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.

Except those aren't comparable. Gaming balance works on finding exploits and stress testing, it's more like figuring out the effectiveness on safety features in a particular car, and you can't find that our if you throw out any data that involves crashes because "it doesn't represent the whole".

 Luke_Prowler wrote:
Except those aren't comparable. Gaming balance works on finding exploits and stress testing, it's more like figuring out the effectiveness on safety features in a particular car, and you can't find that our if you throw out any data that involves crashes because "it doesn't represent the whole".

So 40k should be balanced around the most extreme waac lists and feth the rest?

No, the most extreme waac lists simply should be within 10% of the rest.

That's what balance is about.

 Luke_Prowler wrote:
Except those aren't comparable. Gaming balance works on finding exploits and stress testing, it's more like figuring out the effectiveness on safety features in a particular car, and you can't find that our if you throw out any data that involves crashes because "it doesn't represent the whole".

Well, car safety is only neede in extreme circumstances of a crash. That comparison makes no sense.

But if you wanna run with it, Magnus or Grey Knights are a very, very common crash possibly spoiling thousands of store and pick-up games every day. Balancing them better against the typical primaris army 12-year old Timmy or the all-Metal Footdar Aspect Host of the local gronard should be a high priority. Poxwalker-farm in contrast isnt a relevant issue outside of an exotic 3 or 4 events. It‘s not a high priority thing from a „crash-testing“-perspective.

 Jidmah wrote:
No, the most extreme waac lists simply should be within 10% of the rest.

That's what balance is about.

Yes, and thats why its problematic to use tournaments as the basis for balance.

jcd386 wrote:
While I do not think making all units (other than troops and whatever other exceptions are made) 0-3 solves all of the games problems, I am having trouble seeing how it would make the game worse.

I don't know if i have ever written a list or played against a list where i saw 4 or 6 or 8 of the same unit and though "oh yeah this game is going to be interesting." 3 of a unit tends to be about my threshold for where effective redundancy tips over into unimaginativeness.

I definitely think that most of the time we take 3+ of a unit because there is a balance issue of some kind (usually one unit is too good, or every other unit is too bad) and that those issues should be addressed, but in a perfect world of balance it seems to me that a 0-3 limitation would still be fine to promote variety, due to the inherent strength of unit redundancy, which is something that can be hard to balance under the current system.

So it seems to me that with minimal changes, a 0-3 system could work. I would probably be on board with certain factions having some exceptions for fluff reasons (SM bikers, deathwing, etc), and some other rule changes (like probably get rid of or limit most vehicle squadrons).

I am not sure that perfect balance for 40k will ever be attainable, but it seems like it would be easier to reach with a 0-3 limit than without.

The #1 reason why I have seen any army field more than 3 of anything is transports. Rhinos, Raiders, Wave Serpents, Trukks, Battlewagons, Chimeras, Drop Pods and probably some things I have missed have all been very army-defining models in the past. 0-3 limitation on those will kill all those armies for good.

 jhnbrg wrote:

 Luke_Prowler wrote:
Except those aren't comparable. Gaming balance works on finding exploits and stress testing, it's more like figuring out the effectiveness on safety features in a particular car, and you can't find that our if you throw out any data that involves crashes because "it doesn't represent the whole".

So 40k should be balanced around the most extreme waac lists and feth the rest?

Did I say that? I like to think I know myself pretty well, and I think that's not what I'm saying. Nor do I think GW only consider tournaments anyway, since they have their own staff playing games and they have have been introducing play testers to their rule making process. This is not some zero sum game that 40k can only get better causally or competitively.

 jhnbrg wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
No, the most extreme waac lists simply should be within 10% of the rest.

That's what balance is about.

Yes, and thats why its problematic to use tournaments as the basis for balance.

In order to bring the best within 10% of the rest, you need people capable of finding what the best is.

Sunny Side Up wrote:

If you‘re truly serious about making 40K more balanced, you must ignore that data at all costs.

That's what GW has been doing past 30 years. Thanks to that game is unbalanced crap.

hobojebus wrote:
Right I don't get why anyone takes gw at their word they have lied to us over and over.

I never have given the claim that everything was play tested much credence before the codex released but it should be clear by now they either Arnt playtesting with tournament players or they are and ignoring their input.

No way would you beta test grey knights and give your seal of approval, or let necrons release without points drops or a reworking of res protocals.

You really have to remember GW main audience is teenagers who are casual players, not WAAC competitive players, or even just low level competitive players.

I imagine GW don't playtest these weird hyper-competitve soup armies that perform in tourneys, they playtest normal builds with normal troops.

If the devs were any good there wouldn't be units better than others, guard codex is packed full of good choices, tau codex not so much.

It's that inconsistency that borks the game, it's wholly unfair to accuse people of being WaaC because they took good units over bad.

And tournament players are ideal for finding the combos that break the game so they can be addressed before they warp the meta.

This thread has been steadily devolving. GW needs to release this FAQ before we see sluggas shooting and chainswords flying

 Luke_Prowler wrote:

 jhnbrg wrote:

 Luke_Prowler wrote:
Except those aren't comparable. Gaming balance works on finding exploits and stress testing, it's more like figuring out the effectiveness on safety features in a particular car, and you can't find that our if you throw out any data that involves crashes because "it doesn't represent the whole".

So 40k should be balanced around the most extreme waac lists and feth the rest?

Did I say that? I like to think I know myself pretty well, and I think that's not what I'm saying. Nor do I think GW only consider tournaments anyway, since they have their own staff playing games and they have have been introducing play testers to their rule making process. This is not some zero sum game that 40k can only get better causally or competitively.

But it is a zero sum game, in order to make the game more suited for tournaments you have to make it worse for casual players, there is no other way.

You cant have 20+ different factions with many wildly different playstyles within each faction and make a perfectly balanced tournamnet game. In order to make it balanced a lot of units need to be squatted (not likely) or a lot of units need to be made the same.

No in order to balance they need to hire a statistician but they are too cheap to pay one enough.

 Tiberius501 wrote:
This thread has been steadily devolving. GW needs to release this FAQ before we see sluggas shooting and chainswords flying

There's so many reasons why they should have released it on April 1...

We get it, guys. You really, really hate the fact that some people play competitively.

Your casual, for fun lists don't bother me or anyone in a tournament. Cannot for the life of me understand why my/our lists throw you into a fury on the internet.

Please calm down and return to the topic at hand, instead of vaguely being rude to one another.

The only point I will concede is that some tournament players see every unit as crap if it isnt as good as the best one in his category.
"This unit cant survive one turn in the open unsupported vs 10 ynnary dark reapers? CRAP! Next one please."
And thats a problem, balance should go towards the middle. Those units you dont actually see much in tournaments but people agree that they feel right for the cost.

 jhnbrg wrote:
But it is a zero sum game, in order to make the game more suited for tournaments you have to make it worse for casual players, there is no other way.

You have failed to deliver proof of this statement multiple times, why do you keep preaching it?

 Luke_Prowler wrote:
Except those aren't comparable. Gaming balance works on finding exploits and stress testing, it's more like figuring out the effectiveness on safety features in a particular car, and you can't find that our if you throw out any data that involves crashes because "it doesn't represent the whole".

Finding expoits and stres testing is not how gaming balance works. That's how stres testing works. Wich is an important part of game balance, wich is an important part of game design, wich is an important part of GW's product.

A game is more than it's balance. If I want to play a perfectly balanced game I'll go play checkers or chess. Warhammer moslty need to fullfill the fantasy of recreating the fantastical battles of the 41st millenium. That is why balance is good for the game, but not everything good for the game is good for balance. And blanacing the different needs of the game and hobby is an important thing for Gw to do. That's why you can't just rely on tournament game(r)s for playtesting. It's not just about them or their playstyle, it's about everyone's.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Making the game better for one set of people does not automatically make it better or worse for another set of people.

Yeah, you dont only balance for the high ranking players.
How many games touch balance changes for things that are fine or even weak in tournaments but frustrating for new players (Nova in heroes of the storm for example)
A good balance team will balance for both crows, that have very different needs.
But people on the internet is to eager to discalify anything that isnt a tournament as not worth looking into.

Perhaps consider that tournaments are valuable in that they reveal the net-lists that will be stomping Timmy's face at the FLGS? If these top lists, which are fun in a competitive setting (fun being a relative term used here in the sense that both participants willingly engage each other with a common understanding and expectations), but are not fun at your FLGS when you're playing a pick-up game (or just getting into/coming back to the hobby, which the numbers appear to indicate people are), are dis-incentivized (or hamstrung), and lists NOT seen are incentivized, the game moves toward 'balance'.

The ideal is a mix of both. You *have* to include tournament data in your balancing because it's the top of the top, and the only real way to get consistent information. You start by taking the top 10% and bottom 10% of represented units, factor in their performance - then nerf the top and buff the bottom. That's the ideal - to shift everything towards the middle, over time, little by little.
Where you run into problems is that this isn't the top and bottom of all games. As people rightly say, this is a very small percentage of all games played - so buffing something that's underrepresented in tournament games can inadvertently create a monster in the 90% of games that are played outside of a tournament setting. A good example is 7th edition T'au - they only ever had middling performance in tournaments but would crush casual games and had a horrible reputation as a result.

'Great, use every other game as your balance testing then!' How? Unlike tournaments, GW don't have access to data from every game in every club and kitchen and basement and whatever. It's simply not possible at present. The only way to replicate is is have thousands of playtesters playing thousands of games; which they don't have. In the scheme of things, GW are a *tiny* company and really don't have the personpower or time resources to playtest things properly. They have their external playtest team - but they're made up of mostly tournament minded people, so have the same problems as just taking data from tournaments anyway.
How do they solve this? No idea. Find a way to start collecting data from all games played, I guess. It could be incorporated into the list construction app I guess, but it's very easy to game.
They absolutely can't just listen to people on the internet, that's a horrible idea. One person claiming (just an example, nothing personal) that Magnus and Grey Knights are OP doesn't mean they are. Just because I say that Death Guard are middling at best because I play with Plague Marines and Forge World dreads doesn't mean they are - you need data. Lots and lots of consistent data.

DCannon4Life wrote:
Perhaps consider that tournaments are valuable in that they reveal the net-lists that will be stomping Timmy's face at the FLGS? If these top lists, which are fun in a competitive setting (fun being a relative term used here in the sense that both participants willingly engage each other with a common understanding and expectations), but are not fun at your FLGS when you're playing a pick-up game (or just getting into/coming back to the hobby, which the numbers appear to indicate people are), are dis-incentivized (or hamstrung), and lists NOT seen are incentivized, the game moves toward 'balance'.

+1 internet for that 79 word long sentence.

Warhammer 40k is probably pretty tough to keep balanced. A lot of the "fun and fluffy" things that get added can quickly be subverted for ultra-competitive play. The detachment system allows for some really fluffy armies, but also allows competitive players to spam the top units in a given army with little and sometimes no "tax unit" requirement.

I really wish GW would do what FFG does with a lot of their games. FFG tends to have a "rule reference", which tells you how to play the game, and then also a "tournament document", which tells you how to run a organized play, competitive event. I think GW sort of tried to do this with the Open/Narrative being for "everyone" and Matched being for the competitive players. I think they really needed to offer a structure for "competitive casual" and then a stricter set of army building requirements for "competitive tournament". They really needed Open/Narrative, Matched and Tournament modes.

 Kriswall wrote:

DCannon4Life wrote:
Perhaps consider that tournaments are valuable in that they reveal the net-lists that will be stomping Timmy's face at the FLGS? If these top lists, which are fun in a competitive setting (fun being a relative term used here in the sense that both participants willingly engage each other with a common understanding and expectations), but are not fun at your FLGS when you're playing a pick-up game (or just getting into/coming back to the hobby, which the numbers appear to indicate people are), are dis-incentivized (or hamstrung), and lists NOT seen are incentivized, the game moves toward 'balance'.

+1 internet for that 79 word long sentence.

Warhammer 40k is probably pretty tough to keep balanced. A lot of the "fun and fluffy" things that get added can quickly be subverted for ultra-competitive play. The detachment system allows for some really fluffy armies, but also allows competitive players to spam the top units in a given army with little and sometimes no "tax unit" requirement.

I really wish GW would do what FFG does with a lot of their games. FFG tends to have a "rule reference", which tells you how to play the game, and then also a "tournament document", which tells you how to run a organized play, competitive event. I think GW sort of tried to do this with the Open/Narrative being for "everyone" and Matched being for the competitive players. I think they really needed to offer a structure for "competitive casual" and then a stricter set of army building requirements for "competitive tournament". They really needed Open/Narrative, Matched and Tournament modes.

I think most of the "WHAT ABOUT POOR LITTLE TIMMY?!?" arguments are mostly overblown and/or faux concern. But I agree that there's a clear difference between 'casual-competitive' play and 'competitive' play, and that lumping them both under 'matched' play probably doesn't serve either category as well as it could.

 Cephalobeard wrote:
We get it, guys. You really, really hate the fact that some people play competitively.

Your casual, for fun lists don't bother me or anyone in a tournament. Cannot for the life of me understand why my/our lists throw you into a fury on the internet.

Please calm down and return to the topic at hand, instead of vaguely being rude to one another.

Don't flagrantly misrepresent people view point, it's beneath you. They are not hating a certain aspect of the game, they simply recognize that it's flawed to use house ruled formats to patch the game proper.

I play both competitively and casually, I get exactly where they are coming from. Being good at adepticon or LVO really has zero baring on 90% of the actual game. They are a format built upon house rules, made up missions and in a timed format. You practice the format and specific missions more then you practice the actually rules proper, which ironically is why so many errors keep popping up on streams.

Here's an example of on e of the best tournament format players in the world, if not the best, losing to a list that would be laughed to hell and back on any competitive forum, to a store casual player nobody has probably heard of. How? Because he isn't playing a tournament pack, he's really good at busting specific tournaments when you give him lead time to practice. So what they need to do is hire a few of these guys so they can control for the variables themselves. I mean in the video he even admits to not knowing anything about a redemptor dread. Good luck getting units balanced from that crowd without specifically controlling the input.




Now, if GW hired a few of these guys to fly in twice a year and playtest the crap out of certain rules and mechanics etc. thats a whole other hog. BTW this isn't to say that GW reaching out to the tournament scene is bad. But adjusting the game over and over based on that one data set is bad. Half of the things currently wrong with the game are in the core rules anyway. Matched play rules, force org charts, how armies are built, characters, smite and moral mechanics. The lack of tank shock is also one of the biggest factors. They can tweak the codexes to hell and back and the game will still suffer from problems until they address those things.

 Red Corsair wrote:
Here's an example of on e of the best tournament format players in the world, if not the best, losing to a list that would be laughed to hell and back on any competitive forum, to a store casual player nobody has probably heard of. How? Because he isn't playing a tournament pack, he's really good at busting specific tournaments when you give him lead time to practice. So what they need to do is hire a few of these guys so they can control for the variables themselves. I mean in the video he even admits to not knowing anything about a redemptor dread. Good luck getting units balanced from that crowd without specifically controlling the input.

This may be an overstatement.

While I'm sure players like Nick practice the mission pack ahead of time, this video really illustrates is how fragile any list can be. The fact Chaos was not able to encircle its targets is what decided the game, there are no auto-wins.

Competitive / tournament players annoy me as much as anyone, but dismissing their feedback due to the nature of mission packs ignores the knowledge of tactics / strategy they build by playing the game repetitively. I don't see them as stress testers so much as power users, they are going to figure out how to get the most out of the rules.

I wouldn't mind if GW took their feedback a little more seriously than other players, if I knew they were also thinking about the units competitive users don't use. My concern is more about bad units being overshadowed by good units, which makes it hard to run fluffy lists.

https://www.facebook.com/Warhammer-40000-Deutsch-420830645026189/?hc_ref=ARSuDrS5mBSz0E4lkOf_NoibM8dXI2X64u_abxw2GqUEppzRExVx9MfEbnSplDJGR70&fref=nf

THE BIG FAQ IS TODAY ACCORDING TO THE GERMAN OFFICIAL 40,000 PAGE.

hobojebus wrote:
No in order to balance they need to hire a statistician but they are too cheap to pay one enough.

In the lootas thread math was used to make Lootas "as durable" as marines per point. This resulted in 9ppm Lootas, which is about the worst thing you could do. Just because someone can do math doesn't mean they understand the game.

It will be released today guys, the german 40k page released a little statement. Finally the dark days are over

Iago40k wrote:
It will be released today guys, the german 40k page released a little statement. Finally the dark days are over

Linky? Screenshotty?