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 Crimson wrote:

MiguelFelstone wrote:
Here's the problem i have with this argument, if they had tested their products correctly they'd catch most of these "edgecase combos".
I'll give you a recent example - anyone who saw the Iron Hands leaks knew was going to broken as hell if the rumors were true, and as soon as that GT finished with half the armies being Iron Hands they FAQd that real quick, like within a few days i believe. It would have been obvious to any competent tester, i mean it was obvious to the dozens of people that showed up with Iron Hands.

They would catch more of them and they definitely should catch more of them. Some things in the unerrated IH supplement for example were so blatantly and obviously broken that it is pretty incomprehensible how no one at the GW noticed this. But still, there is always some less obvious combos. There is always the best list as long as lists are different. I am not saying that they shouldn't do better, but the perfection is nevertheless unattainable. The goal should be a balance good enough for random casual games. In casual game one faction winning 48% time and onother 52% time is close enough. It still feels that you win about half your games. But in top tier competitive environment that 48% win faction would be deemed as pointless trash.

Yeah, this is the thing. All of this. As someone said before, there's diminishing returns the more balanced you try to get the game. Getting it 75% balanced is easy. Getting it 90% balanced is really effing hard. Getting it 95% balanced is damn near impossible. And getting it 100% balanced is literally impossible without making all the armies exactly the same.

The point so many of us are trying to make but people seem determined to ignore is that GW's goal, obviously, when doing their playtesting, is just to get it balanced enough for the kinds of friendly games most people are playing. If a big mistake breaks through the cracks and totally screws up the tournament meta, like Iron Hands or the Castellan, they correct that with FAQ / Errata as quickly as they can. They're going to stick with this model, because no matter what the top-selling kits are (I've already explained why that's a stupid metric; and seriously, GW has a lot more sales data and sales analysis then any of us in this thread do), they know that their bread and the butter is the IP, and the breadth of the hobby's appeal, not tournaments and hardcore competitors. They're even deliberately gearing other games more towards the tournament scene - like Underworlds - specifically to cash in more on tournaments while maintaining the wide ranging appeal of 40k.

That's what it boils down to. If you want to be a competitively focused player, that's 100% fine. And heck, if you wanna be really really angry that 40k isn't priority built for the competitive scene, that's fine too, but it's really not going to ever change, and you might be better off playing something different if possible. And if you demand 40k change in ways that would come at the expense of other players' priorities, well, that's not as okay, and will probably ruffle a few feathers. Likewise with being a snide, condescending jerk to people just because they don't share your aggressive, negative outlook on the game.

Also, finally: a really good player can still do a hell of a lot better with Grey Knights than a naive newcomer can do with Space Marines.

LOL no. Grey Knights are that bad. There's no amount of skill there.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
LOL no. Grey Knights are that bad. There's no amount of skill there.

I think you're underestimating just how badly someone can suck at Warhammer.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
LOL no. Grey Knights are that bad. There's no amount of skill there.

There is a minimum level of competency required by the SM player. For instance, this list:



Should lose to a decent GK list at 1k points. But this so... SO BAD, that any halfway competent player would never build it.

MiguelFelstone wrote:

Pointed Stick wrote:
Competitive games are the ones that can withstand a lack of perfect balance and a constantly shifting metagame, because these attributes become features for the game to remain interesting over time.

I love it when the thing i hate most about this game suddenly becomes a virtue ...

It's not wrong though. The competitive players seem to WANT there to be uber broken combos so they can feel superior by finding them (the irony being that GW's combos are so poor that anyone with a brain could look at them and figure out the "best" one) compared to your average scrubs who don't know. So yes, it would appear that comp players really don't want balance because they find the most interesting part to be finding and using the unbalanced things, and if things were balanced then they wouldn't be able to do that. At least that's how it often seems since a key part of being a competitive player is finding the broken combos and using them to the max, so those existing have to factor into the picture.

I also feel that bad balance hurts casual more than competitive because your comp players are going to inevitably drift to the broken combos anyways, no matter what they are, so if 90% of the units in an army suck it won't matter to the competitive person who will just focus on the 10% that are good anyways and ignore the rest because they are only interested in the good. The person really hurt is the casual person who really likes the 90% that suck and doesn't like the 10% that is good, because now what they've chosen is detrimental to them winning games simply by existing. That's not to say that competitive players wouldn't benefit from better balance, but in the end, it doesn't affect them as much because they will just jump to whatever is good to stay competitive. Usually (but not always) your comp players aren't kept interested in an army by anything other than how well it performs so are more likely to swap armies without the same sort of emotional attachment your more casual players tend to have.

In regards to Kill Team, I don't believe it was ever designed for tournament balance since the game went to great effort not to change data sheets and points (at the time Kill Team came out) from what would be found in full 40k. With Arena efforts were placed to control the battlefield and Line of Sight variables, but no changes to actually occurred among factions. So given the new battlefield conditions some factions move up in the meta playing Arena compared to a more typical game of Kill Team. But that was about it., The standard meta of faction that has access to chaff units and several powerful special/heavy weapons remained unchanged. So I would argue not much balance was added to Kill Team over full 40k, save a limited scope of units and standard Command Point generation. Which allows the game to be much more balanced, but it still has fairly well defined Upper, Mid and Lower tier factions.

I agree that KT originally wasn't meant for any tourney play, but KT Arena was basically GW admitting that they saw a market in catering to a more tourney playerbase. Now whether they follow through with that is another matter.

I am honestly of the opinion that GW desires the tourney money more and more, but aren't really sure how they should approach it or how it will affect their processes.

MiguelFelstone wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
Its a mystery to me as to why people keep trying to force something so staunchly not a competitive game into that niche. If GW wanted to make the game Warmachine levels of competitive they easily could but they don't for a reason.

It's the customers who are wrong!

Well yeah, if they keep chucking money at something they profess to hate, then it's not the people making the thing that keeps selling who are the problem, tbh.

 Nazrak wrote:

MiguelFelstone wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
Its a mystery to me as to why people keep trying to force something so staunchly not a competitive game into that niche. If GW wanted to make the game Warmachine levels of competitive they easily could but they don't for a reason.

It's the customers who are wrong!

Well yeah, if they keep chucking money at something they profess to hate, then it's not the people making the thing that keeps selling who are the problem, tbh.

Unrelated but this goes down the slope of "good enough" and mediocrity. And when you accept mediocrity you have no reason to improve. Doubly so when mediocrity gets you record-breaking profits. I would argue it's partially GW's fault for following the "eh good enough" mindset but more on the players who accepted the mediocrity that was 8th with "Well it's better than 7th!" and fell for most of GW's smoke and mirrors. That's who is really to blame, because 7th was the slap in the face to GW that things needed to change but 8th wasn't change enough (rather, it quickly spiraled out of control) but just better enough to make everyone forget the issues.

Wayniac wrote:

 Nazrak wrote:

MiguelFelstone wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
Its a mystery to me as to why people keep trying to force something so staunchly not a competitive game into that niche. If GW wanted to make the game Warmachine levels of competitive they easily could but they don't for a reason.

It's the customers who are wrong!

Well yeah, if they keep chucking money at something they profess to hate, then it's not the people making the thing that keeps selling who are the problem, tbh.

Unrelated but this goes down the slope of "good enough" and mediocrity. And when you accept mediocrity you have no reason to improve. Doubly so when mediocrity gets you record-breaking profits. I would argue it's partially GW's fault, but more on the players who accepted the mediocrity that was 8th with "Well it's better than 7th!" and fell for most of GW's smoke and mirrors.

Or, and here's a crazy thought, maybe the players that "accepted the mediocrity" actually LIKE 8th, didn't "fall for" anything, and genuinely have fun using the rules for a narrative combat simulation game without needing it to be 100% perfect.

Wait, that'll probably get me called a White Knight.

 Octopoid wrote:

Wayniac wrote:

 Nazrak wrote:

MiguelFelstone wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
Its a mystery to me as to why people keep trying to force something so staunchly not a competitive game into that niche. If GW wanted to make the game Warmachine levels of competitive they easily could but they don't for a reason.

It's the customers who are wrong!

Well yeah, if they keep chucking money at something they profess to hate, then it's not the people making the thing that keeps selling who are the problem, tbh.

Unrelated but this goes down the slope of "good enough" and mediocrity. And when you accept mediocrity you have no reason to improve. Doubly so when mediocrity gets you record-breaking profits. I would argue it's partially GW's fault, but more on the players who accepted the mediocrity that was 8th with "Well it's better than 7th!" and fell for most of GW's smoke and mirrors.

Or, and here's a crazy thought, maybe the players that "accepted the mediocrity" actually LIKE 8th, didn't "fall for" anything, and genuinely have fun using the rules for a narrative combat simulation game without needing it to be 100% perfect.

Wait, that'll probably get me called a White Knight.

Oh look at the white... no, seriously. I mean, sure. But there's no way of knowing that. Definitely Dakka has a bigger share of people who are overly concerned about competitive balance and competitive play. But really is 8th all that better than 7th? It started out that way sure but now? I'm not so sure. It seems like it's gotten overly bloated just like 7th did before.

I do think that there's a whole lot of people who don't play uber competitively that have no issues, but to me that's more "It doesn't affect me so there's no problem"

Wayniac wrote:

Unrelated but this goes down the slope of "good enough" and mediocrity. And when you accept mediocrity you have no reason to improve. Doubly so when mediocrity gets you record-breaking profits. I would argue it's partially GW's fault for following the "eh good enough" mindset but more on the players who accepted the mediocrity that was 8th with "Well it's better than 7th!" and fell for most of GW's smoke and mirrors. That's who is really to blame, because 7th was the slap in the face to GW that things needed to change but 8th wasn't change enough (rather, it quickly spiraled out of control) but just better enough to make everyone forget the issues.

It rather quickly spiraled out of control and then it was dealt with, spiraled again and then it was dealt with, and so on. Flyers can't cap, rule of 3, CA17 w/ Bobby and Asscan nerfs, beta smite, etc.

GW hasn't been complacent. There are noticeable and distinct differences of GW's behavior between 7th and 8th that go far beyond smoke and mirrors. To suggest otherwise is being deliberately misleading.

I kind of gak myself over GSC and it turns out they're way harder to manage, but nearly the entire community is collectively gaking itself over marines...like every god damn day. We get it. GW tried to give an option to move away from soup and it isn't going well right this moment. Calm down for like two or three months and give feedback so they can fix it.

Would you rather wait an entire edition for GW to do something or just the Spring FAQ?

nataliereed1984 wrote:
or the Castellan, they correct that with FAQ / Errata as quickly as they can.

If they corrected it as quickly as they could it wouldn't have taken nearly a year to address it.

nataliereed1984 wrote:
Likewise with being a snide, condescending jerk to people just because they don't share your aggressive, negative outlook on the game.

If that's how i came across i apologize.

nataliereed1984 wrote:
Also, finally: a really good player can still do a hell of a lot better with Grey Knights than a naive newcomer can do with Space Marines.

Maybe if they had no idea how the game worked, like the basic systems of play - and then realistically only if they brought a single Purgation spearhead.

 Nazrak wrote:

MiguelFelstone wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
Its a mystery to me as to why people keep trying to force something so staunchly not a competitive game into that niche. If GW wanted to make the game Warmachine levels of competitive they easily could but they don't for a reason.

It's the customers who are wrong!

Well yeah, if they keep chucking money at something they profess to hate, then it's not the people making the thing that keeps selling who are the problem, tbh.

I love this game. I've been playing it off and on since 3rd, and if i didn't (love it) i wouldn't care this much about a single aspect. It just happens to be the one aspect that kept my local club / community strong for at least the last decade.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Would you rather wait an entire edition for GW to do something or just the Spring FAQ?

I don't accept that it has to be one or the other, how about you develop and test something competently and THEN release it.

MiguelFelstone wrote:
I don't accept that it has to be one or the other, how about you develop and test something competently and THEN release it.

Well, this goes back to their release schedule being unsustainable. Nobody wants to go back to the days when some books weren't updated for years, but the rate they are putting out material is just exacerbating sloppy editing/proofreading and has got to be eating into development and playtesting time.

I am sure that some of the issues indeed stem from the swift release schedule and this is not something that can even necessarily be fixed by hiring more people. Writers simply have no time to compare notes, and this would obviously be highly important for achieving balance between factions.

Like it is decided that marines of all sorts need buffs, and one writer works on updated CSM book and another on updated loyalist marine book, and sure enough, both give buffs to these factions. It just happens that the CSM writer gives quite moderate buffs and the SM writer gives massive buffs. It is even possible that the marine supplements were written by different people, as they're so uneven.

Wayniac wrote:

MiguelFelstone wrote:
I don't accept that it has to be one or the other, how about you develop and test something competently and THEN release it.

Well, this goes back to their release schedule being unsustainable. Nobody wants to go back to the days when some books weren't updated for years, but the rate they are putting out material is just exacerbating sloppy editing/proofreading and has got to be eating into development and playtesting time.

This could honestly be solved overnight if they just started open beta testing rather than all this NDA / non testing crap. If the community had access to the proposed changes they could test it under "real world" conditions and then maybe we wouldn't have to deal with the year of the Knight and the year(s? /cry) of the Space Marine.
but that's a pipe dream, it would probably eat into their profits

MiguelFelstone wrote:

Wayniac wrote:

MiguelFelstone wrote:
I don't accept that it has to be one or the other, how about you develop and test something competently and THEN release it.

Well, this goes back to their release schedule being unsustainable. Nobody wants to go back to the days when some books weren't updated for years, but the rate they are putting out material is just exacerbating sloppy editing/proofreading and has got to be eating into development and playtesting time.

This could honestly be solved overnight if they just started open beta testing rather than all this NDA / non testing crap. If the community had access to the proposed changes they could test it under "real world" conditions and then maybe we wouldn't have to deal with the year of the Knight and the year(s? /cry) of the Space Marine.
but that's a pipe dream, it would probably eat into their profits

I dont think they are going to undermine their own published book empire by giving away points for beta testing. (for full on beta testing. its different with minor beta rules like bolter drill and smite)

imho and i know people hate it, they should go full azyr with a reasonable subscription based platform that gives you both a list builder and an automatically updating rules with options for beta rules. it gives you up to date information on armies and gives gw an idea of what people are building.

 Crimson wrote:
I am sure that some of the issues indeed stem from the swift release schedule and this is not something that can even necessarily be fixed by hiring more people. Writers simply have no time to compare notes, and this would obviously be highly important for achieving balance between factions.

Like it is decided that marines of all sorts need buffs, and one writer works on updated CSM book and another on updated loyalist marine book, and sure enough, both give buffs to these factions. It just happens that the CSM writer gives quite moderate buffs and the SM writer gives massive buffs. It is even possible that the marine supplements were written by different people, as they're so uneven.

It's hard to tell with the fact they don't give much information about their design process, but that seems like it's exactly what happens. The bits and pieces revealed seem to indicate that the initial parts at least are done essentially in isolation without communicating with the other designers about interactions. Likely without comparing multiple books (so missing the whole take X detachment with Y detachment combos) and, it would seem, even their own errata.

MiguelFelstone wrote:

Wayniac wrote:

MiguelFelstone wrote:
I don't accept that it has to be one or the other, how about you develop and test something competently and THEN release it.

Well, this goes back to their release schedule being unsustainable. Nobody wants to go back to the days when some books weren't updated for years, but the rate they are putting out material is just exacerbating sloppy editing/proofreading and has got to be eating into development and playtesting time.

This could honestly be solved overnight if they just started open beta testing rather than all this NDA / non testing crap. If the community had access to the proposed changes they could test it under "real world" conditions and then maybe we wouldn't have to deal with the year of the Knight and the year(s? /cry) of the Space Marine.
but that's a pipe dream, it would probably eat into their profits

No it wouldn't. Privateer Press do public beta testing and anyone who isn't super into the competitive side of the game hate it because they never know what models are going to change when. A lot of people even attribute the decline of the game partly to it.

Speaking of, PP DO playtest their game and even hired Warmachine's top level players to do it for them in house. Didn't work and there was still unbalanced stuff.

 Sim-Life wrote:

MiguelFelstone wrote:

Wayniac wrote:

MiguelFelstone wrote:
I don't accept that it has to be one or the other, how about you develop and test something competently and THEN release it.

Well, this goes back to their release schedule being unsustainable. Nobody wants to go back to the days when some books weren't updated for years, but the rate they are putting out material is just exacerbating sloppy editing/proofreading and has got to be eating into development and playtesting time.

This could honestly be solved overnight if they just started open beta testing rather than all this NDA / non testing crap. If the community had access to the proposed changes they could test it under "real world" conditions and then maybe we wouldn't have to deal with the year of the Knight and the year(s? /cry) of the Space Marine.
but that's a pipe dream, it would probably eat into their profits

No it wouldn't. Privateer Press do public beta testing and anyone who isn't super into the competitive side of the game hate it because they never know what models are going to change when. A lot of people even attribute the decline of the game partly to it.

Speaking of, PP DO playtest their game and even hired Warmachine's top level players to do it for them in house. Didn't work and there was still unbalanced stuff.

Nowhere near the level of GW's unbalanced stuff, and if you look at all the possible permutations and interactions of abilities in WM/H it dwarfs the "options" that 40k has. Their beta testing was actually a really good thing.

 Sim-Life wrote:
No it wouldn't. Privateer Press do public beta testing and anyone who isn't super into the competitive side of the game hate it because they never know what models are going to change when. A lot of people even attribute the decline of the game partly to it.

Verses all of us not knowing what models are going to change when? Because that's the state of the game right now (see: NDAs). At least then it would be publicly available information.
I've been waiting for them to fix GK smite for years. Will it happen in a FAQ tomorrow? Next campaign book? Never? Your guess is as good as mine.
Edit: In lore every single Grey Knight is the psyker equivalent of a Librarian and yet in-game they have a laughable if it wasn't so sad "smite" and the worst spells of any Space Marine chapter.

Wayniac wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:

MiguelFelstone wrote:

Wayniac wrote:

MiguelFelstone wrote:
I don't accept that it has to be one or the other, how about you develop and test something competently and THEN release it.

Well, this goes back to their release schedule being unsustainable. Nobody wants to go back to the days when some books weren't updated for years, but the rate they are putting out material is just exacerbating sloppy editing/proofreading and has got to be eating into development and playtesting time.

This could honestly be solved overnight if they just started open beta testing rather than all this NDA / non testing crap. If the community had access to the proposed changes they could test it under "real world" conditions and then maybe we wouldn't have to deal with the year of the Knight and the year(s? /cry) of the Space Marine.
but that's a pipe dream, it would probably eat into their profits

No it wouldn't. Privateer Press do public beta testing and anyone who isn't super into the competitive side of the game hate it because they never know what models are going to change when. A lot of people even attribute the decline of the game partly to it.

Speaking of, PP DO playtest their game and even hired Warmachine's top level players to do it for them in house. Didn't work and there was still unbalanced stuff.

Nowhere near the level of GW's unbalanced stuff, and if you look at all the possible permutations and interactions of abilities in WM/H it dwarfs the "options" that 40k has. Their beta testing was actually a really good thing.

It wouldn't call it "really" good. Okay maybe. Overall its improved the game but at high levels there's still a bunch of lists dominating all the others.

That's going to happen in any game with a competitive scene; there will always be something that's better and dominates, which is why "perfect balance" is a pipe dream and not a real goal. Last time I played WM/H though there was more of a variety among armies (no "one good list and the rest junk"), and a lot more of "how do I make Unit X work" without the answer of "Don't take it, take Unit Y instead" like is almost all the case in 40k.

MiguelFelstone wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
No it wouldn't. Privateer Press do public beta testing and anyone who isn't super into the competitive side of the game hate it because they never know what models are going to change when. A lot of people even attribute the decline of the game partly to it.

Verses all of us not knowing what models are going to change when? Because that's the state of the game right now (see: NDAs). At least then it would be publicly available information.
I've been waiting for them to fix GK smite for years. Will it happen in a FAQ tomorrow? Next campaign book? Never? Your guess is as good as mine.

Except we know rules changes happen every 6 months?

 Sim-Life wrote:

MiguelFelstone wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
No it wouldn't. Privateer Press do public beta testing and anyone who isn't super into the competitive side of the game hate it because they never know what models are going to change when. A lot of people even attribute the decline of the game partly to it.

Verses all of us not knowing what models are going to change when? Because that's the state of the game right now (see: NDAs). At least then it would be publicly available information.
I've been waiting for them to fix GK smite for years. Will it happen in a FAQ tomorrow? Next campaign book? Never? Your guess is as good as mine.

Except we know rules changes happen every 6 months?

But zero idea what might change or what's even on their radar. The process is too opaque so we have no idea what they even consider worth looking into or what they think is fine since they don't say anything.

Wayniac wrote:
That's going to happen in any game with a competitive scene. Last time I played WM/H though, there was more of a variety and a lot more of "how do I make Unit X work" without the answer of "Don't take it, take Unit Y instead" like is almost all the case in 40k.

Which neatly brings us back to the point some people in this thread have been making. The game is balanced for a casual level, so expecting it to be balanced for high level competition is unrealistic and never going to happen.

 Sim-Life wrote:

MiguelFelstone wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
No it wouldn't. Privateer Press do public beta testing and anyone who isn't super into the competitive side of the game hate it because they never know what models are going to change when. A lot of people even attribute the decline of the game partly to it.

Verses all of us not knowing what models are going to change when? Because that's the state of the game right now (see: NDAs). At least then it would be publicly available information.
I've been waiting for them to fix GK smite for years. Will it happen in a FAQ tomorrow? Next campaign book? Never? Your guess is as good as mine.

Except we know rules changes happen every 6 months?

Yeah but we don't know what those changes are ...
We just know it will happen, maybe, something, god knows what, but something is going to happen
How is that in any way useful?

 Sim-Life wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
That's going to happen in any game with a competitive scene. Last time I played WM/H though, there was more of a variety and a lot more of "how do I make Unit X work" without the answer of "Don't take it, take Unit Y instead" like is almost all the case in 40k.

Which neatly brings us back to the point some people in this thread have been making. The game is balanced for a casual level, so expecting it to be balanced for high level competition is unrealistic and never going to happen.

See I don't think that's a valid point though. The game can and should be balanced better so there's LESS broken combos. What you said just goes back to "eh good enough" and reinforcing mediocrity rather than at least try to be better.

 Sim-Life wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
That's going to happen in any game with a competitive scene. Last time I played WM/H though, there was more of a variety and a lot more of "how do I make Unit X work" without the answer of "Don't take it, take Unit Y instead" like is almost all the case in 40k.

Which neatly brings us back to the point some people in this thread have been making. The game is balanced for a casual level, so expecting it to be balanced for high level competition is unrealistic and never going to happen.

Except if you balance for the competitive well, you'll get balance for casual play too.

Or, to put it another way (or possibly to go off on a tangent), if you want to play a Narrative game of a small contingent of Space Marines holding out against an endless horde of Nids, that's an unbalanced scenario. You can achieve that in the game, as it stands, right now, by giving the Marines something like 1,500 points and the Nids 3,000, plus infinitely respawning dudes.

However, it's only with great difficulty that you can get a FAIR match-up between the Nids and the Marines, if both players are skilled. Nids are just too pricey/lack the options that Marines have.

It's easy to unbalance a balanced game. It's not nearly as easy to balance an unbalanced one. And when the rules cost hundreds of dollars, I damn well expect them to be doing the hard work instead of me.

 JNAProductions wrote:
It's easy to unbalance a balanced game. It's not nearly as easy to balance an unbalanced one. And when the rules cost hundreds of dollars, I damn well expect them to be doing the hard work instead of me.

This 100%. It's much easier to relax tight rules than tighten up loose ones. At least that way you minimize the imbalances (they will still exist of course but you want to minimize it) but provide the option to relax restrictions if it fits.

 Sim-Life wrote:
The game is balanced for a casual level, so expecting it to be balanced for high level competition is unrealistic and never going to happen.

That's quite the defeatist attitude. If the Broom Makers Kabal had thought like - Curling wouldn't be an Olympic sport