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Made in us
Decrepit Dakkanaut





Wait, you can stab people at tournaments? This changes everything!
   
Made in gb
Incorporating Wet-Blending




U.k

A.T. wrote:
 Strombones wrote:
It is a casual game that is constantly being shoe-horned into a tournament setting.
GW promote tournaments and produce paid-for rules updates and balance passes - it is not being sold as a casual non-tournament game, though a case could be made for it being mis-sold.


It’s sold as both. With the three ways to play and the narrative campaign books it’s is equally sold as a casual narrative game, there is as much fluff as riles in each codex. Games like shadespire are sold as competitive games designed to met just that need. Minimal narrative element. They don’t appeal to me at all as I okay narratively. 40k appeals to both and should cater to both.
   
Made in at
Second Story Man





Austria

 Strombones wrote:
 Latro_ wrote:

remember when iron warriors were totally broken because you could take a whopping 4 heavy support choices! remember nob biker wound allocation? or when necrons and grey knights were 'the competitive armies'.
it'll never end.


I remember all of those things too. The flying croissant army of Necrons, ect.....
40k has been like this since I started in 1997. It is a casual game that is constantly being shoe-horned into a tournament setting.


And during that time I enjoyed tournaments much more than casual or pick up games
For the main reason, I knew what to expect, there was a widely accepted system of scenarios and victory conditions and I was able ti finish 90% of my games

Never had a problem that a game was decided turn 1 or ended turn 2 in favour of my opponent.


Funny thing is,that it went from acceptable to bad the moment GW officially supported tournaments.
No one wanted to use custom scenarios or victory conditions any more, same as no one wanted to use the scenarios/victory conditions marked as "narrative" and all wanted to play strictly to the official GW tournament rules no matter how bad those were.
(I mean a 20:0 point system is still used with points in game directly translate into victory points wich also makes a 20:0 victory much easier than ever before and also favours lists that can get 3/5 20:0 over lists that win 5/5 games 11/9)

I tried both, pick up games and tournaments after 6th (skipped that edition) and while pick up games become much longer (with more talking than playing), most of them ended turn 2 with a clear winner at the end of turn 1 while tournaments became a random game if you were not chasing the flavour of the month army
At the start of 8th, at least pick up games became better, but now we are again at end of 7thE state of the game and I guess I will skip 9th as I don't expect GW to learn or to change

Harry, bring this ring to Narnia or the Sith will take the Enterprise 
   
Made in us
Dakka Veteran





There is a sizable group that's definitely enjoying what ITC has done for the tournament scene here in the US. ITC doesn't solve all the problems and is really it's own fan-made game, but for guys that like to play hard it's as good as competitive 40k has ever been.

A lot of people love solving the list optimization puzzle every season and ITC rules + GW's periodic updates have been delivering on that experience pretty consistently over the past few years.

--- 
   
Made in at
Second Story Man





Austria

Bad balance and chasing the meta has never been a problem for tournaments

it is just a big problem for casual players who want to play on tournaments from time to time and for casual players without a fixed group.

Which makes 40k (and AoS) bad at the one point were they were really better than everyone else, pick up games without further arrangement needed

Harry, bring this ring to Narnia or the Sith will take the Enterprise 
   
Made in us
Ship's Officer



London

 kodos wrote:
Bad balance and chasing the meta has never been a problem for tournaments

it is just a big problem for casual players who want to play on tournaments from time to time and for casual players without a fixed group.

Which makes 40k (and AoS) bad at the one point were they were really better than everyone else, pick up games without further arrangement needed

I think I agree with this. Bad balance doesn't affect high-level tournament players all that much. Tournament players will get hold of the best stuff.

I think the real issue with imbalance is with casual play. I think of my cousins buying random stuff as kids who never really got into the game. The one who played marines always beat the one who played orks. Since they never had a good game, they stopped. Who could blame them?
   
Made in gb
Incorporating Wet-Blending




U.k

Mandragola wrote:
 kodos wrote:
Bad balance and chasing the meta has never been a problem for tournaments

it is just a big problem for casual players who want to play on tournaments from time to time and for casual players without a fixed group.

Which makes 40k (and AoS) bad at the one point were they were really better than everyone else, pick up games without further arrangement needed

I think I agree with this. Bad balance doesn't affect high-level tournament players all that much. Tournament players will get hold of the best stuff.

I think the real issue with imbalance is with casual play. I think of my cousins buying random stuff as kids who never really got into the game. The one who played marines always beat the one who played orks. Since they never had a good game, they stopped. Who could blame them?


Disagree totally, the thing with casual games, especially the way I play them in my group is that they are self balancing. For example, got a knight castellan, it messed up so much stuff that we decided if I brought it out again we would scenario it to balance it. Like extra PL for the other player. That’s the point if you aim for a game that’s fun. It works in many other situations too.
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut







Andykp wrote:
Mandragola wrote:
 kodos wrote:
Bad balance and chasing the meta has never been a problem for tournaments

it is just a big problem for casual players who want to play on tournaments from time to time and for casual players without a fixed group.

Which makes 40k (and AoS) bad at the one point were they were really better than everyone else, pick up games without further arrangement needed

I think I agree with this. Bad balance doesn't affect high-level tournament players all that much. Tournament players will get hold of the best stuff.

I think the real issue with imbalance is with casual play. I think of my cousins buying random stuff as kids who never really got into the game. The one who played marines always beat the one who played orks. Since they never had a good game, they stopped. Who could blame them?


Disagree totally, the thing with casual games, especially the way I play them in my group is that they are self balancing. For example, got a knight castellan, it messed up so much stuff that we decided if I brought it out again we would scenario it to balance it. Like extra PL for the other player. That’s the point if you aim for a game that’s fun. It works in many other situations too.


"If I brought it out again we would scenario it to balance it" means that you're saying that you don't mind doing the designers' work for them. Which is totally fine if you don't mind doing that, but it also means that you're playing a game where you've got three separate aspects to the hobby:
*Game Design
*Building models
*Playing games
That's all good fun and games, until you disagree with the group concensus on how nerfed your models should be.

I'll leave it as an observational exercise (look at the internet and the discussion forums concerning even things like the old Adepticon FAQs) for what happens when you try to do that sort of thing in larger groups of mostly strangers.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/10/17 02:32:22


 
   
Made in de
Hellacious Havoc




The Realm of Hungry Ghosts

Andykp wrote:
 kodos wrote:
Bad balance and chasing the meta has never been a problem for tournaments

it is just a big problem for casual players who want to play on tournaments from time to time and for casual players without a fixed group.

Which makes 40k (and AoS) bad at the one point were they were really better than everyone else, pick up games without further arrangement needed


Disagree totally, the thing with casual games, especially the way I play them in my group is that they are self balancing. For example, got a knight castellan, it messed up so much stuff that we decided if I brought it out again we would scenario it to balance it. Like extra PL for the other player. That’s the point if you aim for a game that’s fun. It works in many other situations too.


But what kodos is saying is that you can't have a simple pick-up game anymore. You're not playing pick-up games, you're meeting up with people you already know who want the same thing from the game and can sort it out easily because you've already established that you're on the same page as each other.

Bharring wrote:
At worst, you'll spend all your time and money on a hobby you don't enjoy, hate everything you're doing, and drive no value out of what should be the best times of your life.
 
   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut




Andykp wrote:
Mandragola wrote:
 kodos wrote:
Bad balance and chasing the meta has never been a problem for tournaments

it is just a big problem for casual players who want to play on tournaments from time to time and for casual players without a fixed group.

Which makes 40k (and AoS) bad at the one point were they were really better than everyone else, pick up games without further arrangement needed

I think I agree with this. Bad balance doesn't affect high-level tournament players all that much. Tournament players will get hold of the best stuff.

I think the real issue with imbalance is with casual play. I think of my cousins buying random stuff as kids who never really got into the game. The one who played marines always beat the one who played orks. Since they never had a good game, they stopped. Who could blame them?


Disagree totally, the thing with casual games, especially the way I play them in my group is that they are self balancing. For example, got a knight castellan, it messed up so much stuff that we decided if I brought it out again we would scenario it to balance it. Like extra PL for the other player. That’s the point if you aim for a game that’s fun. It works in many other situations too.


I don't think that's the type of game being discussed and I don't think that sort of situation is all that common. Games in smaller, closed groups are often able to use the balancing approach you're talking about here (sometimes even subconsciously), but trying to do that in larger, more open groups can be difficult or impossible. It often leads to people feeling like there's a clique or some sort of gatekeeping happening that is difficult to understand, or people outright ignoring the unwritten rules of balance within the group. I would say most people I've ever met play what I would describe as semi-casual games where they aren't going for a full-on tournament build but are trying to play something vaguely competitive, maybe with some self-imposed restrictions. But nobody wants to play a game where they win or lose in the first turn or balance is so bad there's no chance for one of the players to win. The current state of 40k, unfortunately, makes these situations much more likely because the game is terribly balanced and, especially at the level most players find themselves at, there's so little tactical depth that there's not much you can do to change the situation other than change your army in some way.
   
Made in gb
Ship's Officer



London

Slipspace wrote:
Andykp wrote:
Mandragola wrote:
 kodos wrote:
Bad balance and chasing the meta has never been a problem for tournaments

it is just a big problem for casual players who want to play on tournaments from time to time and for casual players without a fixed group.

Which makes 40k (and AoS) bad at the one point were they were really better than everyone else, pick up games without further arrangement needed

I think I agree with this. Bad balance doesn't affect high-level tournament players all that much. Tournament players will get hold of the best stuff.

I think the real issue with imbalance is with casual play. I think of my cousins buying random stuff as kids who never really got into the game. The one who played marines always beat the one who played orks. Since they never had a good game, they stopped. Who could blame them?


Disagree totally, the thing with casual games, especially the way I play them in my group is that they are self balancing. For example, got a knight castellan, it messed up so much stuff that we decided if I brought it out again we would scenario it to balance it. Like extra PL for the other player. That’s the point if you aim for a game that’s fun. It works in many other situations too.


I don't think that's the type of game being discussed and I don't think that sort of situation is all that common. Games in smaller, closed groups are often able to use the balancing approach you're talking about here (sometimes even subconsciously), but trying to do that in larger, more open groups can be difficult or impossible. It often leads to people feeling like there's a clique or some sort of gatekeeping happening that is difficult to understand, or people outright ignoring the unwritten rules of balance within the group. I would say most people I've ever met play what I would describe as semi-casual games where they aren't going for a full-on tournament build but are trying to play something vaguely competitive, maybe with some self-imposed restrictions. But nobody wants to play a game where they win or lose in the first turn or balance is so bad there's no chance for one of the players to win. The current state of 40k, unfortunately, makes these situations much more likely because the game is terribly balanced and, especially at the level most players find themselves at, there's so little tactical depth that there's not much you can do to change the situation other than change your army in some way.

The other thing is that my cousins, like most of us when we started out, were teenagers. It was the first time they’d played any kind of wargame and it never really occurred to them to change the rules to improve it. And they didn’t have infinite cash to go out and buy new stuff – they had to work with what they had.

I think the problems for casual play are not the same as those for competitive play. For casual play, the bigger issue is that so many units in the game, and some whole armies, are complete trash. So a kid saves up all his money, or waits for his birthday or something, and gets hold of the new psychic awakening box. Then he finds that it doesn’t contain a single good unit. Sad thought, right? And not a great marketing strategy either.

At the competitive end of the spectrum you have competitive players who look at that box set and give it a hard pass, so they lose nothing. They’re playing with a far smaller selection of units than casual players because most units in most codexes don’t make the cut. But the margins for error in turning a good unit into a totally unreasonable one are pretty small. Time and again, GW gets it wrong.

There’s a post in the competitive 40k channel today with a Dark Angel (I think) player asking how to beat his friend’s Mortarion army. The crazy thing is that I don’t know the answer. The units available to both sides are way off the bottom of anything I’d use, or likely come up against, in a tournament, so I haven’t given them much thought. I did once come up against Jes Bickham’s Mortarion-led Death Guard at a GT heat, using my Crimson Fists, right at the start of 8th, and tabled them. I can’t imagine that army as a serious threat.

I don’t want to be giving someone “advice” that is essentially “your models are useless, go buy new ones”. But that’s actually the situation. This guy cannot expect to shoot Mortarion dead with 4 lascannons and the odd plasma gun in a tactical squad. His models are useless and he’s going to need a new army – or like 80% of one. And at the end of all that he’ll still have Dark Angels. It's actually sad to think of it.
   
Made in us
Clousseau




Your models are useless, buy a new army is often the only real answer.

And thats a common scenario.

There shouldn't be this much trash in a game or heavy skew in a game, but 40k and AOS revel in it and even bathe in it.
   
Made in ch
The Dread Evil Lord Varlak





 auticus wrote:
Your models are useless, buy a new army is often the only real answer.

And thats a common scenario.

There shouldn't be this much trash in a game or heavy skew in a game, but 40k and AOS revel in it and even bathe in it.


Out of GW's perspective that is fine, because people that need to change their list and are regular hobbiests will spend on the improved units.

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/766717.page
A Mostly Renegades and Heretics blog.
GW:"Space marines got too many options to balance, therefore we decided to legends HH units."
Players: "why?!? Now we finally got decent plastic kits and you cut them?"
Chaos marines players: "Since when are Daemonengines 30k models and why do i have NO droppods now?"
GW" MONEY.... erm i meant TOO MANY OPTIONS (to resell your army to you again by disalowing former units)! Do you want specific tyranid fighiting Primaris? Even a new sabotage lieutnant!"
Chaos players: Guess i stop playing or go to HH.  
   
Made in us
Clousseau




The trap comes in when a new player shows up to the store, doesn't know better, figures that 2000 points means he has a fighting chance against 2000 points of his opponent, buys stuff, and then finds out his $800 investment was largely garbage and he really needs to spam those other two units over there.

Competitive tournament players will typically do research first. Casual players often go for what looks the coolest because thats what draws them in the first place.

This is where gw needs to tighten down their system.
   
Made in ch
The Dread Evil Lord Varlak





 auticus wrote:
The trap comes in when a new player shows up to the store, doesn't know better, figures that 2000 points means he has a fighting chance against 2000 points of his opponent, buys stuff, and then finds out his $800 investment was largely garbage and he really needs to spam those other two units over there.

Competitive tournament players will typically do research first. Casual players often go for what looks the coolest because thats what draws them in the first place.

This is where gw needs to tighten down their system.

i totally agree, however the changing tides are also there to "motivate" veterans into spending.

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/766717.page
A Mostly Renegades and Heretics blog.
GW:"Space marines got too many options to balance, therefore we decided to legends HH units."
Players: "why?!? Now we finally got decent plastic kits and you cut them?"
Chaos marines players: "Since when are Daemonengines 30k models and why do i have NO droppods now?"
GW" MONEY.... erm i meant TOO MANY OPTIONS (to resell your army to you again by disalowing former units)! Do you want specific tyranid fighiting Primaris? Even a new sabotage lieutnant!"
Chaos players: Guess i stop playing or go to HH.  
   
Made in us
Dakka Veteran





Not Online!!! wrote:
 auticus wrote:
The trap comes in when a new player shows up to the store, doesn't know better, figures that 2000 points means he has a fighting chance against 2000 points of his opponent, buys stuff, and then finds out his $800 investment was largely garbage and he really needs to spam those other two units over there.

Competitive tournament players will typically do research first. Casual players often go for what looks the coolest because thats what draws them in the first place.

This is where gw needs to tighten down their system.

i totally agree, however the changing tides are also there to "motivate" veterans into spending.


Lets be fair, most vets, who I would classify as people in the game actively for over ten years. Tend to have many models and many armies and are usually, like me, enjoy the game enough that we like cool new hotness as well as have many armies or expand them. It isn't hard to get a vet to spend more money. We like our little plastic dudes enough to be in the game.

Now a churn and burn also always buys more because of the meta chase.

So there seems to be little GW has to do to keep the Tourney players buying except the meta wave they are doing now, the vets buy because lol look new plastic dudes. yaaa!

The crunch on the new players or the non-vets. They have the largest cost curve to absorb (the vets don't need to buy lots.. just a few here and there as they are released). They are often young, being non-working (aka parent's pay) or are young adults (which means in all except rare cases.. poor as hell.. lets be real. I was there too). As a vet player from the mid 80s I am at that point in life where my income is like you always dreamed of. You know, two kids, wife, I own a large house, I work for Uncle Sam and collect the kind of pay he likes to dole out to us from your (and my) tax money. Wife is a manager in an engineering/manufacturing corp. So yeah. Cost isn't an issue. GW doesn't have to market to us. And that's the problem. They are chasing us.. which require about zero effort to get us to buy the new cool and the tourney who spend money like water because of meta-chasing.. all the while the price hikes and sundry result in a Higher Entry Cost.. so much so that as has been stated above. You spend 800 bucks and you get trashed.. you quit.

In order to grow the hobby they need to chase the young and POOR. The rest of us.. be we Meta-Tourney Hardcore Folks or us now "old dudes" take care of ourselves for the most part and are likely to be nearly life-long customers.. as our investment sunk costs are so huge that we are in it forever since we've sunk costs for decades now.

For that reason they need to balance the game. Which is why I posted about Index. They were not "perfect" and were open to abuse (all rules can be abused by a rules lawyer or intentional misreading or other beardy nonsense) but what happened was a reneassance of play in stores. Primarily pickup games of newer players with smaller budgets and smaller models. Sure, the old dudes could field all of their 130 buck a pop flier cheese but we could do that anyways.. we already had the models from when GW was pushing the BUY THREE OF ALL THE THINGS (or for floating footballs of doom.. buy six!).. but by and large the new players and the small model count players could bring and fight with whatever they had. It worked.. pretty well. Not perfectly but at that point it was a tossup and pretty much everyone had some kind of chance unless facing off against a Cheese Puff player.

That caused a BOOM in new players. I saw it here. I saw it in the stores.. at the tables.. The bring and play and have fun brought back a ton of older players who left.. who often bought new models.. and newbies who bought new models. This caused a massive surge in GW's Customer Base. That was ENORMOUS from a corporate standpoint. A growing market or market boom is GOOD when you are a niche market.

What made it work was that new players and experienced players, as well as returning players, and even the Long Beards could all bring and play.. and it took a little while for the Cheese Curds to rise to the surface and in that time everyone was having a rocking good time, bringing what they had and winning and losing but mostly having a chance.

These days, as stated above, some models, and armies are trash.. trash to the point that if you bring them the pervasive cheese and just the standard table fare of the New OP Hotness will just crush them. They will NEVER win a game. This.. as with the Warmachine Experience, will drive away new players.. which is like saying you want your company to fail and you have selling product.

I'd be happy with less focus and reliance on us Long Beards. Our time is limited. As we age it becomes harder to paint, play time goes down. Our time is spent on family and other things. At this point GW needs to LOWER the cost of entry and ensure that you can have a CHANCE of winning (it matters, esp for the young and new players to win a few times).. This in turn over time ensures the hobby continues as the Long Beards age out and new long Beards come in.

In my case I am raising two new 40K players. But that's replacement level 2- age out 2- come in. Zero growth. They need new young people and new young adults. To do that you have to pander to their budgets.. not my budget. I am not the metric. I am not the primary and should not be the primary income/cost balance point. It is a bad idea.

Judging by the posts here, most people are young and on a limited budget but they WANT to spend money on this hobby and GW is pissing away all that good will with the Trash Models (which everyone usually buys because they are always the most prominent and cheap boxes.. Tactical Marines for example) and price hikes that make it ever harder for the majority of players to both buy in and to ENJOY the hobby.

Oh well. We will see where it goes.

Consummate 8th Edition Hater.  
   
Made in us
Fixture of Dakka





I think the hardest thing for players to accept is that truthfully, a lot of imbalance is unavoidable. It's not (entirely) malicious, its not (total) incompetence; a lot of it honestly grows organically out of the math models that drive the game; particularly as a meta develops. The ideal of blind balance through the power of points doesn't really work, even if its what we all tend to believe in.

I guess what I'm getting at is there's really no perfect solution for players that don't want to invest as much either in play or purchases in a game that is fundamentally about determining a winner. There are always going to be wrong choices and if your method of choice is aesthetic , the chance of getting stuck with a bad one is fairly high. There's a bigger question at play as to whether its better to keep things stable and let players abandon bad choices permanently or whether its worth trying to give everything its day in the sun at the cost of the right choices never being permanently right.

That's not to say GW games don't have issues that exacerbate the problem, (lack of meaningful design space) just that accepting the nature of the problem is a big part of deciding how you want to enjoy the experience in spite of it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
On a side note, I can't stress enough how important I think soup is for solving 40k's balance problems. I know its contentious, but I really think it helps players focus on building their collections in smaller components and insulates them to change. There's a huge difference between having 2000 points burn and churned into something new vs changing 600 points at a time.

I'd like to see changes to its implementation; reducing the ubiquity of the battalion and make it more of a progressive army growth. Take a lot of the extra slots out of the Battalion and require the others for stuff like heavy support. Make it your first detachment you get 1 of, and then unlike your 2nd and third as you build to 2000 points, with things like Super Heavy/Supreme Command/etc reserved for that third slot.

Regardless, I feel like the more the game leans on mono codex armies, the easier it is for change to cripple players and the harder it is for them to incorporate new releases into their collection. I think its telling that nothing has felt as onerous to adapt to as the first book to say "take mono faction or you get squat".

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/10/17 16:36:16


 
   
Made in ch
The Dread Evil Lord Varlak





Spoiler:
 meatybtz wrote:
Not Online!!! wrote:
 auticus wrote:
The trap comes in when a new player shows up to the store, doesn't know better, figures that 2000 points means he has a fighting chance against 2000 points of his opponent, buys stuff, and then finds out his $800 investment was largely garbage and he really needs to spam those other two units over there.

Competitive tournament players will typically do research first. Casual players often go for what looks the coolest because thats what draws them in the first place.

This is where gw needs to tighten down their system.

i totally agree, however the changing tides are also there to "motivate" veterans into spending.


Lets be fair, most vets, who I would classify as people in the game actively for over ten years. Tend to have many models and many armies and are usually, like me, enjoy the game enough that we like cool new hotness as well as have many armies or expand them. It isn't hard to get a vet to spend more money. We like our little plastic dudes enough to be in the game.

Now a churn and burn also always buys more because of the meta chase.

So there seems to be little GW has to do to keep the Tourney players buying except the meta wave they are doing now, the vets buy because lol look new plastic dudes. yaaa!

The crunch on the new players or the non-vets. They have the largest cost curve to absorb (the vets don't need to buy lots.. just a few here and there as they are released). They are often young, being non-working (aka parent's pay) or are young adults (which means in all except rare cases.. poor as hell.. lets be real. I was there too). As a vet player from the mid 80s I am at that point in life where my income is like you always dreamed of. You know, two kids, wife, I own a large house, I work for Uncle Sam and collect the kind of pay he likes to dole out to us from your (and my) tax money. Wife is a manager in an engineering/manufacturing corp. So yeah. Cost isn't an issue. GW doesn't have to market to us. And that's the problem. They are chasing us.. which require about zero effort to get us to buy the new cool and the tourney who spend money like water because of meta-chasing.. all the while the price hikes and sundry result in a Higher Entry Cost.. so much so that as has been stated above. You spend 800 bucks and you get trashed.. you quit.

In order to grow the hobby they need to chase the young and POOR. The rest of us.. be we Meta-Tourney Hardcore Folks or us now "old dudes" take care of ourselves for the most part and are likely to be nearly life-long customers.. as our investment sunk costs are so huge that we are in it forever since we've sunk costs for decades now.

For that reason they need to balance the game. Which is why I posted about Index. They were not "perfect" and were open to abuse (all rules can be abused by a rules lawyer or intentional misreading or other beardy nonsense) but what happened was a reneassance of play in stores. Primarily pickup games of newer players with smaller budgets and smaller models. Sure, the old dudes could field all of their 130 buck a pop flier cheese but we could do that anyways.. we already had the models from when GW was pushing the BUY THREE OF ALL THE THINGS (or for floating footballs of doom.. buy six!).. but by and large the new players and the small model count players could bring and fight with whatever they had. It worked.. pretty well. Not perfectly but at that point it was a tossup and pretty much everyone had some kind of chance unless facing off against a Cheese Puff player.

That caused a BOOM in new players. I saw it here. I saw it in the stores.. at the tables.. The bring and play and have fun brought back a ton of older players who left.. who often bought new models.. and newbies who bought new models. This caused a massive surge in GW's Customer Base. That was ENORMOUS from a corporate standpoint. A growing market or market boom is GOOD when you are a niche market.

What made it work was that new players and experienced players, as well as returning players, and even the Long Beards could all bring and play.. and it took a little while for the Cheese Curds to rise to the surface and in that time everyone was having a rocking good time, bringing what they had and winning and losing but mostly having a chance.

These days, as stated above, some models, and armies are trash.. trash to the point that if you bring them the pervasive cheese and just the standard table fare of the New OP Hotness will just crush them. They will NEVER win a game. This.. as with the Warmachine Experience, will drive away new players.. which is like saying you want your company to fail and you have selling product.

I'd be happy with less focus and reliance on us Long Beards. Our time is limited. As we age it becomes harder to paint, play time goes down. Our time is spent on family and other things. At this point GW needs to LOWER the cost of entry and ensure that you can have a CHANCE of winning (it matters, esp for the young and new players to win a few times).. This in turn over time ensures the hobby continues as the Long Beards age out and new long Beards come in.

In my case I am raising two new 40K players. But that's replacement level 2- age out 2- come in. Zero growth. They need new young people and new young adults. To do that you have to pander to their budgets.. not my budget. I am not the metric. I am not the primary and should not be the primary income/cost balance point. It is a bad idea.

Judging by the posts here, most people are young and on a limited budget but they WANT to spend money on this hobby and GW is pissing away all that good will with the Trash Models (which everyone usually buys because they are always the most prominent and cheap boxes.. Tactical Marines for example) and price hikes that make it ever harder for the majority of players to both buy in and to ENJOY the hobby.

Oh well. We will see where it goes.


I am probably young in your classification but i also started early.
But yeah the budget thing is an important sidenote, however GW^s financially perfectly fine if they go whaling for a lack off better term if you are familiar with the Videogames industry.

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/766717.page
A Mostly Renegades and Heretics blog.
GW:"Space marines got too many options to balance, therefore we decided to legends HH units."
Players: "why?!? Now we finally got decent plastic kits and you cut them?"
Chaos marines players: "Since when are Daemonengines 30k models and why do i have NO droppods now?"
GW" MONEY.... erm i meant TOO MANY OPTIONS (to resell your army to you again by disalowing former units)! Do you want specific tyranid fighiting Primaris? Even a new sabotage lieutnant!"
Chaos players: Guess i stop playing or go to HH.  
   
Made in us
Quick-fingered Warlord Moderatus






A.T. wrote:
 Suzuteo wrote:
As for the rest, if GW is more interested in money than competitive balance, why don't people do something about it? Take the Index and build a house meta around it. Launch a revolution to seize the means of design. Lol.
It has recently come to our attention that much of the information hosted on your website (the "Website"), provides us with cause for concern as it conflicts with our intellectual property rights. Although we are confident that the Website is a well-intentioned resource, we are acutely aware of the need to assert our intellectual property rights.

As you may appreciate, GW has a strict policy of protecting all of its intellectual property rights. To this end, we must insist that these materials are removed from the Website.

You can't copyright rules. (Well, unless you are Tetris.)
   
Made in gb
Incorporating Wet-Blending




U.k

Most of the cool,aunts here to me are about players attitudes not the rules them selves. They are open and open to possible abuse. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

If you have teenagers playing pick up games with what they have then a more veteran player could basically GM the game to balance it for them. We did this with my mates cousin who had buts and bats from marine armies. He played my mate and set up the terrain limited my mates choices so it was a a challenging fun game. It would have been different experience if he had come up against Army on a flat board. As it was he didn’t, he lost but that was down to some dice rolls not game balance but best of all he had fun and enjoyed the narrative.

I would rather have an open rule set where you can do this work your self and make the game work for any situation than have a dull game with no character that’s balanced and competetive.
   
Made in nl
Longtime Dakkanaut





Andykp wrote:
Most of the cool,aunts here to me are about players attitudes not the rules them selves. They are open and open to possible abuse. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

If you have teenagers playing pick up games with what they have then a more veteran player could basically GM the game to balance it for them. We did this with my mates cousin who had buts and bats from marine armies. He played my mate and set up the terrain limited my mates choices so it was a a challenging fun game. It would have been different experience if he had come up against Army on a flat board. As it was he didn’t, he lost but that was down to some dice rolls not game balance but best of all he had fun and enjoyed the narrative.

I would rather have an open rule set where you can do this work your self and make the game work for any situation than have a dull game with no character that’s balanced and competetive.
Right, because there is absolutely no level of balance good enough for casual pickup games that allow a game to have character...

its funny how often tournament players are talking about wanting the game a little more balanced so casual players can enjoy pickup games only for 'casuals' to come in and ferociously defend their need to house rule the game for it to be playable.
Every single balance discussion it happens eventually.
   
Made in gb
Witch Hunter in the Shadows





Andykp wrote:
I would rather have an open rule set where you can do this work your self and make the game work for any situation than have a dull game with no character that’s balanced and competetive.
Or alternatively start with a more balanced game that you can choose to unbalance if you want.

I don't get this 'balanced equals dull'. If I play a balanced(ish) game and am winning or losing it's probably because of the choices I am making, whereas kicking someone's ass by pushing my overpowered army up the table with a croupier stick is no fun at all, for me or my opponent.


 Suzuteo wrote:
You can't copyright rules. (Well, unless you are Tetris.)
Tell that to GW, that was an excerpt from one of their cease and desist letters to a website hosting GW rules.
   
Made in us
Clousseau




Once someone who is not interested in only collecting the most powerful units comes in and plays some games and gets their faces rubbed in dirt because they liked the models that were trash but they were under the delusion that the point system meant you had a decent chance at a good game so long as you had enough points (which is not the case in gw games), you lose those players.

Especially if they don't have a deep investment in the game. Its easier to cut your losses.

It stings the community when you constantly churn out of new players. Right now its negligible because you just get new people to replace those people that quit over their delusion being shattered, so a lot of people just shrug their shoulders and go "meh not my problem".

40k has the advantage of being able to be as putrid as it is and still maintain the ability to play a game anywhere on the globe, and I think thats more important than its game mechanics or balance issues. While that exists, this is basically not going to change anything.

AOS is riding on the coattails of the GW name and achieving the same level of indifference for the same reasons.

Balance also certainly does not equal dull. It boggles my mind that people actively seek out imbalance in games though.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/10/17 22:29:26


 
   
Made in us
Dakka Veteran





Not Online!!! wrote:
Spoiler:
 meatybtz wrote:
Not Online!!! wrote:
 auticus wrote:
The trap comes in when a new player shows up to the store, doesn't know better, figures that 2000 points means he has a fighting chance against 2000 points of his opponent, buys stuff, and then finds out his $800 investment was largely garbage and he really needs to spam those other two units over there.

Competitive tournament players will typically do research first. Casual players often go for what looks the coolest because thats what draws them in the first place.

This is where gw needs to tighten down their system.

i totally agree, however the changing tides are also there to "motivate" veterans into spending.


Lets be fair, most vets, who I would classify as people in the game actively for over ten years. Tend to have many models and many armies and are usually, like me, enjoy the game enough that we like cool new hotness as well as have many armies or expand them. It isn't hard to get a vet to spend more money. We like our little plastic dudes enough to be in the game.

Now a churn and burn also always buys more because of the meta chase.

So there seems to be little GW has to do to keep the Tourney players buying except the meta wave they are doing now, the vets buy because lol look new plastic dudes. yaaa!

The crunch on the new players or the non-vets. They have the largest cost curve to absorb (the vets don't need to buy lots.. just a few here and there as they are released). They are often young, being non-working (aka parent's pay) or are young adults (which means in all except rare cases.. poor as hell.. lets be real. I was there too). As a vet player from the mid 80s I am at that point in life where my income is like you always dreamed of. You know, two kids, wife, I own a large house, I work for Uncle Sam and collect the kind of pay he likes to dole out to us from your (and my) tax money. Wife is a manager in an engineering/manufacturing corp. So yeah. Cost isn't an issue. GW doesn't have to market to us. And that's the problem. They are chasing us.. which require about zero effort to get us to buy the new cool and the tourney who spend money like water because of meta-chasing.. all the while the price hikes and sundry result in a Higher Entry Cost.. so much so that as has been stated above. You spend 800 bucks and you get trashed.. you quit.

In order to grow the hobby they need to chase the young and POOR. The rest of us.. be we Meta-Tourney Hardcore Folks or us now "old dudes" take care of ourselves for the most part and are likely to be nearly life-long customers.. as our investment sunk costs are so huge that we are in it forever since we've sunk costs for decades now.

For that reason they need to balance the game. Which is why I posted about Index. They were not "perfect" and were open to abuse (all rules can be abused by a rules lawyer or intentional misreading or other beardy nonsense) but what happened was a reneassance of play in stores. Primarily pickup games of newer players with smaller budgets and smaller models. Sure, the old dudes could field all of their 130 buck a pop flier cheese but we could do that anyways.. we already had the models from when GW was pushing the BUY THREE OF ALL THE THINGS (or for floating footballs of doom.. buy six!).. but by and large the new players and the small model count players could bring and fight with whatever they had. It worked.. pretty well. Not perfectly but at that point it was a tossup and pretty much everyone had some kind of chance unless facing off against a Cheese Puff player.

That caused a BOOM in new players. I saw it here. I saw it in the stores.. at the tables.. The bring and play and have fun brought back a ton of older players who left.. who often bought new models.. and newbies who bought new models. This caused a massive surge in GW's Customer Base. That was ENORMOUS from a corporate standpoint. A growing market or market boom is GOOD when you are a niche market.

What made it work was that new players and experienced players, as well as returning players, and even the Long Beards could all bring and play.. and it took a little while for the Cheese Curds to rise to the surface and in that time everyone was having a rocking good time, bringing what they had and winning and losing but mostly having a chance.

These days, as stated above, some models, and armies are trash.. trash to the point that if you bring them the pervasive cheese and just the standard table fare of the New OP Hotness will just crush them. They will NEVER win a game. This.. as with the Warmachine Experience, will drive away new players.. which is like saying you want your company to fail and you have selling product.

I'd be happy with less focus and reliance on us Long Beards. Our time is limited. As we age it becomes harder to paint, play time goes down. Our time is spent on family and other things. At this point GW needs to LOWER the cost of entry and ensure that you can have a CHANCE of winning (it matters, esp for the young and new players to win a few times).. This in turn over time ensures the hobby continues as the Long Beards age out and new long Beards come in.

In my case I am raising two new 40K players. But that's replacement level 2- age out 2- come in. Zero growth. They need new young people and new young adults. To do that you have to pander to their budgets.. not my budget. I am not the metric. I am not the primary and should not be the primary income/cost balance point. It is a bad idea.

Judging by the posts here, most people are young and on a limited budget but they WANT to spend money on this hobby and GW is pissing away all that good will with the Trash Models (which everyone usually buys because they are always the most prominent and cheap boxes.. Tactical Marines for example) and price hikes that make it ever harder for the majority of players to both buy in and to ENJOY the hobby.

Oh well. We will see where it goes.


I am probably young in your classification but i also started early.
But yeah the budget thing is an important sidenote, however GW^s financially perfectly fine if they go whaling for a lack off better term if you are familiar with the Videogames industry.


It does indeed seem to be a sort of Whaling. I just don't think its a good long term strategy. I am still haunted perhaps by watching the model train industry implode since that is what I was into before wargamming.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Ordana wrote:
Andykp wrote:
Most of the cool,aunts here to me are about players attitudes not the rules them selves. They are open and open to possible abuse. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

If you have teenagers playing pick up games with what they have then a more veteran player could basically GM the game to balance it for them. We did this with my mates cousin who had buts and bats from marine armies. He played my mate and set up the terrain limited my mates choices so it was a a challenging fun game. It would have been different experience if he had come up against Army on a flat board. As it was he didn’t, he lost but that was down to some dice rolls not game balance but best of all he had fun and enjoyed the narrative.

I would rather have an open rule set where you can do this work your self and make the game work for any situation than have a dull game with no character that’s balanced and competetive.
Right, because there is absolutely no level of balance good enough for casual pickup games that allow a game to have character...

its funny how often tournament players are talking about wanting the game a little more balanced so casual players can enjoy pickup games only for 'casuals' to come in and ferociously defend their need to house rule the game for it to be playable.
Every single balance discussion it happens eventually.


Sure there is.

Take an index army built up off of what the "core" models (cheaper boxes) are. No matter what race you pick it will "mostly" work out. Maybe not on a one off battle but over time the average will balance out. Be it ork boys, necron warriors, eldar guardians, or space marine tactical squads. I used to say use the start collecting boxes but those started doing some strange things as time went on. But basically that is where new players will start.

Points for points a Start Collecting won't hold up against an army made with more expensive boxes. As it turns out the game isn't balanced on points.. it's balanced on price. The more expensive boxes tend to be better performers (not always but that is usually an error on GWs part).. as someone pointed out earlier the flyer spam from the Index as an example of lack of balance but dollar for dollar that flyer army was likely twice the dollar cost of the opposition despite being the same points.

Take those starter battle boxes and they tend to be relatively fun and balanced to pick up and play. Things start going off the rails as you start throwing in the 80 bucks for 3 models type units... and those 150 buck single models (knights, eldar or otherwise, superheavies, etc) can really punch above their points level but match for punch vs DOLLAR.

Which is probably where people found root for the pay to win commentary in regard to 40k. The more costly boxed sets performed better point for point vs the cheaper "standard" units (troops usually).

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/10/18 00:04:27


Consummate 8th Edition Hater.  
   
Made in gb
Incorporating Wet-Blending




U.k

A.T. wrote:
Andykp wrote:
I would rather have an open rule set where you can do this work your self and make the game work for any situation than have a dull game with no character that’s balanced and competetive.
Or alternatively start with a more balanced game that you can choose to unbalance if you want.

I don't get this 'balanced equals dull'. If I play a balanced(ish) game and am winning or losing it's probably because of the choices I am making, whereas kicking someone's ass by pushing my overpowered army up the table with a croupier stick is no fun at all, for me or my opponent.


 Suzuteo wrote:
You can't copyright rules. (Well, unless you are Tetris.)
Tell that to GW, that was an excerpt from one of their cease and desist letters to a website hosting GW rules.


Because this thread is about why the competive scene is getting so much hate. And at the minute it’s because the vocal minority of competitive players on the Internet call for measure that would balance the game but make it very dull. Restricting choices, detachments, stripping away special rules, banning mixed armies, streamlining away the character of units and armies. If people could find balance measures that didn’t do that I’d be ok with it.

You can balance pick up games very easily without changing the rules at all, one, don’t force the games to use match play and tournament rules. Like rule of 3, and points. Use power level and random missions. Two, don’t be a jerk. Talk to each other. Play for fun. Make up a story about your armies and the battle, who are they, why is it happening. Easy. Fun pick up game where ORKS can have a fun battle against iron hands or who ever.
   
Made in gb
Witch Hunter in the Shadows





Andykp wrote:
And at the minute it’s because the vocal minority of competitive players on the Internet call for measure that would balance the game but make it very dull. Restricting choices, detachments, stripping away special rules, banning mixed armies, streamlining away the character of units and armies.
The most games and most opponents / new player i've had while playing 40k was during the earlier part of 5th edition.
Lists were heavily restricted - more than three long ranged heavy weapon units in a list were uncommon, similarly fast first strike units, allies were almost non-existent, the majority of special rules were shared from a small common pool, playing something like an Iyanden army meant taking more wraithguard rather than getting arbitrary bonuses, psychic powers were mundane, rerolls were uncommon, and there were no freebies.

It wasn't dull.

At least not at first, the edition suffered from power creep and by the end of it the game was much like it is today - increasingly unbalanced armies that could faceroll over the lesser factions, where decisions made during the game become increasingly less relevant to its outcome.


Andykp wrote:
You can balance pick up games very easily without changing the rules at all, one, don’t force the games to use match play and tournament rules. Like rule of 3, and points. Use power level and random missions. Two, don’t be a jerk. Talk to each other. Play for fun. Make up a story about your armies and the battle, who are they, why is it happening. Easy. Fun pick up game where ORKS can have a fun battle against iron hands or who ever.
You could do all of these things with a better balanced game.
   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut




Andykp wrote:
A.T. wrote:
Andykp wrote:
I would rather have an open rule set where you can do this work your self and make the game work for any situation than have a dull game with no character that’s balanced and competetive.
Or alternatively start with a more balanced game that you can choose to unbalance if you want.

I don't get this 'balanced equals dull'. If I play a balanced(ish) game and am winning or losing it's probably because of the choices I am making, whereas kicking someone's ass by pushing my overpowered army up the table with a croupier stick is no fun at all, for me or my opponent.


 Suzuteo wrote:
You can't copyright rules. (Well, unless you are Tetris.)
Tell that to GW, that was an excerpt from one of their cease and desist letters to a website hosting GW rules.


Because this thread is about why the competive scene is getting so much hate. And at the minute it’s because the vocal minority of competitive players on the Internet call for measure that would balance the game but make it very dull. Restricting choices, detachments, stripping away special rules, banning mixed armies, streamlining away the character of units and armies. If people could find balance measures that didn’t do that I’d be ok with it.


Restrictions are a key part of balance and creativity. The current trend towards essentially unrestricted army selection is one of the key things that makes games unbalanced because it removes the template that previously existed that at least somewhat forced the creation of balanced armies. Now we see lists of 6+ flyers and, befor ethe rule of 3, 9 Plagueburst Crawlers or 7 Flyrants simply because there are absolutely no meaningful restrictions on army selection. The idea that the game would become dull and lacking in character if we went back to the old Force Org Chart, for example, is laughable. We had that from 3rd through to midway through 7th and the game seemed characterful enough to me. Similarly, my 3rd edition Blood Angels had one army-wide special rule, one special unit and a special rule for their Rhino-chassis vehicles, along with a simple Force Org slot switch for Assault Marines and they were plenty characterful and massively different from the Dark Angels or Salamanders lists I played against back then. That's fewer special rules than a basic Iron Hands detachment gets from all its layered Doctrine, Chapter Tactic rules etc but it can still be effective. Seems to me like a very GW approach to games design to think that special rules = character. That's what's led us to this situation in the first place, where every army needs half a dozen special rules, on top of the unit special rules that are everywhere.

Andykp wrote:

You can balance pick up games very easily without changing the rules at all, one, don’t force the games to use match play and tournament rules. Like rule of 3, and points. Use power level and random missions. Two, don’t be a jerk. Talk to each other. Play for fun. Make up a story about your armies and the battle, who are they, why is it happening. Easy. Fun pick up game where ORKS can have a fun battle against iron hands or who ever.


Again, the problem with that is it means different things to different people and there's no way to easily communicate "don't be a jerk" to a disparate gaming group. Among a group of 4-6 people who play each other regularly it's definitely achievable but if you have a larger group, especially one that's regularly taking in new players all your unwritten rules do is confuse and turn away players. The current state of balance means you're losing these players befor ethey get the experience to be able to self-balance (if that's even what they want to do). I'm constantly baffled by the attitude that we should do GW's job for them and balance the game ourselves. If a new player shows up with his Necron army and plays against someone using the new Space Marine Codex he shouldn't feel like he's playing a completely different game to his opponent. He shouldn't be left wondering why all his stuff seems so much worse than his opponent's and he shouldn't have to ask his opponent to significantly nerf his army just so he can get a close game. In fact, I would argue, somebody playing Iron Hands characterfully could argue their just playing to the theme of their army and it's not their fault GW is so bad at balancing the game it leads to blow-outs in 2 turns. That also means no amount of random missions will help - having nothing left on the board from turn 2 is a bad play experience regardless of mission parameters. Power Levels potentially make the problem even worse. In the case of Necrons they get no options for their units, but Space Marines can easily take much more powerful stuff for the same cost because it's not accounted for iin the PL system. this isn't even the SM player being a jerk, it's just one more example of how we shouldn't have to be negotiating every aspect of a game beforehand because GW is sometimes spectactularly incompetent when it comes to balance.

It's telling that GW games seem to be the only ones that have this problem. Other wargames I play or have experience of don't involve any pre-game negotiation and they don't really lack for character or fun.

   
Made in ch
The Dread Evil Lord Varlak





It does indeed seem to be a sort of Whaling. I just don't think its a good long term strategy. I am still haunted perhaps by watching the model train industry implode since that is what I was into before wargamming.

It isn't, it's a bubble chasing based concept.
And me personally they have mostly priced out.

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/766717.page
A Mostly Renegades and Heretics blog.
GW:"Space marines got too many options to balance, therefore we decided to legends HH units."
Players: "why?!? Now we finally got decent plastic kits and you cut them?"
Chaos marines players: "Since when are Daemonengines 30k models and why do i have NO droppods now?"
GW" MONEY.... erm i meant TOO MANY OPTIONS (to resell your army to you again by disalowing former units)! Do you want specific tyranid fighiting Primaris? Even a new sabotage lieutnant!"
Chaos players: Guess i stop playing or go to HH.  
   
Made in us
Clousseau




Unrestricted list building with no restrictions is a major reason why the games are horrible in terms of balance and why min/maxing is so easy.

GW games are the only games to my knowledge that have unrestricted list building. Every other wargame I have ever played has had restrictions for a good reason.
   
Made in gb
Ship's Officer



London

Andykp wrote:
A.T. wrote:
Andykp wrote:
I would rather have an open rule set where you can do this work your self and make the game work for any situation than have a dull game with no character that’s balanced and competetive.
Or alternatively start with a more balanced game that you can choose to unbalance if you want.

I don't get this 'balanced equals dull'. If I play a balanced(ish) game and am winning or losing it's probably because of the choices I am making, whereas kicking someone's ass by pushing my overpowered army up the table with a croupier stick is no fun at all, for me or my opponent.


 Suzuteo wrote:
You can't copyright rules. (Well, unless you are Tetris.)
Tell that to GW, that was an excerpt from one of their cease and desist letters to a website hosting GW rules.


Because this thread is about why the competive scene is getting so much hate. And at the minute it’s because the vocal minority of competitive players on the Internet call for measure that would balance the game but make it very dull. Restricting choices, detachments, stripping away special rules, banning mixed armies, streamlining away the character of units and armies. If people could find balance measures that didn’t do that I’d be ok with it.

You can balance pick up games very easily without changing the rules at all, one, don’t force the games to use match play and tournament rules. Like rule of 3, and points. Use power level and random missions. Two, don’t be a jerk. Talk to each other. Play for fun. Make up a story about your armies and the battle, who are they, why is it happening. Easy. Fun pick up game where ORKS can have a fun battle against iron hands or who ever.

One thing that I totally support is having different systems for competitive play and casual play, as 40k does. If you want to play with power level instead of points, no rule of three and so on, then the game absolutely supports that. Go ahead - open play is every bit as "official" as matched play. If other people want to use all those things, then that’s also fine surely, isn’t it? It’s their game, not yours. None of us own what other people do.

And so where competitive players are talking about wanting restrictions, that should explicitly be for matched play and not casual play. In casual play, the best balancing method is a pre-game conversation between the players. No rules writer can come up with a better system than you can through talking to your fellow gamers.

But that doesn’t work for all situations. It kind of requires that you know each other and have some history of playing, to figure out how to balance things going forward. And so those of us playing pick up games or tournaments require a different system to balance our games against opponents we’ve never met before. It can’t really be as good as what you can manage over time, but it has to do as well as it can.

I’d like to understand more about how attempts to balance the game make things worse for casual players. The most recent example is probably the Iron Hands codex, which got a pretty major (and in my opinion entirely warranted) power reduction yesterday. Are you saying that a change such as reducing the effect of the Ironstone is less fun, and if so, how? Or am I getting the wrong end of the stick here?
   
 
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