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 Kaiyanwang wrote:

 flandarz wrote:
To be fair, this kinda happens in every hobby. When D&D made tha change from 3.5 to 4th, the old guard said that it was "garbage" as well.

4th edition was a whole new game, with many elements and basic design concepts (dissociated mechanics) that clashed with what people wanted from D&D back then. It did not fix anything of what people wanted to be fixed from 3.5.
It was clumsily advertised on top of that.
5ed D&D, albeit newer, received a way better feedback.

If you wanted to use D&D as an example, you played yourself.

I think the main difference is that D&D tried (and failed) to change up their game with 4th edition, but went too far. They actually learned what went wrong though and did 5th edition, which from what I've read is pretty solid overall.

GW claimed they learned, but really didn't change anything or, if they did, they quickly fell back into their old ways. Honestly, I think part of the issue is BECAUSE of games like Warmahordes. Warmahordes exploded in popularity when GW was on the decline, and a big reason for that was the tight, concise rules and competitive bent, as well as the very synergistic approach to army building. It was very different to what was the norm at the time, and was very appealing.

Sadly, GW despite being way larger doesn't have the quality to match that, so made an attempt to have more combo/synergy driven games as opposed to the older style based on historical games, only there's a slew of problems because they don't seem to actually know how to design a game like that. For one thing, the reason Warmahordes tends to have less overall units and options is to avoid exactly what has plagued and continues to plague 40k: Too much bloat that hinders balance. There are how many armies in 40k? Over a dozen, if not closer to 20? How many units in each of those factions? How many options per unit? It's just bloat on top of bloat on top of bloat, and the more they add the harder it becomes to balance because part of balancing a game is actually testing all the permutations of an ability rather than play a game or two and call it done. GW goes for quantity over quality with the rules, and that's a big factor why the game breaks down.

It still seems like GW largely tests in the old style; rather than actually test how abilities interact with all the things (something which is key, otherwise you end up with the situation where you are locked into design for a faction because they would be too strong if you fixed them, due to poor synergies with units), they play a few games in a laid back way, take notes on what felt good, and tweak minorly. From what I've read, even the external testers are limited; GW doesn't let them build lists to show what breaks the game or could have issues, they essentially say test these rules with this army and tell us how it feels.

That isn't how you test any sort of game, let alone one that's supposed to now be based around synergies and combos. The reason Warmahordes was able to do this successfully was because they actually tested and compared abilities across the game, not at best within one faction while completely ignoring the fact that the rules usually let you ignore any sort of faction-specific weakness (assuming you play Imperium or Chaos, and maybe Eldar)

8th is not broken but it´s rules are dumbed down to appeal to GW´s target demography of today:

 Strg Alt wrote:
8th is not broken but it´s rules are dumbed down to appeal to GW´s target demography of today:

GW's rules have always been terrible though. You would think "dumbing down" the rules would make them easier to understand, cleaner and with fewer loopholes/debate on what's meant. Instead, it seems like the opposite. Literally, every single book has glaring errors, if not actual incorrect rules that need to be addressed.

 Strg Alt wrote:
8th is not broken but it´s rules are dumbed down to appeal to GW´s target demography of today:

I don't think that's quite the issue, I think the bigger issue is that they want everything in the 40k universe to be playable under one ruleset, regardless of size, setting, scale, or suitability. They want one primary product line at the 28mm scale that anyone can buy anything in and slap down anywhere and play with. They're trying to do in one rules system what would normally be done in 3 or 4 different games.

And so, we get a game where you can bring just about anything that exists in the setting, but in order to accommodate that they have to make the rules extremely generalized with lots of simplified abstractions.

 Strg Alt wrote:
8th is not broken but it´s rules are dumbed down to appeal to GW´s target demography of today:

I really hate this elitistic, nerdier-than-thou attitude. If rule complexity is a barrier for entry, it's only normal for GW to simplify the rules. They're a for-profit company after all. They need an influx of new blood, or their customer base will only ever shrink and they'll go bankrupt.

Streamlining the rules is not the same as "dumbing down" the rules.

Nothing says streamlined like "reroll all misses" not applying to rolls of "3" for marines if there is a to hit penalty.

ohh boi. He has a point you know.

Gw just can't streamline without dumbing down.

Not Online!!! wrote:
ohh boi. He has a point you know.

Gw just can't streamline without dimbing down.

You can be terrible at both - See Martel's comment.

Someone almost hit me over that rule. It really sticks out in my mind.

 Kaiyanwang wrote:

 flandarz wrote:
To be fair, this kinda happens in every hobby. When D&D made tha change from 3.5 to 4th, the old guard said that it was "garbage" as well.

4th edition was a whole new game, with many elements and basic design concepts (dissociated mechanics) that clashed with what people wanted from D&D back then. It did not fix anything of what people wanted to be fixed from 3.5.
It was clumsily advertised on top of that.
5ed D&D, albeit newer, received a way better feedback.

If you wanted to use D&D as an example, you played yourself.

Did I? Even just with the quoted portion, and ignoring the rest of my post, I think my example stands. 4th dropped, and rather than take the system on it's own merits, it was compared to the previous edition and because it wasn't the same, dismissed as inferior or "garbage". I'm relatively certain that had that same ruleset dropped under any other name but D&D, no one would have had a single word of complaint.

Don't get me wrong, I wasn't a fan of 4th edition either. And I think 5e is the best iteration to date. But, as a ruleset, 4th wasn't bad. As was stated above, it was just too different for the old guard to get behind.

 flandarz wrote:

Don't get me wrong, I wasn't a fan of 4th edition either. And I think 5e is the best iteration to date. But, as a ruleset, 4th wasn't bad. As was stated above, it was just too different for the old guard to get behind.

4th was a nice tabletop, but a bad RPG because the mechanics interfered with the immersion needed for a RPG.
So yeah, I'd argue the system was actually pretty bad. But we are going off-topic.
My point is that in my opinion the nerd-o-verse reacts badly to a new iteration of a given system when such iteration doesn't address the perceived or real issues of the older version.

And this is why, on the other hand, people were open to 8th at the beginning.

The problems with 7th was miscosted units. The problem with 8th is miscosted units. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Martel732 wrote:
The problems with 7th was miscosted units. The problem with 8th is miscosted units. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Depends what you want from a game.
As an example, albeit I like 8th well enough, I think that it's maddening that I cannot tell apart infiltrators from deepstrikers.

I despise the auras. Auras are, in fact, challenging to cost, but GW didn't have to go down that route.

The bigger issue is their desire to focus everything into auras/stratagems. How many faction rules that used to be available all the time got rolled up into limited stratagems? How many interesting abilities devolved into some weaksauce aura which buffs the broken stuff and doesn't do enough for the bad stuff. How many armies have multiple units that do the same role, but one is so much better than the other that it's essentially a replacement, without explicitly obsoleting the previous unit?

The bottom line is that the 40k team still doesn't really know how to balance rules. They add stuff to stratagems, which were neat when they were very specific and limited. But you can just take CP farms from another army (in most cases) and ignore the limited uses, which breaks them. A perfect example is our old friend the Castellan. It was clear the Knight Codex was built around the idea it had very strong stratagems, which were limited due to low CP, which his fine design. Except, their shoddy ally system let you just take cheap guard battalions to get a lot of CP, thereby eliminating what should have been the balancing factor of taking knights.

That's the key issue. They don't think enough about how the rules interact, and maybe that's proof there are too many units/options/abilities in the game, but even then within hours (if not sooner) of a codex dropping (sometimes even before it officially comes out due to leaks) people are finding glaring issues with the rules or glaring holes in the rules that are grossly ambiguous and require debate over what they mean, which show that either they aren't considering all the possibilities for a rule and just throwing it out there because it "sounds cool", or they just aren't even sure of how the rules in their own game work because they are so used to house ruling or going along with what they feel yet not clarifying that, or maybe both.

If that doesn't show the game is bloated, I don't know what will.

The Newman wrote:
@ Mr. White: Orks growing from spores and therefore being almost impossible to completely eliminate was one of my favorite parts of their fluff when I played them. In this universe even the mold is trying to kill you, and not in the passive "I'll destroy your lungs if you inhale me" kind of way.

But, this is not how the story begins, with a young orkling out for glory...
it is Imperial propaganda, trying to convince the rest of us that orks are so low as mold!
Lies, I say.
Lies... all.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

-Guardsman- wrote:

 Strg Alt wrote:
8th is not broken but it´s rules are dumbed down to appeal to GW´s target demography of today:

I really hate this elitistic, nerdier-than-thou attitude. If rule complexity is a barrier for entry, it's only normal for GW to simplify the rules. They're a for-profit company after all. They need an influx of new blood, or their customer base will only ever shrink and they'll go bankrupt.

Streamlining the rules is not the same as "dumbing down" the rules.

Right on!
Because nothing here is streamlined.
But, it is awfully dumbed down!

Martel732 wrote:
The problems with 7th was miscosted units. The problem with 8th is miscosted units. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

I disagree. Miscosted units was definitely *a* problem in 7th, but it was far from the *only* problem. You also had:

- Hugely bloated and convoluted rules (not helped by the worst layout I've ever seen in any rulebook to date).
- In addition to the core rules, there were a stupid number of additional rules (and, in some cases, units that ignored whole swathes of the rulebook).
- Absurd differences in scale and army composition. A player could easily find themselves facing an IK army that was immune to about half their army's firepower (since anything less than S6 was worthless, and even S6 could barely scratch them).
- A great deal of weapons were made useless by scenarios like the above. Small arms fire in particular became almost completely useless because there were so few units in the game that it was even remotely effective against.
- Many of the later Formations were hilariously unbalanced and granted bonuses far beyond what could be considered reasonable.
- Similarly, many psychic powers were completely ridiculous (Invisibility being the main culprit).
- 'Balance by randomness'. "Who cares if these spells or warlord traits are on entirely different levels in terms of power? They're random so it balances out."
etc.


8th addressed some of these, but frequently either went too far or else replaced them with new ones.

 Kaiyanwang wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
ohh boi. He has a point you know.

Gw just can't streamline without dimbing down.

You can be terrible at both - See Martel's comment.

Tbf gw can't write decent rules.
And they don't have to thanks to their monolithic market position.

 TheFleshIsWeak wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
The problems with 7th was miscosted units. The problem with 8th is miscosted units. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

I disagree. Miscosted units was definitely *a* problem in 7th, but it was far from the *only* problem. You also had:

- Hugely bloated and convoluted rules (not helped by the worst layout I've ever seen in any rulebook to date).
- In addition to the core rules, there were a stupid number of additional rules (and, in some cases, units that ignored whole swathes of the rulebook).
- Absurd differences in scale and army composition. A player could easily find themselves facing an IK army that was immune to about half their army's firepower (since anything less than S6 was worthless, and even S6 could barely scratch them).
- A great deal of weapons were made useless by scenarios like the above. Small arms fire in particular became almost completely useless because there were so few units in the game that it was even remotely effective against.
- Many of the later Formations were hilariously unbalanced and granted bonuses far beyond what could be considered reasonable.
- Similarly, many psychic powers were completely ridiculous (Invisibility being the main culprit).
- 'Balance by randomness'. "Who cares if these spells or warlord traits are on entirely different levels in terms of power? They're random so it balances out."
etc.


8th addressed some of these, but frequently either went too far or else replaced them with new ones.

Many of the later Formations were hilariously unbalanced and granted bonuses far beyond what could be considered reasonable.

Balance & reason was never the aim of GW. Their agenda was, is and always will be a sales driven ruleset. I still remember the introduction of the defiler which surpassed the dreadnought in every category. It was such a good unit that not to include it was an act of stupidity on the part of a chaos player.
Nowadays defilers are old junk and the new hot stuff are the upcoming chaos knights. Though I haven´t seen double AGC artwork on any chaos knight yet which could imply by GW´s terms of business conduct that such a choice of weapons is now illegal. And this is another HUGE issue which GW does all the time: Outlawing certain weapon loadouts and screwing players over. Geez, I am lucky that I chose to remain loyal with my four IK.

Ah yes the introduction of the new and improved things.

Reminds me of the no counter valkyrie.

good times were had.

Please remember the rules when posting, especially rule 1. Making broad, sweeping, insulting generalizations is not polite. Do not do it.
Thanks,
ingtaer.

I'd say you could find as many examples of balanced or bad new units as you could find overpowered ones. GW is hit or miss concerning balancing new units.
Primaris, Orkbuggies, the new CSM aside from the Lord Discordant and chaincannon all were on the weaker side of things.

Adding to the thread what I'd consider "broken": everything should cost points, Warlord traits, psychic powers, faction rules, artefacts. You won't be able to balance these if they cost nothing. Even as a casual fluff Player why would I ever take Plague Wind or stream of corruption when they're clearly worse than blades of putrefaction or miasma and even need a higher roll to pull of despite being a worse smite? Yes, probably in a fluffy list surrounding stacking mortal wounds, but it's still a self - imposed Handicap.

Martel732 wrote:
Nothing says streamlined like "reroll all misses" not applying to rolls of "3" for marines if there is a to hit penalty.

Okay, yeah, I agree the way penalties interact with re-rolls is totally ridiculous and counter-intuitive.

Also, plasma guns should overheat on an unmodified 1.

.

-Guardsman- wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Nothing says streamlined like "reroll all misses" not applying to rolls of "3" for marines if there is a to hit penalty.

Okay, yeah, I agree the way penalties interact with re-rolls is totally ridiculous and counter-intuitive.

Also, plasma guns should overheat on an unmodified 1.

.

yeah it really is stupid that something is harder hit so your gun blows up rather than your gun blows up because you overcharged it and the containment field failed.

 Elbows wrote:
Good luck.

The things that are pushing me rapidly away from playing 40K at the moment are:

1) Too many shots/dice rolls. It's absolutely asinine that an Ork can get 6-7 attacks, or that a unit that shoots a ton is allowed to shoot again in certain armies. The idea of a unit putting out 200-300 etc. attacks is....just asinine. It throws away any other consideration in the game. "Oh this guys tough" - "Doesn't matter I'm about to roll 300 dice." This is possibly the most glaring/obnoxious issue for me.

2) The ease with which auras/stratagems/spells make the above even more obnoxious. "Oh, those 300 dice...I'm re-rolling all of them, and doing double damage on 6's...and then rolling bonus dice if I do that....oh and they're buffed to hitting and wounding on 2+", etc.

The absurd level of lethality and comical level of dice rolling all but removes the idea that it's even a game. This all combines into gotcha-hammer, the worst type of gaming. "I ignore the following six rules and I have the following six buffs...so...you might as well take your models off the table".

This, combined with the archaic IGOUGO format just makes for a silly and miserable experience. You can take units and armies that don't do the above....but then you need to find an opponent who's similarly interested in artificially toning down the game.

Now, the above is fine with a lot of people - but they aren't playing a wargaming, they're competing in "a game". The same people who want to carry out a 168 hit combo in Street Fighter and you never get to hit a button etc. A lot of people enjoy the process of finding how to remove any risk/chance from the game. That's fine if that's the style of hobby you enjoy. However, that all trickles down and ruins the narrative elements of the game. It makes it increasingly hard to develop narrative or fun scenarios when someone can do X+Y+Z and obliterate your army.

I'm all about modifying a game to your enjoyment, but I don't think I care enough to bother any more with 40K. I'm to the point where any opponent (and these are my friends) say "Well I have 120 shots...and then I can shoot again"....I just take the unit off the table to end the game quicker. I can't be bothered. Unfortunate, but true.

Ok kind of off topic, but there hasn't been a Street Fighter game in a while where one person can dominate another with a single combo. There is always a chance for the defending player to do SOMETHING to stop that.

Really it is the same thing in 40k 8th edition. I have found that most armies I play against have been pretty balanced and the only egregious issues I've found comes from a few rules that were just poorly worded (Necron transports was the worst). The FAQs have fixxed a lot of the problems I personally had with the game, but even with a "low tier" army like necrons I still have fun and give folks a run for their money.

Ive read that gw claimed somewhere they are shooting faster trying to hit.

8ths biggest issue is as it stands the game could be replaced by a dice rolling simulation, key it to roll say 5000 d6’s rerolling 1’s and whoever rolls the most 6’s wins.

It would be quicker the “rules” are clearer and it’s balanced, on the whole it would probably be more fun and have the same tactical and strategic depth.

Seriously 8th’s main issue is that it is dull, tedious and just not that much fun. The thing is KillTeam is actually quite good and kinda based on the same rules. Which leads me to think 8th just does not scale up very well, but it also outside KT doesn’t scale down very well either if you have tried low point games.

This is backed up by Armageddon being its own thing for the 1st time, so GW have a dedicated skirmish game and a dedicated mass battle game. So what is the actual point of 8th what scale should it be used for or should it just be quietly dropped like 6th as a failed experiment?

Sid Meier is quoted as saying that a game is a series of interesting decisions. My core problem with 8e is that it includes fewer of those decisions, and they matter less.

In some cases this is due to specific internal balance issues, but more pressing are the instances where it's baked into the structure of the game. Important binary differences and decisions have been smoothed out into penalties or bonuses or removed altogether. The result feels more like a frictionless "white room" scenario than older editions ever did, and while it's quicker and more straightforward it's also shallow and often uninteresting, leading to a lot of the feelings described in this thread, such as "Combo-hammer", or "Bucket of Dice", where it doesn't really matter what you do so long as you stack your buffs properly onto a good death-blob and roll lots of dice for them.

The yearning for a d12 system is a symptom of this: people recognize that there's less and less to differentiate between units, and hope to revive a sense of mechanical identity by breaking down the various stats into more specific values.

Look at guns in 8e as a perfect example. In 3-5e, you couldn't split targets, so loading up a specific unit for a specific purpose really mattered. Rapid Fire weapons couldn't fire if your unit moved while outside short range, and Heavy Weapons couldn't fire if you moved full stop. Assault weapons were the only guns that could freely move-and-shoot, while template weapons varied in power massively depending on placement and target, and Pistols offered a powerful combat boost.

In these editions the Strength and AP of a weapon were of huge importance. Firstly because AP was binary: against anything short of AP3, a Marine was saving on 3+. This gave weapons a very clear set of targets and priorities. A weapon that would leave a Guardsman without a save would ping off power armour. AP3 is now AP-2, and applies a flat penalty to everything; AP5 is now AP-0, and doesn't touch anything. AP4, once "better than nothing, I guess" in a Marine-dominated meta, is now AP-1, the gold standard for a useful weapon that will double your Terminator kills compared to AP-0.

Secondly, because vehicles were closer to binary. A vehicle could be shaken or lose guns, yes, but for the most part it was dead or it wasn't, as determined by the attacker's Strength (and AP). A dozen autocannons couldn't scratch a Land Raider in a million years, while a meltagun up the jacksie was an instant death sentence for almost anything. In 8e, vehicles are monsters, and you kill them with the same stuff you'd use to kill anything with lots of Toughness and Wounds. Instant Death is a rule that also falls into this category. Not all of these things were perfect (or even good for the game), but they did draw clear sharp lines between how you used different guns.

The list goes on. Overwatch, for example, is a no-brainer defensive boost to shooting units that would have previously needed to decide between eating the charge and hoping to tie up the enemy for a countercharge, or falling back and risking destruction in the hopes of escaping to regroup. In its original incarnation, back in 2e, it was a decision to gamble on your shooting; you'd suffer a penalty, but if your opponent moved into range or out of cover (with penalties of up to -2) you could shoot on their turn and avoid those penalties. It was an interesting decision.

The reason people like Kill Team more than 40k is in large part because it includes more of these decisions, and they matter more. Do I move into cover for a powerful defensive bonus, or into the open so I'll be in short range and shoot better, or just Ready so I can shoot first? Do I fire Overwatch or try to Retreat? Do I take this gun or that gun? Do I take a Combat Specialist or a Veteran? Do I activate this model first, or that model? I'm in combat and I don't want to be; do I Fall Back, or keep him tied up and hope my pistol will do the job? I'm in combat and I want to be; do I Fall Back so my opponent doesn't leave me stranded when they Fall Back, or do I try to charge him to keep him here?

Interesting decisions, and decisions that matter. That's what 8e has lost a lot of.

RevlidRas wrote:
In these editions the Strength and AP of a weapon were of huge importance. Firstly because AP was binary: against anything short of AP3, a Marine was saving on 3+. This gave weapons a very clear set of targets and priorities. A weapon that would leave a Guardsman without a save would ping off power armour. AP3 is now AP-2, and applies a flat penalty to everything; AP5 is now AP-0, and doesn't touch anything. AP4, once "better than nothing, I guess" in a Marine-dominated meta, is now AP-1, the gold standard for a useful weapon that will double your Terminator kills compared to AP-0.

Eh, there is quite a lot of rose-tinted glasses involved here.
AP4 wasn't "better than nothing" AP 4 was "nothing" against pretty much all armies and "no armor" vs all others who payed points for their 4+ armor. Terminators also had just one wound, so and AP 6-4 weapon with many shots was the best way to kill terminators, not the worst.

Secondly, because vehicles were closer to binary. A vehicle could be shaken or lose guns, yes, but for the most part it was dead or it wasn't, as determined by the attacker's Strength (and AP). A dozen autocannons couldn't scratch a Land Raider in a million years, while a meltagun up the jacksie was an instant death sentence for almost anything.

That is ist a big fat misrepresentation of how the game really worked. Autocannons were the most efficient way of destroying all vehicles except those few AV14 models through many editions, while missiles, lascannons and other similar weapons were outright useless.

In 8e, vehicles are monsters, and you kill them with the same stuff you'd use to kill anything with lots of Toughness and Wounds. Instant Death is a rule that also falls into this category. Not all of these things were perfect (or even good for the game), but they did draw clear sharp lines between how you used different guns.

Binary is a BAD thing in game design. Vehicles dying slowly and degrading is much better than half of your army exploding/being invincible turn 1 due to bad/good luck is not something to be desired.
The thing that needs to be fixed is that all vehicles should be getting degrading tables that actually hurt them equally, so you get your "weapon destroyed/stunned"-effect back. Vehicles like the hemlock which just ignore degrading should not exist.
As for instant death, there is no way to properly price an instant death weapon when it can one-shot 500 point models. A 6 damage weapon like the knight's sword is a much better solution, as it's very much instant death to any infantry model, but not to a landraider.

The list goes on. Overwatch, for example, is a no-brainer defensive boost to shooting units that would have previously needed to decide between eating the charge and hoping to tie up the enemy for a countercharge, or falling back and risking destruction in the hopes of escaping to regroup. In its original incarnation, back in 2e, it was a decision to gamble on your shooting; you'd suffer a penalty, but if your opponent moved into range or out of cover (with penalties of up to -2) you could shoot on their turn and avoid those penalties. It was an interesting decision.

I actually agree on this one, but point to my previous post. Avoiding assaults should not be too easy, as they are very hard to pull off compared to shooting. I guess you could make it a decision between overwatch, counter-charge and falling back if you make leaving combat much more punishing.

The reason people like Kill Team more than 40k is in large part because it includes more of these decisions, and they matter more. Do I move into cover for a powerful defensive bonus, or into the open so I'll be in short range and shoot better, or just Ready so I can shoot first? Do I fire Overwatch or try to Retreat? Do I take this gun or that gun? Do I take a Combat Specialist or a Veteran? Do I activate this model first, or that model? I'm in combat and I don't want to be; do I Fall Back, or keep him tied up and hope my pistol will do the job? I'm in combat and I want to be; do I Fall Back so my opponent doesn't leave me stranded when they Fall Back, or do I try to charge him to keep him here?

I really love the way KT handles shooting and wish it were implemented like that for WH40k. However, most of the other decisions exist in both games - the big issue with KT is that shooting is much less deadly, so stuff gets more "personal" forcing more actions from player than point&clicking artillery units.

Interesting decisions, and decisions that matter. That's what 8e has lost a lot of.

What army do you play? Which armies are you facing regularly? How high is your meta's competitive level?
I think these answers might have a huge impact on the amount of decision making your games require.

 Jidmah wrote:
Eh, there is quite a lot of rose-tinted glasses involved here.

To be clear, I'm not praising these older mechanics (at least, not universally) – I'm just pointing out the ways in which different stats and options had more weight and distinction to them than in the "sliding scale" approach of 8e.

To use an example you raised, I'm not really concerned with whether insta-exploding vehicles that are immune to most weapons is a good thing for the game. I'm more concerned with examining how much weight that system puts on weapon choice and placement, as opposed to blasting away at vehicles to whittle them down the same way you would anything else. As I noted in my own post, the Marine-heavy meta (which hasn't and will never change) and tendency toward army-wide standard Save values meant that AP4 was worthless against MEQ armies while stripping clean through Tau or Eldar – but it can't be denied that the difference between an AP4 weapon and an AP3 weapon was more stark than an AP-1 weapon vs an AP-2 weapon now.