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.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
The people who like imbalance will still be playing if it improves; where are they going to go that has worse? The people who ARENT playing because of imbalance could be recruited if it was improved.

Exactly, improved balance benefits everyone. If GW improve balance to the point where most armies have several viable builds and no clear single "best ever" list then it benefits them because now more of their market has a reason to buy more models. IF there's only one power-build then that's what the power builders will buy - and if its really bad imbalance even the casual people will be building that list.

So that means lots of sales on some models and fewer on others, which means GW has models which they've invested into which are not selling and returning on that investment. Plus when there's only one power build players hit the ceiling for purchases far quicker. When you've got multiple builds that are viable within a single army, then those who play that army are far more likely to add other models and try out other lists. That means more of those moulds are recouping their investment; it means sales are spread out over a greater range of the product and it means that the potential ceiling for each army is greater for most players.

Yes power-builds make things simpler and you can market with them, but long term it bleeds you out and means that you're always reliant on those power builds. Instead a flatter more even playing field introduces far more variety, model sales, gamer retention and more.

I don't disagree. I'm just tired of hearing the equivalent of "refer to page 5" from people and it seems that that is such a common answer that I have to believe it is the majority that feels its fine because few pipe in otherwise.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Case in point this morning on a facebook group there was a ton of talk about some GT that just finished and how balanced and perfect the game was because of how diverse the top tier armies all are at tournaments.

As in over 100 posters saying the same thing and nary an opposing viewpoint.

Well, regarding balance: the honest wargamer (he used to be one of the warhammer community hosts, but went his own way to be able to speak a bit more freely it seems) made a quite good overview of AoS2 from all major events worldwide:



This is the most recent one.

As you can see, summoning armies are not running rampant atm. The "best performing" summoning army (Legions of Nagash) is doing quite strongly, but this is in no way true for the other summoners (Seraphon in particular are very underperforming in the current iteration of the game).

Lots of bodies doing craptons of regular attacks seems to be coming out on top again lately, but that's up for debate.

auticus wrote:
I don't disagree. I'm just tired of hearing the equivalent of "refer to page 5" from people and it seems that that is such a common answer that I have to believe it is the majority that feels its fine because few pipe in otherwise.

One of the reasons why I never started up that game. I want to play for fun, not a need to win.

@Elmir the thread premise is regular games, not tournament play.

Ah ok, I'd just thought I'd add this into it though, as summoning in it's own right isn't necessarily able to break the top levels.

I can imagine running a super summoning heavy list in a narrative/casual environment, it would destroy most of them. Then again, running super heavy summoning is not something I'd describe as "casual" to begin with.

But yeah, it definitely can break casual games.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
PS: this has nothing to do with the whole summoning argument, but I thought I'd mention a nice long chat I had with some of the rules writers at warhammer Fest Europe.

They are quite aware that a few "legacy armies" (meaning, anything that hasn't gotten a new battletome yet) are not quite able to compete all that well and it is kind of deliberate. There's a lot of discussion going on internally on shaping the new world and seeing how much of the old miniature range they are willing to keep vs redesign/expand. From a pure business point of view, stocking and producing as many tiny subfactions/armies as AoS now has (with part of it old WHFB ranges, parts of it being brand spanking new), is virtually impossible. So they are still in a transition phase between old/new warhammer it seems.

He also stated that they NEVER want to experience the thing that happened with Tomb Kings again: those guys dominating the competitive meta in the first year after GBH, but technically having been culled from the model line-up.... It just caused a lot of feelbadsies and absolute price gauging on the net.

The fact that some factions right now, are not exactly good yet (game wise), because a final decision on where to take the faction hasn't been made yet, is no accident. I personally wasn't too happy with that, as I thought it quite unfair because it's essentially a business decision having an impact on the gaming, but that's the way the cookie crumbles.

The entire premise of the argument states that:

* summoning is fine. At the tournament level. At the casual level it is busted.

* focusing on the tournament level - there is nothing that needs done

* focusing on the casual level, the game has a wide gulf of balace issues that the devs skip over because its balanced at the tournament level and should therefore be considered fine

* legacy armies don't necessarily mean casual. One can pick up any modern battle tome and play casually without creating an optimized list. A more "for fun" list. "For fun" lists are auto-beat by summoning lists if the for fun list is truly for fun and not spamming summoning out.

* my own argument was rescinded because it appears most of the community are all tournament minded or oriented, even if they don't play in tournaments themselves, and therefore the vast majority of players are fine with balance only existing at the tournament level

Except balance does not exist at the tournament level, as the chart above makes abundantly clear, and the apparent minority that understands that is left scratching their heads as to why anyone involved is deliberately choosing to have less nice things.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Elmir wrote:
Ah ok, I'd just thought I'd add this into it though, as summoning in it's own right isn't necessarily able to break the top levels.

I can imagine running a super summoning heavy list in a narrative/casual environment, it would destroy most of them. Then again, running super heavy summoning is not something I'd describe as "casual" to begin with.

But yeah, it definitely can break casual games.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
PS: this has nothing to do with the whole summoning argument, but I thought I'd mention a nice long chat I had with some of the rules writers at warhammer Fest Europe.

They are quite aware that a few "legacy armies" (meaning, anything that hasn't gotten a new battletome yet) are not quite able to compete all that well and it is kind of deliberate. There's a lot of discussion going on internally on shaping the new world and seeing how much of the old miniature range they are willing to keep vs redesign/expand. From a pure business point of view, stocking and producing as many tiny subfactions/armies as AoS now has (with part of it old WHFB ranges, parts of it being brand spanking new), is virtually impossible. So they are still in a transition phase between old/new warhammer it seems.

He also stated that they NEVER want to experience the thing that happened with Tomb Kings again: those guys dominating the competitive meta in the first year after GBH, but technically having been culled from the model line-up.... It just caused a lot of feelbadsies and absolute price gauging on the net.

The fact that some factions right now, are not exactly good yet (game wise), because a final decision on where to take the faction hasn't been made yet, is no accident. I personally wasn't too happy with that, as I thought it quite unfair because it's essentially a business decision having an impact on the gaming, but that's the way the cookie crumbles.

Honestly, I am OK with armies that have no allegiance being underdogs. Because to bring them up to par without allegiance would mean making their units overpowered, and then it just makes the Grand Alliance overpowered. What should be balanced is armies with allegiance; if it has allegiance then is should be roughly on par with any other army with allegiance. For GHB allegiances this could mean simply giving a very strong ability to make up for the diversity of spells/prayers/artifacts/sub-factions that a full battletome gets. Seraphon are a good example of how that can be done (just pretend the summoning is not there).

The crux being the question:

What does balance mean to you?

And that threshold is going to be different from player to player.

My guess from the very many heated rebuttals to my comments on imbalance is that the threshold for most players is simply "if the tournament scene has multiple armies winning then its balanced".

The data above, as I have pointed out to the four or five others that have posted it as well, is flawed for a few reasons:

1) it is not enough data. Each army would need a similar sampling.

If 88 players play stormcast and only 2 play fantastic army X, and those 2 players that play fantastic army X both place high in tournaments, then they are unfairly weighted very highly. People would say "fantastic army X is very powerful because it has a 100% placing" even though only 2 people make up its data point.

Conversely, if 2 people play fantastic broken army Y, but they are bad players and dont' place, it can be argued "broken army Y is fine because it doesn't win tournaments" even though its busted.

Whereas 88 stormcast players are likely to have a variety of skill and their placings will be more median and thus appear "balanced".

If anything, I'd simply look at how many people play each faction because tournament players tend to optimize in Excel spreadsheets and if 1/4 of your playerbase are playing from the same two books, I will promise you that the game is not balanced.

2) tournament play is vastly different from casual play. Casual play is (as I thought anyway) bringing what looks cool and for fun, tournament play is brought to hammer your opponents sensitive areas down their throat as fast as possible to garner max points.

To judge if the game is balanced, instead of looking at the nutcracker lists and discerning the game is fine because multiple nutcrackers exist, one should look at the gulf between for fun and ball buster and see how wide that is.

It seems most people would agree that a summon spam army will hammer a casual for fun army. But for whatever reason, thats seen as acceptable and totally not imbalanced. You will have to dig deep to find out why someone feels that is not imbalanced, but typically that answer revolves around a variation of warmachine's' page 5, or "git gud".

Your moving the argument around. No one said that the tournaments prove that the game is balanced. The results were only to show that summoning isn't inheritly unbalanced. Its also a good sign that not one army is dominating the tournament scene. No one will argue that there is a fair number of armies that are struggling and not competitive viable in the current meta. Most of these armies have not been fully updated to the current game environment.

Then you say that tournament play is irrelevant, but tournament play is the only way to measure the game in its most unbiased form. Casual play is going to very from place to place and person to person. So when you say that casual play is broken that is entirely your opinion.

I have posted a ton of different data pointers throughout here so ... not interested in rehashing again.

A lot of people in this thread and others have said "summoning is fine, the tournaement scene has a lot of different winners so the balance of the game is fine"

The whole (again) crux of the issue is that summoning is not fine because if you are summoning at the tournament powerlist level, and your opponent is not and additionally not spamming mortal wounds, that the game is likely over before it even began.

Casual play is defined here as playing the game not at the tournament level or running optimized lists.

If you're going to argue how an army is summoning 600 points against an army not spamming mortal wounds and not summoning is not one-sided, or how an army summoning 1000+ points against the same type of army not spamming mortal wounds or summoning is not broken, then great... show examples of how that is not broken or unbalanced.

I never said tournament play is irrelevant. I said that a tiny sampling of data does not prove nor disprove balance and that tournament data is only pertinent to balance at the tournament level. If you think tournament level performance is pertinent beyond the tournament level wherein tournament lists can play non tournament lists... great! Show some examples of how because at the tournament level ssummoning isn't broken that playing non optimized lists with tournament level summoning is not that big a deal and is fine.

Show some examples of how summoning is not broken outside of the tournament level when summoning is involved against an army that is not optimized.

That is the entire fulcrum point of the "is summoning broken" topic. Because summoning is a part of why unviable armies are unviable.

This isn't that tiny a data sample though. These are 11 major events with 685 armies in total. It's by no means all the data in the world, but if you can show me a larger data collection out there, I'd love to see it. This does show a pretty significant trend.

Also, the most dominant army now (DoK), doesn't spam MW, nor does it summon... I really don't agree with you that those are the only two options this game has to do for it to be power play. Good board control and brutal regular attacks with lots of bodies really are viable without being as "in your face" obvious.

Can summoning break a casual game? Yes... But if you create a "I summon 600-1000p in a game" type list, you are imo WAY out of casual range. Same if spam MW, same if you generate thousands of attacks with deepkin or DoK.

And mind you, I am really well aware that balance in AoS when Pitting none-updated armies (since whfb) is not good. A rules writer essentially admitted that. Most armies with summoning mechanics tend to be updated armies now (slaanesh being the exception, but let's face it, that book is rightt around the corner now), so that will also skew things a bit.

Does summoning play a role in that imbalance? It probably does. Is that role as big as some people make it seem? Probably not...

I think the factor "updated book Vs non updated" is the bigger problem now, but that's also debatable by armies like KO try really didn't age well in AoS2.

But if you create a "I summon 600-1000p in a game" type list, you are imo WAY out of casual range.

Does summoning play a role in that imbalance? It probably does. Is that role as big as some people make it seem? Probably not...

But which one is it? I can summon 600 - 1000 pts is way out of casual range... but isn't as big a deal in imbalance?

These are 11 major events with 685 armies in total.

Yes. 11 hyper optimized events that power gamers flock to.

We need events where there is casual data as well.

Unless we have casual data, you have a table of data pertinent to the top end powergaming spectrum of the game. You can't judge the balance of the entire game as a whole from both poles using only one extreme end of the game. You can judge the powergaming extreme and say from a powergaming extreme the game is more diverse, but you can't say that that is true for the game as a whole unless you are also in the same breath meaning that the powergaming extreme is really the entire game as a whole.

You can also say "we don't have that data so we can't judge the other end" but that circles back to knowing that summoning 600 - 1000 points (which are fairly common from optimized summons lists) will blow away a casual list based on the fact that the game is a 2600/3000 point army vs a 2000 point one.

 Venerable Ironclad wrote:
Your moving the argument around. No one said that the tournaments prove that the game is balanced. The results were only to show that summoning isn't inheritly unbalanced. Its also a good sign that not one army is dominating the tournament scene. No one will argue that there is a fair number of armies that are struggling and not competitive viable in the current meta. Most of these armies have not been fully updated to the current game environment.

Then you say that tournament play is irrelevant, but tournament play is the only way to measure the game in its most unbiased form. Casual play is going to very from place to place and person to person. So when you say that casual play is broken that is entirely your opinion.

The issue at hand is the people doing the balancing very much are saying that tournaments prove the game is balanced.

One can also say casual play is broken objectively using math, which is pretty bad when such a subjective argument can be proven without even hitting the table. The level at which one quantifies casual play is arbitrary because there is no level at which balance is not broken.

auticus wrote:

But if you create a "I summon 600-1000p in a game" type list, you are imo WAY out of casual range.

But which one is it? I can summon 600 - 1000 pts is way out of casual range... but isn't as big a deal in imbalance?.

Yes those two statements do not contradict.

Because summoning doesn't break the game all the time in a casual setting. It does if you do excessive amounts of it.... But then it's by no means a casual list, but you move into cheese territory. And in that cheese territory, it's turning out to be quite balanced... Because it's by no means the overly dominant "most effective tactic available" or meta.

Boils down to: unoptimised casual list will get annihilated by:
- hardcore summoning
- hardcore MW output
- hardcore alpha strike
- hardcore attack generation.

So yeah, playing a wargame at casual level is a gentleman's agreement to hold you punches somewhat. If you are summoning that much in that setting, your not a gentleman, but a d*ckweed.

But you would be as well if you agreed on a casual game and then spammed MW, started using gavriel sureheart with 2CP, etc etc. I think saying it's just a problem caused by summoning is a bit of a oversimplification tbh.

I don't think I've ever said the unbalance in AOS is solely caused by summoning. I've said many times that its a contributing factor. I find it to be a moderate contributing factor.

Its the same as a unit that is grossly undercost. You could say by that logic its not broken because it won't break the game all the time to be grossly undercost, and its only cheesy if you spam it, but thats pretty much the foundation of all powerlists.

And again this problem doesn't exist as severely in most other games as it does in the GW-sphere of games. (note the words as severely - we all know every game can be gamed, but the imbalance in the gw-sphere has always been epic)

It honestly sounds like the people arguing that summon are broken are using some sort of standard where we have to use Casual Play to try and balance it around? Is that correct?

Not many games try and balance around at that level because it's objectively broken to try and balance at such level.

No thats not correct. The goal should be in game design that powergaming not be as obvious and easy to achieve to lessen the gulf between powergaming and not power gaming.

In the case of summoning, it is distilled thus:

I have a mechanic that gives me additional points beyond what my game allows assuming that you are designing points as some kind of balancing mechanism.

* how many additional points would push the game to untenable if the other side was not doing this as well

That answer will vary on person to person. I have found once you exceed 20% of the army's size in bonus points you have begun making a one-sided game. Once you hit 30% of the army's size in bonus points you have all but assured that. That would mean I should look at capping how many bonus points you can get. GW decided to take this concept and crank it to 11.

* if the other side was not doing this, what can they do to make sure the game is not one sided and broken
If you have enough offensive power then you can reasonably chew through the bonus points and still make a good game out of it. in AOS that is the ability to produce a lot of mortal wounds or high damage attacks or extreme high amounts of attacks

* have we created a scenario where the game is basically won before it started if player A uses this new mechanism within the boundaries of the rules
In AOS case with summoning, yes this is exactly what has been created.

Why I have given up caring about this argument is simply because the player base ENJOYS this overwhelmingly (I assume based on few other posts to the contrary, though I find in non GW threads (or even in the why dont you play AOS thread in here) that there are a lot of people that dont play precisely for this reason) so the target audience is large enough that they want the dev team to make mechanics that can auto win them games if their opposition isn't doing it as well.

Saying that this is ok because if you are not in a power gamer arena you should just not do this or else you are a (insert derogatory shaming name here) is not acceptable to me. Because the rules allow it, and players will want to play by the rules, they shouldn't be shamed because they played by the rules. If you are playing by the rules and are able to create a one sided match up that ends the game before the game even begins, thats bad game design and should be addressed.

Once again, that's basically balancing for the casual market. As you've constantly stated, and circled around to in your arguments.

Thats balancing the game as a whole to minimize power gaming breaking the game.

In the case of summoning there are several solutions that would bring it inline and not so overbearing.

Except as shown with overall facts It's not a problem, and summoning if it were truly overpowered would've dragged Seraphon up to a higher tier rank rather then being the biggest of summoning armies, and the rest would be drawn up further as well if they access to summoning.

It's not breaking the game at all.

I don't have anything else to add to this conversation.

Right. Its not a problem. If you are powergaming and your opponent is not powergaming.

I've already said that about 100x in this thread.

Go play a non powergaming optimized list against a seraphon player pushing 1000 points of stuff in your face on top of his army and get back with me on how balanced and fun the game is.

Go play a non-powergaming list against an optimized list. You'll lose regardless anyways.

As summoning isn't breaking the game, you'll just have to play with un-optomized lists vs such anyways. Because a good list will destroy a non-powergaming list regardless.

auticus wrote:


Case in point this morning on a facebook group there was a ton of talk about some GT that just finished and how balanced and perfect the game was because of how diverse the top tier armies all are at tournaments.

As in over 100 posters saying the same thing and nary an opposing viewpoint

Which group? Seems most of the AoS pages I follow have devolved into "Check out my paintjob/conversion/whatever"(which is fine, I steal plenty of ideas!) with little to no tactics discussion. Would love to join a group that talks more about the gaming side of AoS.

Indirectly related, at lunch today, I happened to find this Game Theory video about possible permutations of Smash! Bros. matches. He does a segment in the first half on the restrictions that are placed on competitive play in order to balance the game for MLG.

https://youtu.be/R2a6fnYOHVU

auticus wrote:
Saying that this is ok because if you are not in a power gamer arena you should just not do this or else you are a (insert derogatory shaming name here) is not acceptable to me. Because the rules allow it, and players will want to play by the rules, they shouldn't be shamed because they played by the rules. If you are playing by the rules and are able to create a one sided match up that ends the game before the game even begins, thats bad game design and should be addressed.

How hard is it for players to have a conversation before they play to determine what kind of game they want to play and how many rules that want to use?

I have no mouth but I MUST POWERGAME BECAUSE THE RULES ALLOW IT

I would really, really like to be able to build a list I want to play and not have to worry about showing up and changing it because it is too weak or too strong. End of the day that is what bothers me the most; not the gulf between power games and casual but that without communicating I have pretty good odds of the game being decided before deployment.

In my gaming group I have two others who are experienced enough for us to agree to a power level ahead of time and show up with matched lists. If one of us wants to play another person we have to show up and see what the other's list is then match it because a majority of players do not have the large amount of experience needed to quickly gague the potency of a list by looking at it. Fortunately we are a group genuinely interested in balanced match ups, many are not so lucky.

The people who show up and get crushed with no hope of victory probably do not go to the forums; they are new to the game and not yet vested in the community. They just sell their models and leave AoS behind. When GW says no to balance, they say no to more money.

"Hey Games Workshop, would you like to make more money with the same product?"

"Nope."

You keep saying that poor balance is costing them money, and you may or may not be right, but GW keeps posting record profits, so the general public at least seems to be happy with the current state of GW's products. I think what you and auticus fail to understand is that this doesn't mean we all think the game is balanced or that we like imbalance, it just means that the game is balanced enough for what we are looking for.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
Once again, that's basically balancing for the casual market. As you've constantly stated, and circled around to in your arguments.

IF the designers would do their job it would be balanced for both.

People seem to think casual gamers etc don't care about balance or benefit. Actually it's the casual players to whom having game balanced matters most. Balance helps everybody but the one where it's absolutely essential is casual games. Tournament games don't care if only 10% of the game is playable.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 andysonic1 wrote:

auticus wrote:
Saying that this is ok because if you are not in a power gamer arena you should just not do this or else you are a (insert derogatory shaming name here) is not acceptable to me. Because the rules allow it, and players will want to play by the rules, they shouldn't be shamed because they played by the rules. If you are playing by the rules and are able to create a one sided match up that ends the game before the game even begins, thats bad game design and should be addressed.

How hard is it for players to have a conversation before they play to determine what kind of game they want to play and how many rules that want to use?

I have no mouth but I MUST POWERGAME BECAUSE THE RULES ALLOW IT

So it's okay for game designers to be lazy incompetent ones because players can do their job in their place instead. Yep yep. That makes sense. GW can sell whatever crap balance and it's okay because players are expected to do their job instead.

 EnTyme wrote:
You keep saying that poor balance is costing them money, and you may or may not be right, but GW keeps posting record profits, so the general public at least seems to be happy with the current state of GW's products. I think what you and auticus fail to understand is that this doesn't mean we all think the game is balanced or that we like imbalance, it just means that the game is balanced enough for what we are looking for.

And don't get me wrong; I love post-2016 GW. The AoS 2.0 rules are a huge improvement. Army allegiance in general is so awesome the game seems naked to imagine otherwise. Balance is absolutely good enough for me, else I would not be playing it. I am critical of AoS' flaws exactly because I enjoy it so much. If I was not so invested I would not really care. For me 40k is like that; I am aware imbalance exists and roughly its nature but am apathetic because it is only a side game to me. Though that cuts both ways; I do not care to get more invested in 40k because there is imbalance on that side too so I would rather stick with the setting and miniature lines I prefer if there is going to be that problem either way.