have an aneurysm) and when I ask for the last few points I could throw down to mix it up and make things look good on the table top, I'll make sure to put in the thread title something about "Peregrine Beware" or somesuch, just so you don't get confused and distraught over the idea that I have a certain way I like to play and it's not the same as yours.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

And yes, I did damn near lose every game I play. And you know what? I never met anyone who hated playing me except the CAACs who just tore their own eyes out at the idea someone could use 10 LRBTs.

Had these people not heard of entire tank regiments?