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Archebius wrote:

So the answer is that it's incompetence, greed, AND stupidity.

Hahaha this is so true though. Coordinating dozens, hundreds or even thousand of people to make a single project is an insanely complex task.

The truth is no single person at the organization has a complete picture of what the feth is actually happening. If you've ever worked on any large scale entertainment production like a video game or movie, you'd know that it is absolute chaos. The fact that companies somehow manage to produce semi-functioning products at all is a minor miracle to me every time it happens.

I don't know how else to express to the armchair designers on the internet how complicated it is to build things.

Isn't most new stuff nowadays build out of pre constructs? Frenchises get reused and rebooted, adaptations are made. With GW there doesn't seem to be much work put in to updating some stuff. Stratagems in 8th were clones or litteraly the same ones, every army gets a banner, gun, sword and armour that work more or less the same way etc.

There are very few armies, where everything seems to be new, at least in w40k. AoS seems to be full of new armies, but then again as Atticus said, GW sometimes drops the ball on some armies had. I felt bad with 2+ years of GK, can't imagine how it would be to be a slaves player and have a bad army for 5+ years.

Archebius wrote:
People are so quick to blame everything on incompetence, greed, or stupidity. But any corporation is a big, complicated organization, made up of dozens or hundreds or thousands of people just like you and me, and the complex interactions that arise from that are chaos theory made manifest.

So the answer is that it's incompetence, greed, AND stupidity.

I kid, I kid. I'm just coming off a multi-year, multi-million-dollar project that ended in blood and tears and legal ultimatums despite really good people being involved in every stage of the process. A lot of the problems arose because of the separate knowledge and goals each tier had - the trenches knew the product was trash and wanted to spend more time in development and QA, the team leads had a directive to include X number of features and so kept adding features to an already-buggy product, and management was weighing things like "long-term financial viability" and "contractual obligations" and "holy crap am I about to get 50+ people fired because I picked a bad product?"

I've used the example before, but even a game like Overwatch - where Blizzard can track every interaction, every combination, every bullet and every blow, run simulations until their eyes bleed - took YEARS to balance some heroes correctly. Mercy was continuously nerfed and was still an auto-take for forever. And that's in (to start with) a relatively small game, with fewer heroes than 40k has factions, let alone units.

By comparison, GW has a tiny window into their own world. They see tournament lists and results, new unit sales, playtest feedback, and maybe, occasionally, forum complaints. And the people working on these rules and releases - as Daedalus points out above - are often working years ahead, and trying to consider every possible interaction at every moment in time just makes it that much harder. And then you add in release schedules to keep player retention going, management mandates that you keep new player onboarding, as measured by certain unit sales, at specific levels, maintain a steady cadence of DLC... it gets difficult. It gets impossible.

Also, I think competitive players make for fine playtesters. They tend to have excellent knowledge about the ins and outs of their own armies - and they get as frustrated as everyone else when they're reduced to taking these five units to the exclusion of all else, because that's the only way to win in the current meta. A healthy meta balance is good for everyone in the long term, and the better competitive players out there recognize it. The more you can play around with, the more you can optimize and tinker and build, the happier a lot of these guys are.

I would also add that some of the problems of imbalance come from the unit sheets themselves and how they are often overlapping or underperforming similar units, making it nigh impossible to point correctly without making it a must take or something to avoid. To be fair I think the tourney playtesters have little to no say in the datasheets themselves and can only suggest potential point costs and try their best to do so.

You see this inherent problem in Overwatch where Blizzard has had to redesign a hero from the ground up to make it viable, but they also have the benefit of having a live service they can change rather quickly which is a benefit in the digital entertainment industry. For GW they are throwing existing codexes/datasheets into the hands of the tourney crowd and at no point will you see the actual datasheet addressed by GW. Except for a Warscroll or two in AoS strangely enough(fx. Plague Monks).

The final problem is also one very few players want to accept, but that is unit bloat. The reason there is a lot of overlap and redundancy is because the rent... I mean the number of units is too high. At some point GW needs to either remove units from factions or just make them interchangeable from one unit to another. Like if they were at one point claim that all marines have undergone the rubicon and the old marines are now "counts as appropriate Primaris unit". Just the Space Marine line alone is about 110-ish units. There is no way to balance it unless you make some of them very similar too each other.

the_scotsman wrote:

 AngryAngel80 wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

Tyel wrote:
There are many complaints on Dakka, but the idea people don't want an balanced game makes very little sense.

8th was the most balanced edition of 40k. In fact its probably *the only edition* where GW actively tried to bring balance to the game. Obviously its not perfect - but its infinitely better than the older method of "here's a codex, oh it sucks? Well, see you in some years time".

All the evidence is that 8th is also the most commercially successful edition. Admittedly this could be due to various other factors unrelated to how the game plays, but its a strange coincidence just to shrug off.

Are GW actively making the game worse by having CA points changes each year?

I guess for people who buy the current hotness and want that to remain the current hotness until the heat death of the universe - but I'm not convinced they make up a huge percentage of the playerbase.

I wouldn't call 8th the most balanced edition of Warhammer. STRETCHES of 8th? sure. The current state of 8th? No way. And this currently shift in focus seems to be lining GW's pockets with that PMarine money very effectively, and seems to be slated to keep up extra hard in 9th.

I hadn't considered the idea that balance may not be what the playerbase actually wants.... but it's been some pretty good arguments put forth as to why that may be, so I remain undecided. Is balance less profitable though? Well, almost certainly. You can't write extremely OP rules to shift units, without causing an imbalance.

Well think about it for a moment. Other than those with collector issues ( like me perhaps ) No one will need to expand on armies or start new ones unless they want to if there is a real balance to things. Like for instance if you really felt and saw that first born marines were at power parity with primaris, what reason would people have to get these " Exciting new powerful units ! ". There wouldn't be one aside from variety and desire to have new stuff but not perhaps better stuff.

Was there a reason to Legend Chaplain on a bike when they had in the works waiting primaris chaplain on bike ? Not a one. They cited balance and unintended rule interactions but all they would have to do is give them the rules with changes for wargear and less wounds for the first born bike chaplain, they'd operate almost exactly the same but for those differences. Was it balance he was booted out for ? I don't think most would say yes now. It was simply that model was old, getting it gives GW no money as the models are second hand, kit bashed or third party. This new one will cost a crap ton, but it'll be new so all the money will flow GWs way for it.

More and more decisions are made seemingly with this in mind. Slowly nerf, release units just flat out better and more cost effective and even when they change points the disparity just grows. Now either they don't understand how to balance things at all or these are decisions made to push agendas that have nothing to do with game play and more with sales. That leads to frustration from the players as they keep touting this balance and care for the game state when most of the decisions may be out of the game designers hands. So in that we may give them a bad look to blame them all the time.

I have a cool life hack for anyone who owns an old legended chaplain on bike or old space marine bikers and is jealous of those fancy new primaris bikes.

It's a special thing I cooked up in my brain-meat as someone who owns and still plays regularly with 2nd edition eldar miniatures. And, you know, every other faction that isn't loyalist space marines who gets a new kit for anything they already own.

You just...

you just say it's the new thing. And you use the new rules.

I would agree and at some point I think many will do this. However, as GW treats these units as different things you will get blow back. My point of bringing it up wasn't to say " I'm a victim ! " it was to say their design process isn't based on balance and more set to sell things. As if they weren't set to sell the new things and moth ball the old they'd keep the old with the new or merge the two, in most books aside from space marines it's simply new models but the same unit. With Space marines they won't do this as then people would already have full armies still and they want to force you to buy whole new primaris forces to keep up. If they Legend all first born it goes from a nudge to a " do it or probably don't play as most will say its unbalanced " We had a whole thread where people said they'd just deny those Legends because of balance as pointless of an excuse as that is.

The advent of legends as opposed to being a savior for all models was just a graveyard for balance. As now they can mothball all they want, literally force you to keep up or get out because they can claim they never " squat " anything again they simply became legend which effectively for most intents and purposes ends up as the same thing for a good deal of the community.

You'll definitely get blowback for using the older chaplain as the new one as the size is different which affects line of sight rules.

I meant more that from the perspective of profitability, if you give out free rules online for open beta among the general 40K community, people are less likely to pay for the tweaked (or unchanged) final version when it goes to print. NDAs are regularly used for their closed beta testing.

If GW gave up on the idea of selling rules, it would open a lot of doors. For a company that is very famously models-first, it's odd that they've seemed so opposed to the concept in 8th.

The real reason you wouldn't give the rules for free in a truly open beta is because it wouldn't net them anything at all. It's too much data for them to collect and too much room for skew in the numbers. The concept of an "open beta" from the video game world really doesn't translate well to this one, so there would literally be no point.

In terms of "selling rules" - the battle primer is a free PDF isn't it? And most of the other top war games companies also sell their rules but avoid the problems GW runs into at every turn. Wanting to sell the rules really doesn't factor in. Honestly, since it's the rules that drive the models, and since they wouldn't be making money directly from the rules in that case, I could make the argument that should they start giving all the rules away for free, the problems would actually get worse, and since you still have to sell that model (and since it's often rules that sell the models), you are still very likely to end up with problem units. Giving the rules away doesn't fix this.

I really think the problem is simply not sitting down and committing to a road map. Again, if you listen to the Horus Heresy authors talk about making the series, the one thing that really stands out is how often they met, how much they talked, and how far in advance they planned TOGETHER so that they wouldn't start writing on day 1, and end up with massive problems on day 10,000.

That's also how you make a development road map. You sit the devs (or in this case, the "rules writers",) down, and hammer out a 12 month plan. Ideally you also have a strong technical writer on hand and some strong editors. Once you have the broad strokes, you set up work groups to tackle the different parts and go. In this way, you have milestones, an agreed to design approach that is checked in on regularly, and an understood timeline so that everything comes out in a logical, clean, and thought out manner. GW doesn't do this currently. For example, look at the 6th ed CSM codex. RIDDLED with NEW units that would have been AMAZING. In 4th or 5th ed. But not 6th. What the hell happened? It's my favorite "dead horse", but it's far from the only example, and these kinds of things don't happen with this kind of regularity if you're using solid, modern best practices.

Under a properly road mapped system, you have time to make the core rules first, test them, release them, work on codexes in concert, make adjustments as needed, test them, and release them. You don't have "guy A" writing the core book in basement "B", while contractor "C" is simultaneously writing a codex for the system that doesn't have full core rules yet, and never between the two shall meet.

They just need to fix the process. THEN they can look at the people. Like any group, there's going to be some winners and losers, but right now they all seem to be hamstrung by a totally broken workflow, so you really can't tell if they're good or not.

Tycho wrote:
I really think the problem is simply not sitting down and committing to a road map. Again, if you listen to the Horus Heresy authors talk about making the series, the one thing that really stands out is how often they met, how much they talked, and how far in advance they planned TOGETHER so that they wouldn't start writing on day 1, and end up with massive problems on day 10,000.

That's also how you make a development road map. You sit the devs (or in this case, the "rules writers",) down, and hammer out a 12 month plan. Ideally you also have a strong technical writer on hand and some strong editors. Once you have the broad strokes, you set up work groups to tackle the different parts and go. In this way, you have milestones, an agreed to design approach that is checked in on regularly, and an understood timeline so that everything comes out in a logical, clean, and thought out manner. GW doesn't do this currently. For example, look at the 6th ed CSM codex. RIDDLED with NEW units that would have been AMAZING. In 4th or 5th ed. But not 6th. What the hell happened? It's my favorite "dead horse", but it's far from the only example, and these kinds of things don't happen with this kind of regularity if you're using solid, modern best practices.

Under a properly road mapped system, you have time to make the core rules first, test them, release them, work on codexes in concert, make adjustments as needed, test them, and release them. You don't have "guy A" writing the core book in basement "B", while contractor "C" is simultaneously writing a codex for the system that doesn't have full core rules yet, and never between the two shall meet.

They just need to fix the process. THEN they can look at the people. Like any group, there's going to be some winners and losers, but right now they all seem to be hamstrung by a totally broken workflow, so you really can't tell if they're good or not.

See, again, I think the drive to sell rules is a significant part of this. Yes, competent rules-writing can clearly be made to work within the confines of a set release schedule, but as it stands the rules teams are beholden to a tempo imposed by yearly Chapter Approved, biannual Marine codices, and the need to string out codex releases into a new one every other month, not to mention now Psychic Awakening as a campaign.

I know software design isn't a 1:1 comparison (I think you are partly correct about open betas- although the feedback that can be gleaned from open betas is little different from what they get from the community that leads to CA changes), but I've seen the design problems that come up when you have a release schedule dictated by business concerns. Maybe you're working on three new systems that are intended to work in concert with one another, but the publisher says you've got to release them as DLCs every two months, so you can't develop and test them concurrently like you really should be, and ultimately you have to fix the mess after the fact.

The writers just can't work on core rules first, then work on codexes in concert, when they have a set, sequential release schedule- especially when the effects from one change to the game won't be felt for another three months and then oops, the next book was sent off to the press two months ago and now the game's going to break. The people are coming and going, the design ideologies are changing, the power level is creeping, and the meta is ever-evolving. If there was a roadmap at the start of the edition, friction has eroded it into a patchwork mess of loose guidelines and invalidated clauses. That's an awful environment to try to develop a game in.

If they threw out the constant need to sell books, then sat down all the devs in a room, worked out a coherent plan and vision for the next 12 months, and then as you said developed the core rules followed by all the codexes in concert, I think we'd have a much tighter, more coherent, balanced, and downright better ruleset. They could even still sell them at the end- but it wouldn't be as profitable as the drip-feed approach, and it seems that's the priority.

See, again, I think the drive to sell rules is a significant part of this. Yes, competent rules-writing can clearly be made to work within the confines of a set release schedule, but as it stands the rules teams are beholden to a tempo imposed by yearly Chapter Approved, biannual Marine codices, and the need to string out codex releases into a new one every other month, not to mention now Psychic Awakening as a campaign.

This is all the tail wagging the dog though, and would be eliminated by proper roadmapping.

I know software design isn't a 1:1 comparison (I think you are partly correct about open betas- although the feedback that can be gleaned from open betas is little different from what they get from the community that leads to CA changes), but I've seen the design problems that come up when you have a release schedule dictated by business concerns. Maybe you're working on three new systems that are intended to work in concert with one another, but the publisher says you've got to release them as DLCs every two months, so you can't develop and test them concurrently like you really should be, and ultimately you have to fix the mess after the fact.

What they get currently for CA is largely via major tournaments and select play testers. This is a specific, strategically limited, quantified data set. An open beta in the video games sense would be a total free for all. No way to gather proper context, no way to target requests, no level setting, etc. It's just very different.

The writers just can't work on core rules first, then work on codexes in concert, when they have a set, sequential release schedule- especially when the effects from one change to the game won't be felt for another three months and then oops, the next book was sent off to the press two months ago and now the game's going to break. The people are coming and going, the design ideologies are changing, the power level is creeping, and the meta is ever-evolving. If there was a roadmap at the start of the edition, friction has eroded it into a patchwork mess of loose guidelines and invalidated clauses. That's an awful environment to try to develop a game in.

If they threw out the constant need to sell books, then sat down all the devs in a room, worked out a coherent plan and vision for the next 12 months, and then as you said developed the core rules followed by all the codexes in concert, I think we'd have a much tighter, more coherent, balanced, and downright better ruleset. They could even still sell them at the end- but it wouldn't be as profitable as the drip-feed approach, and it seems that's the priority.

They actually had the chance to write core rules THEN the codexes when we were in index 40k but they (generally) whiffed on it. The thing is, when you look at the codex releases across 8th, it becomes very clear there was no defined direction from the start. You can see two books seeming to go down one path, then a third book is released and BAM! Completely different direction. The fourth bool forks in a third direction off of that, but the 5th book kind of circles back to the original direction ... this is partly why things become such a mess balance wise.

With a roadmap you would:

1. Define the core rules
2. Play test core rules with something akin to index 40k
3. Select a general design structure for the actual codexes
4. STICK to said structure and begin releasing them while collecting data
5. Re-evaluate at years end - making adjustments in CA, and evaluating the current army design direction for place to improve

In this way you start to get true balance because you're evaluating a series of books that were all based on the same design philosophy rather than having one or two books that are cranked up to 11, and another 5 that ... aren't and trying to figure out which books are TRULY causing the problem . The current way is "HEY! Check out this ork codex I designed. Totes for fun! Complete beer 'n' pretzels good time!", while across the studio, Iron Hands is being developed as the final word in competitive play. They couldn't be anymore different from one another in terms of even basic design philosophy, but they're both expected to live in the same space as though they WERE made under some central guiding light. Proper creative direction and actual planning would prevent this, while STILL allowing them to maintain the break-kneck pace of releases. In fact, after a small release delay (similar to the times of index 40k), it would actually allow them to go FASTER.

If anything, in addition to what appears to be lack of process, what likely is getting in the way is the sheer number of factions. Ideally, you would put out every codex under the initial "design directive" and then re-evaluate for a 2.0 series in 18 months to 2 years. Problem is, if your book came at the end of the first cycle and it isn't good, you're sitting on that book for a while as everyone else gets a new one. The positive would be that you at least would be playing the same game as everyone else, rather than what we have now where some armies have to play Warhammer 40,000 and others are playing whatever the feth they want because reasons. lol

Tycho wrote:

I know software design isn't a 1:1 comparison (I think you are partly correct about open betas- although the feedback that can be gleaned from open betas is little different from what they get from the community that leads to CA changes), but I've seen the design problems that come up when you have a release schedule dictated by business concerns. Maybe you're working on three new systems that are intended to work in concert with one another, but the publisher says you've got to release them as DLCs every two months, so you can't develop and test them concurrently like you really should be, and ultimately you have to fix the mess after the fact.

What they get currently for CA is largely via major tournaments and select play testers. This is a specific, strategically limited, quantified data set. An open beta in the video games sense would be a total free for all. No way to gather proper context, no way to target requests, no level setting, etc. It's just very different.

Do you think it is a problem if the tournament scene is the only channel being used to collect feedback, given the number of events during 8th that weren't playing 40k as written by GW?

 Dysartes wrote:

Tycho wrote:

I know software design isn't a 1:1 comparison (I think you are partly correct about open betas- although the feedback that can be gleaned from open betas is little different from what they get from the community that leads to CA changes), but I've seen the design problems that come up when you have a release schedule dictated by business concerns. Maybe you're working on three new systems that are intended to work in concert with one another, but the publisher says you've got to release them as DLCs every two months, so you can't develop and test them concurrently like you really should be, and ultimately you have to fix the mess after the fact.

What they get currently for CA is largely via major tournaments and select play testers. This is a specific, strategically limited, quantified data set. An open beta in the video games sense would be a total free for all. No way to gather proper context, no way to target requests, no level setting, etc. It's just very different.

Do you think it is a problem if the tournament scene is the only channel being used to collect feedback, given the number of events during 8th that weren't playing 40k as written by GW?

Luckily absolutely nothing even suggests that the game is being built purely around the tournament scene. Look at the state of this game.

Tycho wrote:

With a roadmap you would:

1. Define the core rules
2. Play test core rules with something akin to index 40k
3. Select a general design structure for the actual codexes
4. STICK to said structure and begin releasing them while collecting data
5. Re-evaluate at years end - making adjustments in CA, and evaluating the current army design direction for place to improve

I think you're spot-on, and just to pick up on this section in particular I think points 1, 3 and 4 are GW's biggest problems, but specifically 4. You just need to look back over the last couple of edition to see big mid-edition changes in direction that should have been left for a new edition. I'm thinking mainly of Formations in 7th and the raft of little changes that snuck into Codices about halfway (maybe 2/3 of the way) through 8th like changing re-roll misses to re-roll all. It's especially infuriating because when you match it up with GW's approach to releasing rules you end up with some armies missing out on the new hotness by a month and being stuck like that for years.

If there was one thing I could change about GW's approach to the rules it would be this. They really need to have a design bible or roadmap, a set of predefined guidelines for designing new units and weapons and they really, really need someone at the studio to force designers to stick to it instead of abruptly changing direction 18 months from now. The big problem with that is it doesn't appear GW thinks deeply enough about their own rules to understand them well enough to design an effective roadmap in the first place.

In principle complete agreement, in practice I can see why GW don't just stick to "this is the design principle and that will be that" - because by definition it makes stuff samey - and you have a multi-year release cycle. I'm not sure if its under "people like imbalance" - but no one likes a middle of the road boring codex with no unique features.

Now okay they could have sat down over the last 6 months and gone "this is what 9th edition Space Marines, Daemons, Necrons, Orks, Eldar, Tau etc will play like, even if the Tau 9th edition codex isn't set to be released until October 2021." But I can't see it somehow. There is always a temptation to "fix" perceived flaws in balance with later codexes, and see what this does to the meta.

So for example you can see a sort of evolution of:
"Vehicles are cool. pew pew."
"Okay, but now armoured walls are a bit silly, better give people anti-tank weapons and let them buff them."
"Okay but now they are killing big stuff too quickly. Hand out 5++ saves and other defences to new units."
"Okay but now things are too tough. Hand out mortal wounds that bypass these defences."
"Okay but now we need to hand out FNP/Mortal wound protection..."

I don't want to derail the thread into "what killed Fantasy" - but you can explicitly track this development through the 8th edition Army Books as GW provided "answers" the meta every year, with power creep being the inevitable result. In 40k its a bit more variable - perhaps due to the "1/4 units are good" approach being more telling.

Basically GW are going to come up with new features/ideas to go in the game, and it makes more sense to push them out and see what happens in the wild, rather than sit on them and then release a load of changes when a new edition arrives. For better balance, they have to get away from this idea that the datasheet is near sacrosanct, and recognise that it can and should change on roughly the same schedule as CA. I think the continued steps to digitalising the rules may eventually lead to this - but so long as paper books remain seemingly a goldmine, I'm not sure they will ever go this far.

Tyel wrote:
In principle complete agreement, in practice I can see why GW don't just stick to "this is the design principle and that will be that" - because by definition it makes stuff samey - and you have a multi-year release cycle. I'm not sure if its under "people like imbalance" - but no one likes a middle of the road boring codex with no unique features.

Now okay they could have sat down over the last 6 months and gone "this is what 9th edition Space Marines, Daemons, Necrons, Orks, Eldar, Tau etc will play like, even if the Tau 9th edition codex isn't set to be released until October 2021." But I can't see it somehow. There is always a temptation to "fix" perceived flaws in balance with later codexes, and see what this does to the meta.

So for example you can see a sort of evolution of:
"Vehicles are cool. pew pew."
"Okay, but now armoured walls are a bit silly, better give people anti-tank weapons and let them buff them."
"Okay but now they are killing big stuff too quickly. Hand out 5++ saves and other defences to new units."
"Okay but now things are too tough. Hand out mortal wounds that bypass these defences."
"Okay but now we need to hand out FNP/Mortal wound protection..."

I don't want to derail the thread into "what killed Fantasy" - but you can explicitly track this development through the 8th edition Army Books as GW provided "answers" the meta every year, with power creep being the inevitable result. In 40k its a bit more variable - perhaps due to the "1/4 units are good" approach being more telling.

Basically GW are going to come up with new features/ideas to go in the game, and it makes more sense to push them out and see what happens in the wild, rather than sit on them and then release a load of changes when a new edition arrives. For better balance, they have to get away from this idea that the datasheet is near sacrosanct, and recognise that it can and should change on roughly the same schedule as CA. I think the continued steps to digitalising the rules may eventually lead to this - but so long as paper books remain seemingly a goldmine, I'm not sure they will ever go this far.

Honestly i think this has lead to the game feeling samey, the design space has been pushed a lot. And the two big changes with Flying and Knights has lead to that design space being shrunk rather than expanded to fit them. When it seems like half the armys where lucky to get thrown bones into that design in the first place.
Half doing it, does not really lead to the game really changing much.
Its just leads to a lot of great ideas being tracked though the mud and the need to change up things again.

Tyel wrote:
In principle complete agreement, in practice I can see why GW don't just stick to "this is the design principle and that will be that" - because by definition it makes stuff samey.

I think that's caused by another pair of problems with the GW approach. Firstly, there are too many units in this game, possible by an order of magnitude once you consider all the FW units. Compounding that is the very narrow range of stats GW uses. Despite opening up Strength and Toughness values above 10 GW stuck too rigidly to the old values, which leaves no design space open for variety.

Just simple design principles in their initial design document would go a long way to curbing a lot of the problems they end up with. Things like deciding what the maximum number of shots a weapon or unit should get with a given AP/S/Damage profile would be a good start to stop things getting out of hand, or a limit on the number of dice a unit can be expected to roll for their attacks for the sake of players' sanity. Instead we tend to see a fairly consistent and conservative approach initially, then things just start getting out of hand because they have nothing to guide them with basic principles of design for each edition.

 auticus wrote:
You'll definitely get blowback for using the older chaplain as the new one as the size is different which affects line of sight rules.

Bet you a shiny nickel the size difference is a whole lot less than my 2nd edition wraithguard on 25mm bases to the current WG.

Literally nobody in dozens upon dozens of games has had a problem with those.

Well, a gameplay problem. I have painted them up to look like creepy creepy puppets, and many people have had a problem with a sad clown and pinnocchio coming to murder their tanks.

the_scotsman wrote:

 auticus wrote:
You'll definitely get blowback for using the older chaplain as the new one as the size is different which affects line of sight rules.

Bet you a shiny nickel the size difference is a whole lot less than my 2nd edition wraithguard on 25mm bases to the current WG.

Literally nobody in dozens upon dozens of games has had a problem with those.

Well, a gameplay problem. I have painted them up to look like creepy creepy puppets, and many people have had a problem with a sad clown and pinnocchio coming to murder their tanks.

I envy you. I've had people get very irate when using older models because they are smaller. I had someone accuse me of rigging my campaign because I was using the old diaz daemonettes from the 2000s instead of the new ones because the older ones were smaller and easier to hide.

To me there are several issues at work here:

First, as auticus continually mentions, people may claim they want balance but they really don't, because listbuilding is an integral part of the game (and perhaps the most important) and listbuilding is all about finding the loopholes in balance to exploit. Look at how within days of a book or even before it's even out due to leaks people are formulating how to break the game by reading XYZ rule as RAW or RAI depending. Hell look at a thread in YMDC talking about terminators with 1+ saves that essentially give them a 2++ save. It's unlikely (but not impossible, this is GW) that isn't intended but people IMMEDIATELY are trying to game an advantage. In a world where people cared about balance, normal people would look at it and not even think it works that way.

Second there's the approach of GW's designers. We know for a fact with 8th edition from what playtesters have stated the playtesting was something along the lines of here take this premade 1500 point army and play it against this other premade 1500 point army. Tell us if everything feels right without a chance to do listbuilding or try and find the wombo-combos that people may try to exploit. We don't know what the testing was for 9th edition but GW has continually shown that their way of testing isn't testing the parts that are most abusable, it's testing the gameplay itself.

Third, or maybe 2.5 since it's related is the fact their design approach from the beginning is too opaque. They almost never state how they actually go about determining what works, how they decide if an ability is too good or needs to be fixed, or anything like that to my knowledge. For AOS Jervis has stated in White Dwarf articles that they have a spreadsheet they use with formulae but no other details and he has gone and said that the model's look influences the rules rather than it being a collaborative effort between the miniatures designers and the rules writers. So for years now it looks like the model guys will design cool models and throw them to the design team a few weeks before they're set to release and tell them to fit them into the game.

Next there's the fact that GW talks out of both sides of their mouth. They claim the game is based around casual narrative play but leave glaring holes that are exploitable by the competitive players, not the casual ones, while at the same time making rules that are wonky enough that a casual player can be considered WAAC just because their army became FOTM and they started to curbstomp everyone else out of the blue through no fault of their own. They used to restrict things that were "rare" (the old 0-1 stuff) and got rid of that because that means you only buy one instead of three, which was already a hit to balance because now that restriction is gone. They adjust things seemingly without reason and since they rarely give any sort of "patch notes" you're left wondering how they came up with the idea that X needed to be fixed.

It's a lot of issues but I don't think the blame is on the competitive players beyond the fact that they have the mindset to look to break everything, when normal people don't take that approach with the rules.

Wayniac wrote:
It's a lot of issues but I don't think the blame is on the competitive players beyond the fact that they have the mindset to look to break everything, when normal people don't take that approach with the rules.

If, as the WHC Faction Focus articles seem to suggest, the only external people doing any playtesting are the competitive crowd, then they need to shoulder some of the "blame" if things don't end up feeling right, even if the balance is better.

Look at the OPs original post - concern that one group is recommending an approach to using Orks that seems counter to the usual Ork look & feel - it might be effective, but it rubs someone who cares about the faction identity upthe wrong way.

the_scotsman wrote:

 AngryAngel80 wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

Tyel wrote:
There are many complaints on Dakka, but the idea people don't want an balanced game makes very little sense.

8th was the most balanced edition of 40k. In fact its probably *the only edition* where GW actively tried to bring balance to the game. Obviously its not perfect - but its infinitely better than the older method of "here's a codex, oh it sucks? Well, see you in some years time".

All the evidence is that 8th is also the most commercially successful edition. Admittedly this could be due to various other factors unrelated to how the game plays, but its a strange coincidence just to shrug off.

Are GW actively making the game worse by having CA points changes each year?

I guess for people who buy the current hotness and want that to remain the current hotness until the heat death of the universe - but I'm not convinced they make up a huge percentage of the playerbase.

I wouldn't call 8th the most balanced edition of Warhammer. STRETCHES of 8th? sure. The current state of 8th? No way. And this currently shift in focus seems to be lining GW's pockets with that PMarine money very effectively, and seems to be slated to keep up extra hard in 9th.

I hadn't considered the idea that balance may not be what the playerbase actually wants.... but it's been some pretty good arguments put forth as to why that may be, so I remain undecided. Is balance less profitable though? Well, almost certainly. You can't write extremely OP rules to shift units, without causing an imbalance.

Well think about it for a moment. Other than those with collector issues ( like me perhaps ) No one will need to expand on armies or start new ones unless they want to if there is a real balance to things. Like for instance if you really felt and saw that first born marines were at power parity with primaris, what reason would people have to get these " Exciting new powerful units ! ". There wouldn't be one aside from variety and desire to have new stuff but not perhaps better stuff.

Was there a reason to Legend Chaplain on a bike when they had in the works waiting primaris chaplain on bike ? Not a one. They cited balance and unintended rule interactions but all they would have to do is give them the rules with changes for wargear and less wounds for the first born bike chaplain, they'd operate almost exactly the same but for those differences. Was it balance he was booted out for ? I don't think most would say yes now. It was simply that model was old, getting it gives GW no money as the models are second hand, kit bashed or third party. This new one will cost a crap ton, but it'll be new so all the money will flow GWs way for it.

More and more decisions are made seemingly with this in mind. Slowly nerf, release units just flat out better and more cost effective and even when they change points the disparity just grows. Now either they don't understand how to balance things at all or these are decisions made to push agendas that have nothing to do with game play and more with sales. That leads to frustration from the players as they keep touting this balance and care for the game state when most of the decisions may be out of the game designers hands. So in that we may give them a bad look to blame them all the time.

I have a cool life hack for anyone who owns an old legended chaplain on bike or old space marine bikers and is jealous of those fancy new primaris bikes.

It's a special thing I cooked up in my brain-meat as someone who owns and still plays regularly with 2nd edition eldar miniatures. And, you know, every other faction that isn't loyalist space marines who gets a new kit for anything they already own.

You just...

you just say it's the new thing. And you use the new rules.

Oh nice, so now i can proxy my Chaos lord on steed of slaanesh as ... nothing?
Oh nice, so now i can proxy my Sorcerer on steed of slaanesh as ... nothing?
Oh nice, so now i can proxy my Fusion pistol + Fusion gun autarch as ... a boring autarch with no gun that has a completely different playstyle than my tank hunter one?
Oh nice, so now i can proxy my Kabalites trueborn as boring old kabalites. good thing drukhari doesn't deserve to keep its fluff.

Having taken a bit to think on why balance in 40k is so difficult I have a few ideas that may shed some light on things.

1. Lack of a clear cut role for each category of unit.
2. Lack of systems to allow for unit differentiation.
3. Multiple units filling the same few roles that we do have.

The first problem is rather easy to highlight when I ask the simple question, what is the role of a Troop choice in 40k? I can further expand this to HQ, Elites, Fast Attack, Heavy Support, Fliers, etc.

In the real world, your basic soldier is the backbone of your armed forces. Cheap enough that you have solid numbers, well equipped enough to have a place on the modern battlefield. Useful for everything from digging ditches and fighting fires to sweeping and clearing buildings or standing guard at a checkpoint. They have enough training to do these tasks but not so much as to be wasting their skills when asked to do low skill grunt work.

In combat, they often serve as the eyes and ears of the force. They don't have enough firepower to act alone against anything though, but the modern soldier knows that their radio is every bit as useful as their rifle when things get tough. They're best suited as a reactive force rather than being the first unit into an area where the enemy is manning prepared positions.

The second problem flows from the first. Every battle in 40k is a pitched battle where both sides have had time to pile into an organized deployment zone and where both sides are fighting for the same core objectives which neither of them appears to have a firm hold over. Realistically each battle should be an escalation of force.

As an example, a pair of patrols find each other while sweeping a sector. They have standing orders to call in additional forces if they encounter the enemy because that sector is important. Each side now has to hunker down and wait for their sides forces to arrive. Fliers, fast attack, and mechanized units tend to arrive the fastest, but your forces might have prioritized (by spending pregame CP) having a heavy support division close-by in anticipation of just such a clash. Your opponent might instead have focused on having their forces arrive all at once even if it means holding back faster units for a turn.

Suddenly a tabletop movement speed and a strategic speed which determines when it would normally arrive and how much CP it costs to have it arrive sooner or later than that. You can also introduce systems that hamper your opponent's reinforcements and purchase off table assets like flak batteries to hurt or delay specific categories of unit as they scramble to reach the battlefield.

These levers and changes to gameplay also mean that the only fixed units you have to field were in your patrol. You can call in the rest of your allotment from a larger pool until you run out of command and are no longer authorized to request additional forces to that sector. This opens up room for specialist units to see play as getting the right counter to what an enemy has just brought out is only a few hunkered and desperate turns away.

I know this isn't 40k. It's far more of a Axis and Allies type campaign, but it illustrates a depth that would allow for a unit to be special beyond killing stuff, buffing stuff, or screening stuff which is where 40k is at right now.

TLDR; the issue with 40k is a lack of depth which means all units are judged only on how well they let you kill stuff rather than emulating things that real militaries use their soldiers for.

Modern warfare and 40k warfare are very different.

In part because 40k seeks that space fantasy feel in which melee can happen and in part because plenty of factions can do things no modern military can do like throwing around billions of troops like candy or teleport.

 Canadian 5th wrote:
Having taken a bit to think on why balance in 40k is so difficult I have a few ideas that may shed some light on things.

1. Lack of a clear cut role for each category of unit.
2. Lack of systems to allow for unit differentiation.
3. Multiple units filling the same few roles that we do have.

The first problem is rather easy to highlight when I ask the simple question, what is the role of a Troop choice in 40k? I can further expand this to HQ, Elites, Fast Attack, Heavy Support, Fliers, etc.

In the real world, your basic soldier is the backbone of your armed forces. Cheap enough that you have solid numbers, well equipped enough to have a place on the modern battlefield. Useful for everything from digging ditches and fighting fires to sweeping and clearing buildings or standing guard at a checkpoint. They have enough training to do these tasks but not so much as to be wasting their skills when asked to do low skill grunt work.

In combat, they often serve as the eyes and ears of the force. They don't have enough firepower to act alone against anything though, but the modern soldier knows that their radio is every bit as useful as their rifle when things get tough. They're best suited as a reactive force rather than being the first unit into an area where the enemy is manning prepared positions.

The second problem flows from the first. Every battle in 40k is a pitched battle where both sides have had time to pile into an organized deployment zone and where both sides are fighting for the same core objectives which neither of them appears to have a firm hold over. Realistically each battle should be an escalation of force.

As an example, a pair of patrols find each other while sweeping a sector. They have standing orders to call in additional forces if they encounter the enemy because that sector is important. Each side now has to hunker down and wait for their sides forces to arrive. Fliers, fast attack, and mechanized units tend to arrive the fastest, but your forces might have prioritized (by spending pregame CP) having a heavy support division close-by in anticipation of just such a clash. Your opponent might instead have focused on having their forces arrive all at once even if it means holding back faster units for a turn.

Suddenly a tabletop movement speed and a strategic speed which determines when it would normally arrive and how much CP it costs to have it arrive sooner or later than that. You can also introduce systems that hamper your opponent's reinforcements and purchase off table assets like flak batteries to hurt or delay specific categories of unit as they scramble to reach the battlefield.

These levers and changes to gameplay also mean that the only fixed units you have to field were in your patrol. You can call in the rest of your allotment from a larger pool until you run out of command and are no longer authorized to request additional forces to that sector. This opens up room for specialist units to see play as getting the right counter to what an enemy has just brought out is only a few hunkered and desperate turns away.

I know this isn't 40k. It's far more of a Axis and Allies type campaign, but it illustrates a depth that would allow for a unit to be special beyond killing stuff, buffing stuff, or screening stuff which is where 40k is at right now.

TLDR; the issue with 40k is a lack of depth which means all units are judged only on how well they let you kill stuff rather than emulating things that real militaries use their soldiers for.

I wonder whether you could create a cool custom mission that would differentiate between unit types in this sort of way, and make 'gathering intel' and 'calling for reinforcements' something of a game objective rather than the usual abstracted style of objective-taking.

Just as a brainstorm...

You're playing a 2k game. Each army gets to start with an Entrenched Force on the board of 2-3 troops, 1-2 HQs, 0-2 fast, 0-1 elites and 0-1 heavy.

At the end of each battle round, if a unit with the Troops, HQ, or Fast Attack battlefield role has both targeted an enemy unit with an attack, and been targeted with an enemy attack but has not been destroyed, they may call for reinforcements, garnering 1 point of Battlefield Requisition. Each battlefield role costs different amounts of Requisition and has a special ability.

Troops - 1 point. Troop Formation: You may instead 1 point and bring on 2 Troops and 1 HQ battlefield role units.

Elites - 2 points. The Cavalry Has Arrived: Any Elites choice unit gains a 6" +1LD Aura the turn it comes on to the board.

Flyer - 2 points. Flyers enter the board as if they were placed into Strategic Reserves (i.e., they deep strike on)

Fast Attack - 1 point. Fast Attack units enter the board as if they were placed into Strategic Reserves (and also cost less Requisition than other specialized roles)

Heavy Support - 2 points. Instead of entering the board, a unit with the Heavy Support role may choose to make 1 shooting attack from off the board when you spend Requisition to call for them. Measure range from any point on your board edge for the attack, the unit counts as having remained stationary this turn.

HQ - 2 points. HQ units cost 1 point of requisition if you bring them in alongside any other non-HQ role unit and they end their movement phase within 3" of that unit.

Dedicated Transport - 1 point. A Dedicated Transport causes it and all units embarked on it to count as Fast Attack slot units the turn they arrive (I.e., they arrive from Strategic Reserves and on the first turn it's on the board the Dedicated Transport model may generate a point of Requisition)

Lord of War - 4 points.

 Tyran wrote:
Modern warfare and 40k warfare are very different.

In part because 40k seeks that space fantasy feel in which melee can happen and in part because plenty of factions can do things no modern military can do like throwing around billions of troops like candy or teleport.

That's fine. That doesn't mean that every battle needs to be a pitched battle with both sides having the same primary objectives.

Why can't you have a patrol of Dark Eldar out looking to catch some slaves run into a detachment of guard who are digging in and waiting for a convoy to arrive and drop off the equipment to set up a new forward observation post? Why do we fight all battles in evacuated ruins without a civilian presence and not a working factory, communications tower, spaceport, etc.to be found?

Being sci-fi doesn't limit our scenarios it should increase them beyond the bog-standard line up like it's the 19th-century missions we get now.

Also, why do these forces exist as they do in-universe? What role is a massed force of cultists supposed to serve? How about a unit of bloodletters, or a unit of lootas? We need to know what these forces are supposed to do and then ask if the rules actually give those roles a meaning.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
Modern warfare and 40k warfare are very different.

In part because 40k seeks that space fantasy feel in which melee can happen and in part because plenty of factions can do things no modern military can do like throwing around billions of troops like candy or teleport.

That's fine. That doesn't mean that every battle needs to be a pitched battle with both sides having the same primary objectives.

Why can't you have a patrol of Dark Eldar out looking to catch some slaves run into a detachment of guard who are digging in and waiting for a convoy to arrive and drop off the equipment to set up a new forward observation post? Why do we fight all battles in evacuated ruins without a civilian presence and not a working factory, communications tower, spaceport, etc.to be found?

Being sci-fi doesn't limit our scenarios it should increase them beyond the bog-standard line up like it's the 19th-century missions we get now.

Also, why do these forces exist as they do in-universe? What role is a massed force of cultists supposed to serve? How about a unit of bloodletters, or a unit of lootas? We need to know what these forces are supposed to do and then ask if the rules actually give those roles a meaning.

Don't narrative missions already represent those scenarios? With pretty much every supplement introducing narrative missions some of them must represent this.

So I guess the answer is the same as why we don't usually play narrative missions.

 Tyran wrote:
Don't narrative missions already represent those scenarios? With pretty much every supplement introducing narrative missions some of them must represent this.

So I guess the answer is the same as why we don't usually play narrative missions.

Then we're back to the issue that you can't balance for both types of play at once because matched play is always pitched battles over some small subset of points on the board. In that tiny design space, the only role a unit can fulfill is buffing, killing, or holding ground with the rare outlier able top do something unique like teleport a unit. When the only things that matter about a unit is how well it can kill and how much firepower it can take before it doesn't get to kill any ore it's going to create large and obvious cases where some units are plainly better than others. Toss in D6 rolls and limited stat ranges and there often is no middle ground between OP and Trash.

EDIT: The core issue I'm aiming to shine a light on is that matched play doesn't have enough depth to allow units to have defined battlefield roles so everything always boils down to a simple formula for which units are worth using.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
Don't narrative missions already represent those scenarios? With pretty much every supplement introducing narrative missions some of them must represent this.

So I guess the answer is the same as why we don't usually play narrative missions.

Then we're back to the issue that you can't balance for both types of play at once because matched play is always pitched battles over some small subset of points on the board. In that tiny design space, the only role a unit can fulfill is buffing, killing, or holding ground with the rare outlier able top do something unique like teleport a unit. When the only things that matter about a unit is how well it can kill and how much firepower it can take before it doesn't get to kill any ore it's going to create large and obvious cases where some units are plainly better than others. Toss in D6 rolls and limited stat ranges and there often is no middle ground between OP and Trash.

EDIT: The core issue I'm aiming to shine a light on is that matched play doesn't have enough depth to allow units to have defined battlefield roles so everything always boils down to a simple formula for which units are worth using.

matched play = math equation / more "fair"
everything else = not math equation / un"fair"

Racerguy180 wrote:
matched play = math equation / more "fair"
everything else = not math equation / un"fair"

You could easily make matched play more interesting and probably more balanced by giving each faction their own set of primary mission goals for each GW mission. So Orks versus DE would play the same scenario far differently that Ultramarines versus Necrons and Orks versus Necrons would also be vastly different.

Picture a game where a guard player has to hold their deployment zone for 3 turns and spend at least 12 non-combat actions to score their primary victor while the Eldar player needs to retrieve an artifact from the center of the board using their warlord, it takes an action to garb that artifact and you can't move more than 6" per turn or embark in transport while carrying it. You still want to stop your opponent from doing their thing but you probably won't win if you don't finish your goal.

The guard might have the same goal while as above while the DE player has to capture a certain number of points of opposing models. They can capture in melee and any models that flee due to morale also count as captured.

This would take a lot of work to get running smoothly and Knights and Custodes are likely to be outliers due to the very specific roles those factions are supposed to fill, but it gives each faction reasons to use different strategies.

 Canadian 5th wrote:
TLDR; the issue with 40k is a lack of depth which means all units are judged only on how well they let you kill stuff rather than emulating things that real militaries use their soldiers for.

Other areas that contribute to this problem:

-IRL, infantry in the open are a tanker's dream, infantry in dense urban terrain are a tanker's nightmare. The denser the terrain, the more of an advantage infantry have, since they can hear vehicles coming from a mile away but the tankers have no idea which buildings conceal guys with anti-tank weapons. This isn't well-represented in-game, as detection is not modeled at all- you know exactly which bushes are safe and which ones are full of RPGs.

-Even in infantry-on-infantry combat, cover is critical IRL, and most casualties are inflicted via flanking and close assault. 40K has no mechanics for crossfire, so having more mobile infantry that can maneuver to flank and deny cover is less useful.

-Morale is largely irrelevant. Suppression does not exist as a concept. High Ld has very little value.

-No command and control modeling whatsoever. If you play something like Panzerblitz, you very quickly get a feel for just how different radio-equipped Panzer IVs play from hand-signals-and-flags T-34s. Even Epic's very simple system (die roll to activate a unit) added a lot of this flavor. Ork Nobz and Space Marines really shouldn't be functionally interchangeable.

-De-emphasis on maneuver. Boards are small enough and ranges long enough that transports aren't about moving troops more rapidly so much as they are about protecting alpha-strike units from enemy fire. Compare to something like Epic where an infantry-heavy force without transports is slow, unwieldy, and plays very differently from one that can strike, remount, and redeploy.

-Lastly, unit roles IRL tend to be very specialized. You do not shoot down aircraft with MBTs, engage infantry with MANPADS, or knock out tanks with massed rifle fire. 40K generalizes most units to avoid the issue of a skew list dominating any TAC list, but your concept of reactive reinforcements would be a way to address that.

In general, 40K just isn't much of a wargame in the traditional sense. It's a highly abstract fantasy system that creates distinct roles through its own internal logic rather than as any reflection of real life.

Tyel wrote:
In principle complete agreement, in practice I can see why GW don't just stick to "this is the design principle and that will be that" - because by definition it makes stuff samey.

I understand where you're coming from, but this only happens if things are done poorly. So for example, if you talk to games designers, one of the things that comes up a lot is the phrase "the rules are made to be broken". This is where your variation comes through. So for example, (and this is VERY general and high level so not trying to imply it's perfect) if you said:

1. Every army will get some form of "doctrines". They may be different versions, and they may get access to, or use them in different ways, but they will all have them.

2. Each army will be varied in it's weapon choices (similar to how the game is now)

3. Each army will be able to specialize in breaking A CERTAIN SPECIFIC RULE. I capitalize that because this is where GW runs into so many problems. Currently, they write the rules and then hand out exceptions like crazy. Some armies have to obey ALL the rules and get no work arounds. Others, can pretty much ignore any rules they want at will. So the variation here would be something like "Tau can manipulate the normal over watch rules", Tsons get special consideration for Psychic phase (and maybe morale if your army is all Rubrics etc). Loyalist marines, since they are supposed to be decent at everything but not amazing at any one thing, could get really simple bonuses in each phase, but don't get to wholly ignore/change/manipulate the rules of any phases in the way other armies do.


I think if you look at something like 7th, the armies all felt pretty unique to me, but if you look at 5th, by the end, you did laregly have that "samey" semi-boring feel you mention. But the good thing is, if you do pick an over-all philosophy, and it DOES turn out samey or boring, you will have a level playing field between the books and a consistent pattern for how to adjust everything going forward. Otherwise, in the words of another poster, you're left with the "Spaghetti Canon fired at a dart board" semi-random approach we have now that continues to cause issues in each edition.

 catbarf wrote:

 Canadian 5th wrote:
TLDR; the issue with 40k is a lack of depth which means all units are judged only on how well they let you kill stuff rather than emulating things that real militaries use their soldiers for.

Other areas that contribute to this problem:

-IRL, infantry in the open are a tanker's dream, infantry in dense urban terrain are a tanker's nightmare. The denser the terrain, the more of an advantage infantry have, since they can hear vehicles coming from a mile away but the tankers have no idea which buildings conceal guys with anti-tank weapons. This isn't well-represented in-game, as detection is not modeled at all- you know exactly which bushes are safe and which ones are full of RPGs.

-Even in infantry-on-infantry combat, cover is critical IRL, and most casualties are inflicted via flanking and close assault. 40K has no mechanics for crossfire, so having more mobile infantry that can maneuver to flank and deny cover is less useful.

-Morale is largely irrelevant. Suppression does not exist as a concept. High Ld has very little value.

-No command and control modeling whatsoever. If you play something like Panzerblitz, you very quickly get a feel for just how different radio-equipped Panzer IVs play from hand-signals-and-flags T-34s. Even Epic's very simple system (die roll to activate a unit) added a lot of this flavor. Ork Nobz and Space Marines really shouldn't be functionally interchangeable.

-De-emphasis on maneuver. Boards are small enough and ranges long enough that transports aren't about moving troops more rapidly so much as they are about protecting alpha-strike units from enemy fire. Compare to something like Epic where an infantry-heavy force without transports is slow, unwieldy, and plays very differently from one that can strike, remount, and redeploy.

-Lastly, unit roles IRL tend to be very specialized. You do not shoot down aircraft with MBTs, engage infantry with MANPADS, or knock out tanks with massed rifle fire. 40K generalizes most units to avoid the issue of a skew list dominating any TAC list, but your concept of reactive reinforcements would be a way to address that.

In general, 40K just isn't much of a wargame in the traditional sense. It's a highly abstract fantasy system that creates distinct roles through its own internal logic rather than as any reflection of real life.

You also need to factor in that 40k should have converged on a few weapons types being the best and everybody using some variant of those rather than each faction having their own unique main arm. Real-life armies are very distinct from one another and even a US division will be distinct from another based on what their intended role is yet they share the same main rifles, support vehicles, command structure, etc. 40k could do with trying to figure out why their many different line-infantry weapons exist and giving them highly defined strengths, weaknesses, and reasons why only their faction uses them.

EDIT: In most metas there are a few best weapons and factions that don't have access to them feel bad while other factions that have them pick up easy wins.