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.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

jcd386 wrote:
I think most people who get pick up games are wanting a fairly competitive experience. Competitive meaning they have a fair chance of winning.

GW has to try and create a ruleset that works for the most people possible.

Your lists already have to follow a bunch of rules. You use points, right? How about detachments? Battleforged? And so on. All of these are limitations in place to provide balance to the game. The rule of three is no different, it was just late to the party.

I 100% agree with you, all of those are limitations to provide balance to the game.

They also restrict theme.

So, once again, to answer the question of "why don't casual players want as balanced of a game as possible:"
Because some casual players prioritize theme over balance.

Please remember I am not necessarily saying the Rule of Three is bad, I am merely trying to answer a stupid question someone asked earlier that seemed to imply that casual players were dumb for not wanting balance. They're not dumb, they just don't care about balance enough to want to prioritize it over theme.

That was me. And it was a serious question. That you took my question as an attack is rather telling.

What precisely are the changes that some players are concerned about? So far the only answer is "it restricts my personal, subjective homebrew theme". If balance isn't important to these kinds of players, open play is a thing. Other players being able to play balanced games against others that find the challenge of battling an opponent enjoyable is not going to hurt you.

the_scotsman 756989 10041350 wrote:


You are Games Workshop's game balance team. The head honchos say to you "okay Karol, write us up the Indexes please."

You write the indexes. You're throwing in a lot of big changes from 7th edition - folding vehicles into big multi-wound monstrous creatures, adding a damage stat to various weapons, adding multiple wounds to a bunch of elite infantry, and completely overhauling the psychic power system with a new mechanic that completely bypasses even Invulnerable saves. Understandably, you're a little cautious about some of these mechanics, and when you play your test games, you probably price stuff that ouputs those mortal wounds pretty conservatively, to make sure that they're not wiping out whole space marine armies in a couple of turns.

Now, you've got your indexes, you did your in-house playtests, you send them to corporate. Corporate says "thanks! Now, please write us the first few codexes, so we can have them ready to print in the first months 8th ed is out."

What do you change? You have no more playtesting than you had before. You have no feedback from players trying your rules out. Nobody has run big tournaments so you don't know what your competitive players think is the best thing in the game. This is what I mean by "no data."

When you're talking about Deathwatch, or Custodes, or ANY codex outside of Space Marines, GK, DG, CSM, and Admech, they had that data. They saw what was doing well in tournaments, they heard back from players what they didn't like, and they were able to make adjustments to the index to release the codex based on that. Expecting them to put their hands over their ears and yell "LA LA LA LA I CANT HEAR YOU" just so everyone's codex can be as hit-and-miss as the first handful is asinine. When they had feedback, they listened to feedback. That's great. They didn't have a crystal ball. I can fault GW for a lot of things, but playing it safe when it came to dumping an all-psychic army into an edition of the game where you just introduced mortal wounds? Yeah, I'd rather have that than just have them slap mortal wounds on every single unit and go "have fun kids, we'll balance this gak laterrrrr!"

I get that marine players tend to think of themselves as this overwhelming majority that makes so many sales for GW so GW should pay the most attention to them. And if you play Space Marines you probably have a point. But buddy, you play Grey Knights. The number of Grey Knight players is not larger than the number of (to use an example of a major faction still sitting around waiting for a codex release) ork players. Or Eldar players. Or Tau players. GW is not going to slam on the brakes and go back and fix your gak before they get all the other codex books out, you might have a tiny (if selfish) point if you were a Marine player, but if you're a GK player you get the feth in line.

First of all, I didn't insult you so don't tell me to feth anything. But m aybe it is my english, but you say they had no data on GK, so they gave them bad index and bad codex. That they wanted to be safe, so kept the rules for the index weak. At the same time the same mechanics, like smite spam, was handed out to eldar or tzeench demons like candy with no limitations. They weren't playing it safe with those armies.

They had 0 tests done with custodes and deathwatch, but they made good books with them. You say they made them good, because they based it on data from people playing other factions. Ok, then why weren't they able to use the same data to make GK better. Plus this wasn't the first edition of w40k, so if they are able to draw data from other armies, why didn't they use the data from previous edition. From what I was told, so I could be wrong here, GK were bad in editions before, but had more options. More special rules etc. One would have to be mad to expect a bad army in a new edition to lose, options and somehow become better.

I am a total noob. I never played any wargames before, other then some PC ones. And I felt that something was wrong with GK after 3 games, and I knew it when my friend showed me how much his units cost. I am a noob, I knew that after seeing his codex for 5 min. There is no way designers with 20 years of expiriance were unable to notice that.

Karol wrote:

First of all, I didn't insult you so don't tell me to feth anything. But m aybe it is my english, but you say they had no data on GK, so they gave them bad index and bad codex. That they wanted to be safe, so kept the rules for the index weak. At the same time the same mechanics, like smite spam, was handed out to eldar or tzeench demons like candy with no limitations. They weren't playing it safe with those armies.

They had 0 tests done with custodes and deathwatch, but they made good books with them. You say they made them good, because they based it on data from people playing other factions. Ok, then why weren't they able to use the same data to make GK better. Plus this wasn't the first edition of w40k, so if they are able to draw data from other armies, why didn't they use the data from previous edition. From what I was told, so I could be wrong here, GK were bad in editions before, but had more options. More special rules etc. One would have to be mad to expect a bad army in a new edition to lose, options and somehow become better.

I am a total noob. I never played any wargames before, other then some PC ones. And I felt that something was wrong with GK after 3 games, and I knew it when my friend showed me how much his units cost. I am a noob, I knew that after seeing his codex for 5 min. There is no way designers with 20 years of expiriance were unable to notice that.

As far as I’m aware, Eldar and Tzeentch Daemons’ ability to smite spam in their Index incarnation was not really any stronger than GK’s ability to smite spam as an Index. So I don’t see it as GW deliberately nerfing GK at the Index stage relative to Eldar/Tzeentch Daemons. True, they weren’t playing it safe with the Eldar and Tzeentch Daemon Codexes, but that’s exactly what we’re saying - when they wrote the Eldar Codex, they had feedback and data so they didn’t feel the need to play it so safe.

Yes they used data and feedback from other factions to make the Custodes and Deathwatch Codexes strong, because they had six months’ worth of player feedback data to base them on. At the time of writing the GK Codex, they had absolutely zero of this data, so how could they have used the data to make the GK Codex better if it didn’t exist when they wrote the book?

The paradigm shift to 8th Edition was so massive that data from previous editions is at best useless, and at worst harmful. Look at Sisters of Battle’s 6+ Invulnerable Save. In 7th Ed it had a use against what used to be AP3 weapons like Battle Cannons. They ported it directly over to 8th Ed, but because of how Save modifiers work in this edition, that 6+ Invul is only useful against weapons with AP-4 or better - and is anybody seriously pointing enough meltaguns at 9pt models that the 6++ will ever be successfully made? Sisters are shackled with a rule based on 7th Ed data and it’s conpletely useless. For another example, look at Terminators. In 7th, 2 Wound Terminators would have been fantastic. Now with the way armour modifiers work and multi-damage weapons, it didn’t help them at all. You just can’t use data from earlier editions in this case - you’re starting from a clean slate.

As to why they don’t have more special rules, again, when they wrote the Codex they had no idea how powerful mortal wounds and psychic powers would be, so they played it a little safe. Later Codexes - those for which they had data to base upon - didn’t need to play it so safe. Regarding them having more options previously, most of the options they used to have are now Stratagems. This isn’t GK-specific, it’s a general theme for 8th Ed (and one I strongly disagree with, incidentally).

Remember that while you’re new to the game, you’re comparing your Codex which was written conservatively due to a lack of data, to your friend’s Codex which was written later with data to be based upon and hence not written conservatively. If you compare apples to apples - namely, GK to something like the Space Marine Codex or the Adeptus Mechanicus one, or the GK Codex to its contemptorary Index books for any faction, and suddenly it doesn’t look so bad.

Edit: I should add that I sympathise with you. I play thematic Black Templars, which as a subfaction is probably the only Codex army that could challenge GK for the title of Worst Amy in the Game. The Marine statline needs a rebuild from the ground up to accommodate the new edition.

Exactly. Because they have to start writing the early codexes BEFORE the edition drops in order to meet an aggressive release schedule, those early codexes didnt have index player data behind them, while the later ones do.

The key here is that they had to start writing them before anyone got indexes.

All that may be true but they did know how badly GK were struggling when they released the newest FAQ (which did have point changes in it, you know more nerfs for marines) and yet didn't take the time to throw GK any more of a bone than "you're terrible mini-smite sucks just a little less."

I am starting to think this is almost entirely a language barrier. Karol has come back and said the exact same thing phrased slightly differently 4-5 times now, and I don't think they're getting the actual meaning when we say 'they had no data.'

What I mean, Karol, is that if you're a customer, there was time between the release of the GK index, and the GK codex.

Players had time to test out the GK index, think about it, identify things that were wrong with it, and think "this is what I would like to see improved in a codex."

Developers, the people making the game, wrote both books BEFORE any players got to play 8th edition. This is why Custodes and Deathwatch ended up better balanced than GK or normal marines, and this is why when I compare codex GK to other rules for other armies, I am primarily looking at INDEXES, not codexes.

Hindsight is 20/20. If you imagine every codex was written by the same guy at the same time, yeah, it seems like someone went out of their way to blatantly shaft your army. In reality, nearly every codex that has been having significant problems was written before the edition of the game was released to the wider public.

Games workshop's design team has said at conventions and QnA sessions that they are aware of the problems Marines are having in competitive play and they are planning on fixing them. Until then, marines and GK have fairly poor codexes. Agreeing on house rules with your opponents or creating custom scenarios can help this somewhat, because I assume as a newbie you probably don't have access to a whole army made out of the few things that do actually work reasonably well for GK (Vendreads, stormravens, Interceptors with Chapter Ancient, GMNDKs etc). When I play against Grey Knights, I play with any units in Terminator armor and any characters getting full power smite, and that helps out immensely.

the_scotsman wrote:
I am starting to think this is almost entirely a language barrier. Karol has come back and said the exact same thing phrased slightly differently 4-5 times now, and I don't think they're getting the actual meaning when we say 'they had no data.'

What I mean, Karol, is that if you're a customer, there was time between the release of the GK index, and the GK codex.

Players had time to test out the GK index, think about it, identify things that were wrong with it, and think "this is what I would like to see improved in a codex."

Developers, the people making the game, wrote both books BEFORE any players got to play 8th edition. This is why Custodes and Deathwatch ended up better balanced than GK or normal marines, and this is why when I compare codex GK to other rules for other armies, I am primarily looking at INDEXES, not codexes.

Hindsight is 20/20. If you imagine every codex was written by the same guy at the same time, yeah, it seems like someone went out of their way to blatantly shaft your army. In reality, nearly every codex that has been having significant problems was written before the edition of the game was released to the wider public.

Games workshop's design team has said at conventions and QnA sessions that they are aware of the problems Marines are having in competitive play and they are planning on fixing them. Until then, marines and GK have fairly poor codexes. Agreeing on house rules with your opponents or creating custom scenarios can help this somewhat, because I assume as a newbie you probably don't have access to a whole army made out of the few things that do actually work reasonably well for GK (Vendreads, stormravens, Interceptors with Chapter Ancient, GMNDKs etc). When I play against Grey Knights, I play with any units in Terminator armor and any characters getting full power smite, and that helps out immensely.

Yes. This is exactly what happened to Grey Knights. It's the First Mover Rule. Getting the first Codex in any edition means you are going to have the worst rules after 6 months in.

In 6th edition, the same thing happened with Chaos Space Marines. It took until the end of 7th edition for them to get decent rules through supplements.

Of course, in 8th edition, the Chaos Space Marine Codex was released at the same time as the Grey Knights Codex. Codex CSM happens to be good (but is showing it's age.)

The corollary to the First Mover Rule is the Reparations Rule. Any Codex suffering from the First Mover Rule will be restored to playability in the next edition.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, by this logic, it’s safe to presume Orks will be OP by the time their Codex is released.

Blastaar wrote:
What precisely are the changes that some players are concerned about? So far the only answer is "it restricts my personal, subjective homebrew theme". If balance isn't important to these kinds of players, open play is a thing. Other players being able to play balanced games against others that find the challenge of battling an opponent enjoyable is not going to hurt you.

I dislike the Ro3 because the army I have is now limited to a total of 4 HQ choices. We have one unique character and one other HQ character you can now take 3 of. To fill up a brigade detachment you are forced to take worthless Elite choices and you are so limited by the amount of units in the army that you quickly are forced to spam troops or take allies, because Soup is a good thing.

Before the Ro3 you could at least make several different builds workable, not break the meta powerful, but they were competitive to a reasonable degree in any competitive environment. Is that too much to ask? The fact that the Ro3 turned them into a mono-build army simply to fill up 2k in points because of Flyrant spam is terrible.

 dracpanzer wrote:

Blastaar wrote:
What precisely are the changes that some players are concerned about? So far the only answer is "it restricts my personal, subjective homebrew theme". If balance isn't important to these kinds of players, open play is a thing. Other players being able to play balanced games against others that find the challenge of battling an opponent enjoyable is not going to hurt you.

I dislike the Ro3 because the army I have is now limited to a total of 4 HQ choices. We have one unique character and one other HQ character you can now take 3 of. To fill up a brigade detachment you are forced to take worthless Elite choices and you are so limited by the amount of units in the army that you quickly are forced to spam troops or take allies, because Soup is a good thing.

Before the Ro3 you could at least make several different builds workable, not break the meta powerful, but they were competitive to a reasonable degree in any competitive environment. Is that too much to ask? The fact that the Ro3 turned them into a mono-build army simply to fill up 2k in points because of Flyrant spam is terrible.

Yeah this sort of situation seems like something they should fix though specific exceptions to the rule of three, but I don't think it invalidates it completely. They could also come out with more HQs for those factions.

the_scotsman wrote:
I am starting to think this is almost entirely a language barrier. Karol has come back and said the exact same thing phrased slightly differently 4-5 times now, and I don't think they're getting the actual meaning when we say 'they had no data.'

What I mean, Karol, is that if you're a customer, there was time between the release of the GK index, and the GK codex.

Players had time to test out the GK index, think about it, identify things that were wrong with it, and think "this is what I would like to see improved in a codex."

Developers, the people making the game, wrote both books BEFORE any players got to play 8th edition. This is why Custodes and Deathwatch ended up better balanced than GK or normal marines, and this is why when I compare codex GK to other rules for other armies, I am primarily looking at INDEXES, not codexes.

Hindsight is 20/20. If you imagine every codex was written by the same guy at the same time, yeah, it seems like someone went out of their way to blatantly shaft your army. In reality, nearly every codex that has been having significant problems was written before the edition of the game was released to the wider public.

.

Wait, players test stuff for GW? How does one get in to those testing groups, am not very good with english, but I could ask my dad to help me with writing raports.
People don't use custom rules here, so it isn't much of a help for me. But I agree that if I could rewrite my own codex I would make it better.

Does GW have a good history of fixing of bad armies? I do worry a bit, because being bad for multiple editions seems to point out at not, but then again maybe GK are just a very unlucky design or playtest teams.

Karol wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
I am starting to think this is almost entirely a language barrier. Karol has come back and said the exact same thing phrased slightly differently 4-5 times now, and I don't think they're getting the actual meaning when we say 'they had no data.'

What I mean, Karol, is that if you're a customer, there was time between the release of the GK index, and the GK codex.

Players had time to test out the GK index, think about it, identify things that were wrong with it, and think "this is what I would like to see improved in a codex."

Developers, the people making the game, wrote both books BEFORE any players got to play 8th edition. This is why Custodes and Deathwatch ended up better balanced than GK or normal marines, and this is why when I compare codex GK to other rules for other armies, I am primarily looking at INDEXES, not codexes.

Hindsight is 20/20. If you imagine every codex was written by the same guy at the same time, yeah, it seems like someone went out of their way to blatantly shaft your army. In reality, nearly every codex that has been having significant problems was written before the edition of the game was released to the wider public.

.

Wait, players test stuff for GW? How does one get in to those testing groups, am not very good with english, but I could ask my dad to help me with writing raports.
People don't use custom rules here, so it isn't much of a help for me. But I agree that if I could rewrite my own codex I would make it better.

Does GW have a good history of fixing of bad armies? I do worry a bit, because being bad for multiple editions seems to point out at not, but then again maybe GK are just a very unlucky design or playtest teams.

They have not in the past, but in this edition they have made a point of working with several major tournament groups and releasing major rules changes in an effort to balance things.

You have to understand: compared to any other edition of the game, the codexes in this edition have come out CRAZY fast. Like, six times faster than any edition in the past 15 years. There are yearly books intended to rebalance the game. It is safe to say that this will get looked at.

Ah ok, thanks for explaining all of this. But I do worry a bit, if they don't test their game themself and just base it on tournament data people send them, then it would be the way people say. Tournament players don't play GK, GW gets no data, so either think the army is fine, or they know what is wrong with them, but don't know what is wrong, so they don't fix stuff.

It is strange to hear that they don't have testing teams of their own. IMO it is actually crazy, no idea how they made it this long with this style of rules writing. Why don't they just make a short edition and when it is "online" they write codex for all other factions, and then after a year or two, they start a new edition and have books ready for everyone. Then no one would have to wait for a new book, and everyone would have the same starting point.

Karol wrote:
Ah ok, thanks for explaining all of this. But I do worry a bit, if they don't test their game themself and just base it on tournament data people send them, then it would be the way people say. Tournament players don't play GK, GW gets no data, so either think the army is fine, or they know what is wrong with them, but don't know what is wrong, so they don't fix stuff.

It is strange to hear that they don't have testing teams of their own. IMO it is actually crazy, no idea how they made it this long with this style of rules writing. Why don't they just make a short edition and when it is "online" they write codex for all other factions, and then after a year or two, they start a new edition and have books ready for everyone. Then no one would have to wait for a new book, and everyone would have the same starting point.

GW has their own in-house testing, they just also have outside playtesters who can give them feedback from outside the Nottingham bubble.

Karol wrote:

Wait, players test stuff for GW? How does one get in to those testing groups, am not very good with english, but I could ask my dad to help me with writing raports.

It’s not quite like that, but they do take player feedback at 40kfaq@gwplc.com and they are acting upon it.

My advice when using that is to keep it short and to the point. Don’t give them a huge pile of rule suggestions, just give them a short summary of the problem and, if you want to suggest something, make it specific. Also, remember to be polite and keep your attitude positive and helpful rather than negative.

For example:

‘Dear GW,

Thank you for taking the time to consider player feedback.

Grey Knights are feeling underpowered relative to other Codexes. Owing to the fast release schedule, those books written early in the edition seem to have been left a bit behind the power curve that most of the books sit on. For example, a GK Paladin is more expensive than a Custodian Guard, but has lower stats and his psychic powers are not enough to make up the difference.

One suggestion for how to help GK out would be to introduce a series of extra psychic powers for Grey Knights, and to lower the points of units like Paladins that are more expensive than superior counterparts in the newer Codexes.

Many thanks and keep up the good work.

Best Regards’

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

jcd386 wrote:
I think most people who get pick up games are wanting a fairly competitive experience. Competitive meaning they have a fair chance of winning.

GW has to try and create a ruleset that works for the most people possible.

Your lists already have to follow a bunch of rules. You use points, right? How about detachments? Battleforged? And so on. All of these are limitations in place to provide balance to the game. The rule of three is no different, it was just late to the party.

I 100% agree with you, all of those are limitations to provide balance to the game.

They also restrict theme.

So, once again, to answer the question of "why don't casual players want as balanced of a game as possible:"
Because some casual players prioritize theme over balance.

Please remember I am not necessarily saying the Rule of Three is bad, I am merely trying to answer a stupid question someone asked earlier that seemed to imply that casual players were dumb for not wanting balance. They're not dumb, they just don't care about balance enough to want to prioritize it over theme.

The big problem with the rule of 3 is that it DOESN'T help balance at all. In fact, based on what we've seen it makes balance WORSE. It takes soup from ubiquitous to mandatory, it exacerbates the strength of armies with good troop options, it kills off certain factions outright, it ruins themed lists, pushes mono-faction lists down the power ladder, and puts a stranglehold of list creativity for absolutely NO benefit.

The game is no more balanced now than when we had 7 flyrants running around. The only difference is we're seeing even more cookie-cutter builds with even less unit variety from list to list. Yes, within a list you're seeing people running more different units, but go look at the list next to that...and the next...and the next...and they'll all be basically the same thing. The rule of 3 was a stupid idea to begin with and it failed UTTERLY at what it was trying to do and should be dropped off a cliff and left to die a slow death.

The game plays strategically when you have a bunch of different units on the field, when you have a field full of one thing spammed it rarely ever does. Whether that effects balance or not, which is much more likely than you would imply, it's regardless an excellent change from a design perspective.

The people I play against use 3-4, sometimes more of the same unit and their lists work fine. As GKs go am not sure how mixing terminators and paladins would help, both seem bad, but the termintors seem a lot worse. And of course they do not fall under the take only 3 rule. the power armored dudes don't seem much better, the shunt guys would be ok, if they cost like 50% less, because they move and die in one turn. I have no idea what the goal of the astral aim GK is in the game, the psychic power is very situational and it kind of a builds,I think, around the idea that the special weapons are taken for that unit, because they can take 4. But the GK special weapons are horrible. The flame dudes are higher priced strikes with a worse smite, and no deep strike. #mindblown And then there are strikes, which seem to be to go to unit for other GK lists. I don't have them, but from what people here told me, their good side is that they costs less then termintors per wound. Which isn't much as almost everything in w40k is better costed then GK termintors.

kombatwombat wrote:
Grey Knights are feeling underpowered relative to other Codexes. Owing to the fast release schedule, those books written early in the edition seem to have been left a bit behind the power curve that most of the books sit on. For example, a GK Paladin is more expensive than a Custodian Guard, but has lower stats and his psychic powers are not enough to make up the difference.

One suggestion for how to help GK out would be to introduce a series of extra psychic powers for Grey Knights, and to lower the points of units like Paladins that are more expensive than superior counterparts in the newer Codexes.

Many thanks and keep up the good work.

Best Regards’

Ok, thanks for the advice. I though they had something like a real playtest team like some other games do, when the testers get paid or at least get merch for doing their job. No one wants to work for free, and the email adress probablly is anwsered by a bot, or an intern who doesn't even play the game. But I will try to write them, my dad should help me make in understandable in english to some degree.

It is worth bearing in mind just *how much* play-testing would be required.

How many different ways can you build an army for each codex? To fully ensure balance, you'd need to take a variety of different army builds for each codex, and play it against the same variety of army builds for *every single other codex*. How many games do you need to play to ensure they are evenly matched? More than one. 5? 10?

Then you want to make sure it scales fairly. You'd want to do the same thing for different size armies. How far do you go there? 500 points, 1000 points, 1500 points, 1850 points, 2000 points?

It would be painful.

And that's without considering allies...

Well I am assuming that the people that work at GW, are not slaves and do not work for food. Someone told me they have been working on the new edition for at least a year. Even if it was just half a year that is 8 hours 5 times a week of testing, and people could work at homes too, it is not like it is required to have some special machines to try stuff out at home. So it would be 40 hours per 4 weeks times 6. that is 960 hours of work time, assuming the design team does not consist of one dude, it seems to me like enough time to do. Specially as who ever is design team boss could just make people do additional work at home. A 10 man team could put a 9600 work hours in to testing. Some PC games have less and those are writen in code.

Not being able to get those new models because you can't get them doesn't make you a scrub. You know that your current army is holding you back, your aren't blaming the dice or the game or the other player.

Refusing to get the better army because you must stick to your one and only faction and that makes you better than filthy band-wagoners and its all their fault that you lose makes you a scrub.

It's not about if you have the best army, it's about what's going on in your head.

Even the guy that takes his fluffy army and loses every game isn't necessarily a scrub if he understands that his self imposed limit is what's making him lose. If he comes away telling himself that its all unfair and he only lost because everyone else had cheese and spam then he's a scrub.

there is NOT a wrong and right way to play wh40k, competitive and casual can be both fun, depend what you look for in this game. Personally i play both ways, mostly competitive but i have no problems play just to roll some dice.
The only thing i dont really understand is why some have to bother so much about what kind of play is better, you like play casual, is ok play casual but dont come in competitive topics saying Oh Lord competitive is evil and crap, same for who like play competitive, this is a GAME after all. Another thing hilarious is when a casual player come at tournaments and he is kicked in his butt, then complain cause he found "evil, crappy unbeatable, not funny lists" what did you expect, you dont like competition, Gw gives you narrative play, is not that hard to understand i guess. This is not referred to you just general talking. Anyway yes i agree, you cant blame others cause ur unable to win, is like if a soccer team wont let its best players play cause the other start complain and crying, instead of "crying" do your best to beat them and if you cant/wont well... accept it and move on, imho

I don't understand the distinction people make between casual and non casual games. I have never seen a casual list, I don't even know how would one make one. Other then randomly selecting units from a huge collection by rolling a dice, but I doubt anyone actually plays that way. I don't think that any form of playing is evil. People are evil, not things. I do want to know how GW does their books, or how they update them, to not a small degree due to how my army works. I just don't understand how the same people could do books back to back and make them so different. People say they don't have data, but they seem to make good books for factions thaty had 0 data on. They make powerful codex for already powerful index list, but make weak index armies weaker, to "stay safe". I can't get my head around how they work, Summer just started and I have 2 months free, and I spend all my summer time cash on my army. It was a realy big investment for me, and I would like to get as much as I can from it, but people just say stuff like paint the models or read the codex, and am not interested in either of those things. I would like to play, just like my friends that made me start w40k do, and not sit around at store for 6-8 hours and get 0 games in, because no one wants to play vs GK. I hope GW is going to fix them till mid summer or something. For the money the army cost me, I could have bought a new bike or buy a 2 month carnet for the bath house and still have a ton of money for food and drinks. Right now I have to sneak out of the house with tap water, because my parents think I have summer money to do stuff with it.

casual= a player who care nothing of competition and play just what he likes to play, usually play with friends at home
competitive= a player who plays the best he has and try to win
as much as he can in any event he goes

Karol wrote:
Well I am assuming that the people that work at GW, are not slaves and do not work for food. Someone told me they have been working on the new edition for at least a year. Even if it was just half a year that is 8 hours 5 times a week of testing, and people could work at homes too, it is not like it is required to have some special machines to try stuff out at home. So it would be 40 hours per 4 weeks times 6. that is 960 hours of work time, assuming the design team does not consist of one dude, it seems to me like enough time to do. Specially as who ever is design team boss could just make people do additional work at home. A 10 man team could put a 9600 work hours in to testing. Some PC games have less and those are writen in code.

OK, there's 19 different codexes at the moment - with about another 4 on the way. Call it 23 factions. Assuming just a single test army list from each codex, that gives you 253 possible combinations of match-ups. Multiply that by 3 for testing at 3 different point values, and then by 5 for playing 5 test games for each combination. That gives you 3795 test games that need to be played. Assume average 2 hours per game, and obviously 2 players, so each game is 4 man-hours - that gives you a total of 15180 man-hours of testing. And this is purely for balance testing of the codexes, never mind testing of the actual rules.

Assume a standard-ish 40 hour working week, and 20 days holiday per year (i.e. 4 weeks off). A full time employee will therefore be able to complete 1920 hours of testing per year. To get it done within a year, assuming you can start balance-testing from day one (which is not going to happen), you'd need 8 full-time employees doing nothing but balance testing of the codexes. I guarantee you GW do not have this.

 blackmage wrote:
casual= a player who care nothing of competition and play just what he likes to play, usually play with friends at home
competitive= a player who plays the best he has and try to win
as much as he can in any event he goes

Seems awful black and white there, I think a lot of folks fall somewhere in between the fluffiest of fluffbunnies and waaciest of WAAC players. Actual balance in the lists is better for everyone on the scale. Ro3 may not affect everyone, either due to having great troop choices, diverse units that are all good enough or what have you, but it really hits the armies that have neither of those harder than it hits the ones everyone is getting butt hurt about at the big GT's.

Balance is a good idea, the Ro3 doesn't do that. Whether or not it affects your own personal list doesn't change that.

Ro3 limits the delta between competitive players and less competitive players. Not in an elegant or optimal way, but it does.

Problem I have with "rule of three" is that its lazy, yes some units are a problem when spammed - the solution is to address those units - otherwise you are back to the days of "no special characters" despite it only being a few that caused the problems.

there are a range of ways to deal with it, personally I'd go for sliding scales on point values, e.g. a Hive Tyrant costs "x", a second one costs "x+y", third one "x+y+z" etc, can also work the other way with some units that could be cheaper in larger sizes (as HH does where its an amount per model for the base unit, but a different amount to add more to it)

Karol wrote:
I don't understand the distinction people make between casual and non casual games. I have never seen a casual list, I don't even know how would one make one. Other then randomly selecting units from a huge collection by rolling a dice, but I doubt anyone actually plays that way.

Well, for example, instead of number-crunching how many wounds a unit is likely to cause versus how many points it costs, how many plasma shots will it take to kill a Rhino compared to melta shots and so on... You might think "Chaos Warp Talons look bad-ass. I'm going to have a unit of them".

I did that with my GK. My friends convinced me that it is going to be fun to play w40k, and they started it in may after confirmation money. I picked GK, because they looked nice and I could afford them. I wasn't crunching anything, because I expected all armies to be more or less the same, if they cost the same money. though that the difference between a "real" army and what I got was that the "real" army costs like a vintage in MtG. And I was more or less wrong, plus the gap between armies seems to be huge. Although I have not played all armies. Can't say how ad mecha or some types of space marines are doing right now, as no one plays them here.

I guarantee you GW do not have this.

A huge company like GW can't hire 8 people to do in house testing Don't they have profits in like milions? But if they can't afford it, why not out source it. The models themself cost next to nothing for GW, and they have chains of store in places like UK. They could ask an employ or people at the store to play a few games and they could do it in an instant. Plus if they showed the rules before puting them to print, people would find what is broken in like minutes. I mean, I understand being overworked etc, but no one at the studio sat down and thought, guys maybe a reaper launcher on a model with no negatives to hit, that can be spamed and can chain shot is a bit too much?

I don't see how anyone can defend the price difference between a disintegrator cannon and a grav-cannon. Come on, they've had access to existing unit stats since before 8th dropped. They had a baseline when they designed the indexes it seemed like. It just appears that they've thrown that baseline away in order to sell more models.

It doesn't take thousands of hours to throw some numbers in a spread sheet and see how a weapon that costs nearly half of another but out performs it greatly against most weapons isn't balanced.

They tried with the index and should have used balance against the index as their baseline. Instead they release the mathematically unbalanced guard codex (really, hard to tell that mobs of 50 morale immune conscripts was op??).

The index armies were close to balanced. A couple outliers but that's what they should have fixed with the codex. The power creep isn't "oh, GW can't run super-computer simulations for weeks at a time." Hell an excel spreadsheet and some data entry isn't too much to ask. The power creep is is so bad it's hard to attribute it to anything other than a desire to sell models along with the codex release so they make a couple units in it strong so you want to add them to your collection.

But now they've shifted the powerband of the existing units so in order to make the next batch of models desirable they need to add more leading to the problems we're facing now where the first couple dexes need a redesign or serious re-pointing in order to keep up with where GW has shifted their own game (it's not like someone else did this to them).

No but it does show why 1 in house playtesting is never going to catch everything ,and 2 identifying the problem is but a part of the solution. Saying GK need a buff is nice and true. But agreeing how (big) a buff is harder. You'd just switch around who's on top of balance like a wheel.