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 Dysartes wrote:

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.

This is a good point. How many competitive players don't care about faction identity, or play style? I'm competitive, but if an army isn't working as it should according to the lore, that's wrong. Is the attraction to this particular subset of players not the gameplay, or the lore, but the ease with which the rules can be abused for easy wins?

If this is the case, those players can shove off. GW shouldn't be asking them to participate in their meager "play testing" process, or considering them when designing the game. This must also be a factor in GW's shoddy writing- they lack perspective and have no understanding just how easy to break their work is, or why many people play their game at all.

Just how many play 40k for reasons other than "40k?"

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.

This isn't really fair since we don't have insight into what they are actually saying/doing, whether or not GW is listening to them, or if they're even allowed to work in a manner that would be conducive to finding the problems. It certainly COULD be the testers fault, but they could also be giving out amazing advice that GW is flat out ignoring because it's not what they want to hear. We just don't know. So while it's fair to say (and I have said this myself many times) "The play testing process isn't necessarily working as intended", you can't, with any confidence lay blame on the testers.

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.

In my local meta, when you watch the Ork players in the "non-competitive" pick-up games, they're not only working like actual Orks, they're actually half way decent provided they brought enough CP. So is the army really broken, or did the competitive crowd simply find an unexpected use? IMO there's too much "XYZ competitive player did a thing with an army that I don't agree with fluff wise, so it must be bad" lately ...

Don't get me wrong, Orks are pretty far from "ok" as an army (imo), but I'm not sure some of the examples given are actually evidence of what the OP believes them to be.

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.

This is claiming something that none of the playtesters are doing. They are not the game designers. They can only say what unit is underpowered/underperforming and overpowered/overperforming which the GW Game Designers take into account when pointing the units.

I think a lot of people in this thread are mixing up what a playtester does and what a game designer does. A playtester is not much different from a QA person and QA rarely - if ever - get any say in how a game is designed.

 Dysartes wrote:
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.

Short of deliberately misrepresenting their findings for personal benefit / to screw with GW the external testers are not in any way responsible for what GW does, and arguably not even then.

External playtesting is gathering opinions and extra eyes looking for mistakes and oversights. It it literally someone elses job to design the game.

A.T. wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:
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.

Short of deliberately misrepresenting their findings for personal benefit / to screw with GW the external testers are not in any way responsible for what GW does, and arguably not even then.

External playtesting is gathering opinions and extra eyes looking for mistakes and oversights. It it literally someone elses job to design the game.

Is there any responsibility then of someone who playtests a faction, gives feedback to GW that they are underpowered, and then gets hired by GW to sell the faction to its playerbase as "Great in the new edition!!! This gun has BLAST now! This vehicle can fire in close combat! WOW! They're going to be so Great!"

Because if anything, that appears to be the real job of these competitive playtesters: Just to be a name they can put at the top of their WHC articles and say the people "wrote" the articles that all read suspiciously identically.

Fame is a powerful tool. It also drives twitch and site subscriptions which translates into $$$. So yeah.

the_scotsman wrote:
Is there any responsibility then of someone who playtests a faction, gives feedback to GW that they are underpowered, and then gets hired by GW to sell the faction to its playerbase as "Great in the new edition!!! This gun has BLAST now! This vehicle can fire in close combat! WOW! They're going to be so Great!"

If it's an employee that is giving bad feedback then they are responsible for doing a bad job.
Trying to hype the game as the best thing ever is unrelated to game balancing, they'd say the same regardless.

A.T. wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
Is there any responsibility then of someone who playtests a faction, gives feedback to GW that they are underpowered, and then gets hired by GW to sell the faction to its playerbase as "Great in the new edition!!! This gun has BLAST now! This vehicle can fire in close combat! WOW! They're going to be so Great!"

If it's an employee that is giving bad feedback then they are responsible for doing a bad job.
Trying to hype the game as the best thing ever is unrelated to game balancing, they'd say the same regardless.

If you are hyping up a bad faction, on an official company site or forum, then you are very much responsible for what you say. If a tester called with first and last name on a Coca Cola site said that corn syrup is great, and in no way a health risk and in fact it is so great people should want more of it in their Cola products, then they are very much responsible what happens later on.

Not really comparable, as one involves a health risk and the other involves plastic soldiers.

Yeah that analogy is a bit of a facepalm

 Tyran wrote:
Not really comparable, as one involves a health risk and the other involves plastic soldiers.

It involves money, and money is always the same kind of thing.

If the GK write up for ed 8 said, you are going to have a bad army for 2 years, and then maybe we will fix it just before 9th, I wouldn't have bought the army. I lost more then some health thinking I wasted money.

But if you want to have an example from no health related stuff, here you go. Our president told everyone to take electricity from polish companies, that it is going to be better, as there won't be any price hikes etc. Of course the prices went up, and durning election his defence was that he didn't say it as the city president, no matter that he said that with the president building in the back with offcials around him, but he said it as a private citizent. People voted him out, but he just got a well paid job at the electricity company. Although considering that 2 people died durning winter from cold, because they couldn't heat their homes, this probably is health related too.

Again no comparable because a president is a government official. Also electricity is a basic need unlike plastic soldier so not comparable x2.

And if GK had been a good army you would still have "lost" the same amount of money.

Karol wrote:
If you are hyping up a bad faction, on an official company site or forum, then you are very much responsible for what you say. If a tester called with first and last name on a Coca Cola site said that corn syrup is great, and in no way a health risk and in fact it is so great people should want more of it in their Cola products, then they are very much responsible what happens later on.

Two entirely different things, as you well know.

Coca Cola will advertise every new flavour as fantastic no matter what they taste like, similarly GW and basically everyone will market their product as amazing regardless.

Now if GW started advertising primaris marines as a heath supplment, cure to cancer, whatever then it's a different story. The term is 'puffery' - it's all opinion, hyperbole, and hot air not claims of fact.

I think a lot of people in this thread are mixing up what a playtester does and what a game designer does. A playtester is not much different from a QA person and QA rarely - if ever - get any say in how a game is designed.

Couldn't agree more with this.

To the point of the Warhammer Community articles - of COURSE something published via "official Games Workshop" channels is going to be largely positive. But if you look up a lot of those same folks on their own channels, I think they've done good jobs of pointing out the pluses AND the minuses. Also, honestly, I don't find the Warhammer Community articles to be that bad. I mean yeah, they ONLY cover the perceived positives, and admittedly, I haven't read all of them, but I haven't really seen one that was "drenched in hyperbole" and truly "hyping" a "bad faction" yet.

Most of what they're saying seems pretty reasonable.

 Eldarsif wrote:

I think a lot of people in this thread are mixing up what a playtester does and what a game designer does. A playtester is not much different from a QA person and QA rarely - if ever - get any say in how a game is designed.

This is true and it is only natural for people to misunderstand. For most fans their only insight into how games are made comes from things like developer diaries, behind-the-scenes interviews, and release previews. This paints a distorted picture of the work and methodologies that actually go into the development process.

The thing to remember is that every single one of these behind-the-scenes tidbits function purely as marketing collateral and that's it. The interview or article written by a famous playtester, YouTuber, or other prominent community figure is conducted and released purely for the sake of hyping up their next product. It has nothing (or at least very little) to do with some altruistic desire by GW to educate you on their design pipeline. That interview with that recognizable name on top is chosen for release solely because it has marketing value. That's it.

At the end of the day, you will only ever see behind-the-scenes material that paints their newest products in the best possible light. Which means as a fan, you're probably going to think that the development processes revealed in the marketing fluff piece represent the primary focus of the design team throughout production. This is rarely the case. The reality is development is extremely chaotic and messy, and most of the time it is too complicated, boring, or otherwise unappealing for the marketing department to portray it accurately in their material. Hence, the distorted picture.

I'm not saying these articles are fake or that these playtesters and designers are lying about their opinions or methodologies . They aren't. The vast majority of the time they do reflect real things they did and real opinions they had in creating the product. It's just that these pieces are chosen selectively for their ability to sell you more things, and not really to provide anything beyond superficial insight into how they made it.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Well said, Catbarf. I think one thing you mentioned but has been somewhat in doubt of late is the coherent vision of how a battle should play out.

I'm not sure the designers have a "coherent vision" for what they are expecting battles to look like. They don't quite understand the nuanced conflict between, say, a Keeper of Secrets and a squad of Guardsmen, or even between an entire army of Slaanesh Daemons and an entire army of loyalists. In 30k and AOS, they seem to have a better grasp. Keeper of Secrets as an example:

In AOS, Keepers do a lot more than simply "10 attacks at 2+, 2+, -3, 3D." They interact with their opponent in more warpy, slaaneshi ways. Indeed, a keeper in AOS is much less more likely to land huge amounts of damage (though it can spike to much greater amounts!). Instead, the strength of a KOS comes from its ability to seduce and toy with the enemy, doing things such as forcing them to attack last by breaking their will with allure, sensuality and temptation, or offering them a bonus (re-rolls) with the potential of a curse (instant death at the end of the phase on a certain roll). Toying, playing, bating, seducing. They have solid damage output, but you don't take it just for the damage.

In 30k, Keepers don't exist. Instead, the daemons begin roughly the same, and what upgrades and army choices you make affects how your models play. A Greater Daemon of the Lurid Onslaught, the closest thing to a Keeper (and clearly intended to be a keeper, given the name) comes out of a Warp Rift, neither deep striking nor deploying normally, and is a potent and terrifying psyker - though it lacks the sheer power of the Gibbering Madness (Tzeench). It has graceful speed (Fleet and Move Through Cover) but lacks the overwhelming brutality of the Khorne analogue, and has an ability to deceive and seduce enemy squads (reducing their initiative in a fight). Additionally, Armies of the Lurid Onslaught can ignore the mission rolled for and instead select a victory condition that is much more slaaneshi, gaining VP from failed morale checks (feeding on despair and the breaking of wills) and losing VP on heroically passed ones (being rebuffed by heroic will and steadfastness in the face of temptation), for example. Combined with mechanics to increase the number of morale checks taken, this works out to make an army that plays uniquely and isn't shackled by holding hum-drum mortal objectives.

So there are two examples of games with visions to employ Slaanesh. I think the same vision is lacking in 40k, or seems to be.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Canadian 5th wrote:
In 40k you don't have the option to match against 10s of thousands of players of equal skill with their champion picks and playstyle carefully measured by a computer designed to give players even and engaging matches. You have a dozen or less players at a local store who each have different budgets and levels of time to dedicate to the game. How do you maintain fluff while also accounting for skill, budget, and local meta?

You do qualitative analysis during playtesting and include casual and narrative players in the playtest.

As has been mentioned several times before, including in the post you quoted - which even says it's a solved problem in the industry.

Yo, we already have iron hands, we don't need AoS style slaanesh. It's not fun to play against. Particularly if you're gonna be combat skewed (which my aos army actually isn't, but my 40k army is) and the slaanesh player goes "Right, so you don't get to fight until my entire army has fought, most of it twice". I don't care how thematic you feel that is for YOUR army, it don't feel particularly thematic for mine.

 Dysartes wrote:

 Bosskelot wrote:
EDIT: Also we know for a fact that GW can absolutely just ignore playtesting completely. Take a look at Marines 2.0 and the Iron Hands supplement specifically. Their entire playtesting team, including the competitive aspects of it, routinely and repeatedly told them it was a massive issue. Their concerns were not taken on board.

Who's on the record saying this happened, btw?

I "know" (As in I have spoken to a couple times) a few playtesters (And they are people you probably know of), and they all said it in more informal conversations, but for the benefit of not trying to screw their prospects, I won't name them.

the_scotsman wrote:
Yeah, I'm sure the rules are just coincidentally structured like ITC, and ITC is just coincidentally deciding to stop houseruling and fold in to the default missions and rules.

They had nothing to do with 9th I'm sure.

Play testing isn't that simple. I do think playtesters have had more say in 40k than ever before. But you can also watch tabletop titans going "And we told GW that these rules are kinda busted" when referring to admech. They don't have all the say.

But, also, it's not like previous missions benefited orks or slaaneshi demons in any way, and the only way to make them viable in a way that feels in theme is to give them the ability to whop across the board ASAP and murder the enemy in a turn or two, like AoS slaanesh does. And that fething sucks for the people on the other side.


Or, let's take a 40k example. Tau play super on many of their themes. And they are the most miserable game experience most people ever have. Especially if you are playing a melee army. "I cha...." "Greater good, I shoot your army dead in your charge phase"

Blastaar wrote:
I do think the rules team is incompetent. Arrogant as well, judging by the tone of recent FAQs, snippets from Twitch and even the way the LOTR rulebook drips with pretension.

It's obvious they don't think deeply about the game- every edition and codex since I started in late 5th has been "the same, but different." Armor value is now gone, but somehow IGOUGO, the phases, and their tunnel-vision on gameplay being roll to-hit, wound and save ad nauseam, are above examination. Now, this would be fine if the game were in a good place and only needed tweaking, but, yeah........

They lack imagination and an openness to self-critique. Many choices made with 9th so far are very weird. A Psyker may be able to make a "psychic action," so this gets stapled onto the rules for the psychic phase, powers, and individual units, yet it never occurred to them that abandoning IGOUGO and the phases for AA might be a simpler method for the players, and provide more opportunities for minis to do cool stuff? Unit coherency gets changed in a way that will surely cause more harm than good, instead of, say, re-analyzing the value of aura buffs and the mobility of factions, which may make conga lines a poor tactic most of the time.

Characters are another great example. How does GW show a commander's ability to lead? Aura buffs. Auras aren't inherently bad, of course, but GW's implementation is. And sooooo boring!


Here's the Kaddar Nova from MEDGe for comparison. They even have an aura buff, too!

https://www.maelstromsedge.com/medge/forcelist.jsp?f=2&u=16

Epirians are even better, but require more understanding of the core rules. Short version: when a ROBOT unit in the force is issued an order, its bot protocols activate. Stuff like Dig-In, Dodge, extra movement, the ability to move and suppressive fire, etc.

I will say the LOTR is pretty good. I have a few issues here and there-like your opponent choosing your mini's LOS in certain situations, or two-handed weapons imposing a -1 penalty to it's wielder's Fight rolls-but it's miles above 40k and AOS. LOTR is a separate team, I think?

It is. Indeed most of the games are seperate rules writers moment to moment, though the bigs ones cross over. The current LotR dudes are mostly insular, though that's in part because their main dude's like super young right now. I can't remember if Troke had any hand in writing other games, and I know calvatore did, but GW's culture was just way different then

 Arachnofiend wrote:

 slave.entity wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

I would buy this a little bit more if GW were actually consistent about making new units OP. The thing is though, they tend not to be. Everyone remembers instances when they are (Like, say, now, with the new primaris stuff) and forgets the instances when they invested huge money releasing stuff that was hot garbage (like say, all the other primaris stuff when it came out. Remember that time GW released more kits in 2 years for the faction that had the most kits already than any other faction got combined, and all of it was hot trash on release?)

It would be too obviously pay-to-win if every new unit was OP. The trick is to release new units all the time, make SOME of them OP every once in a while, and save the rest for later, giving them the OP treatment in the future depending on a variety of (likely external) factors such as overall sales history of a particular kit, remaining stock, plans for future products, etc.

Obfuscating a pay to win scheme over the long term really doesn't seem that hard when you have years or even decades to do it.

So basically, anything that's overpowered at release is part of the big evil conspiracy to sell the new models, but anything that isn't overpowered was just sacrificed into obscurity in order to obfuscate the previously mentioned conspiracy.

A'ight.

When you make an overpowered unit, you don't want it to be overpowered forever, because then people will buy it and be done buying. You want it to, later, be bad, so that people have to buy the new OP unit.

And GW does certainly do this. Literally every major CCG and miniature wargame does this honestly. Hell, MOBAs all do this. Because it drives profits. It's one of the most bog standard business tactics in the industry.

Tyel wrote:

 Arachnofiend wrote:
Frankly I'm more interested to know why GW decided they didn't want to push Intercessors until a full year after they were released.

Its all part of the master plan.
Because GW clearly wanted people hunting down Forgeworld Dreads, Centurions, Whirlwinds and Thunderfire Cannons and not... idk, Hellblasters and Inceptors.
Its very important to the business that people buy the right plastic and not the wrong plastic.

You want some supposition?

GW wanted marines to be bad for a bit so that marine players switched to other armies slowly.

Only to reel them back in with good (and blatently overpowered) rules later.


Or they made a mistake here, because companies WANTING to do something, and companies successfully doing something aren't the same.

But you'd have to be pretty dim to think GW doesn't use the most basic of marketing strategies with their games. Or extra dim to think such strategies exist nowhere.

Karol wrote:

Blastaar wrote:
"Balance doesn't sell." Unfortunately, I think this is true.

People want the power fantasy, yes.

The tastes of gamers have also changed, however. Especially among people my age and younger, the desire to put effort into succeeding at a game simply isn't there. Players prefer to minimize the effort they put into their own fun time, and rely on OP stuff or rules/game system abuses. It's easier, and it's "the way" to play. This is certainly what LOL does. They pay lip-service to balance while releasing new champions every month who are nearly always OP for several weeks before the inevitable nerf. Their business is selling RP to players, and using flashy gameplay in Esports games as advertising.
.

There is also the fact that if GW puts out your codex as a balanced one, 6 months later it is no longer balanced, because in the mean time they put out 3-4 new books out of which two are maybe more powerful, and one is a lot less powerful. Having an unbalanced, externaly, codex gives it more life.
Eldar for example, required a full blown faction kill switch nerf and they still were okey as a core faction codex. They just wasn't the best.

Something like DG on the other hand went in to obscurity very fast. So it is not just a power fantasy, where you plow through opponent after opponent. Some of it is thinking of the future of what you are going to play in 6 or 12 months time.

This is why the new KO battletome did not bring me back to AoS. A nice balanced army. Fighting against the nonsense of slaanesh and OBR. No thank you.

 Dysartes wrote:

 auticus wrote:
WHen I did campaign events I had to write houserules to curb the powergaming. Of course that leads to the age old chestnut of "who are you to rewrite the rules and make my army less effective? HOW DARE YOU!" arguments and screaming matches that can take place down at the good ole game store.

I believe the correct responses to this question are either "Me? I'm Batman." or "I'm the event organiser, hence I can change the rules as needed".

 auticus wrote:
I mean I have had a guy almost flip a table and storm out because I was using a warhammer world scenario which wasn't "real 40k" (wasn't an ITC tournament scenario) and another guy flip his **** at a campaign event because we were using Forgeworld campaign and those weren't "real 40k". Then there was the guy that wanted to go out into the parking lot to fight because houserules were toxic and ruined the community and he felt VERY strongly about that.

Guy 1 - ITC isn't real 40k either, and at least the scenario you were using was published by GW
Guy 2 - FW materials are released with the GW & 40k logos on them, ergo they're part of "real 40k". Suck it up, buttercup.
Guy 3 - "Hi, police? I've got a gentleman here threatening to assault me over a miniature wargame..."

Unless you want someone dead, don't call the police on them

Purifying Tempest wrote:
Hey, I think we just discovered Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

I'm not going to be as brash as to call the designers "stupid" - I mean there are tons of data points and interactions these people have to account for, surely something unintended is going to slip through. But I also think attributing these mistakes to malice is just... really... childish.

There is no doomsday clock of when your units are going to absolutely suck and then suddenly swing into power houses. Everything cycles around. New units probably get a white glove pass because they're new and the company genuinely wants them to succeed... they literally spent a ton of money in design on them, you don't want it to flop. Do they make them intentionally OP? No, but I think they try to find that line and get REALLY close, because they want you to want it. The model is never going to sell as well as when it is premiered, so you definitely do not want to sell a turd.

And that means other models kind of languish under the radar. Their rules are infrequently updated, how the game plays after an edition update diminishes their value even more... the unit starts to age, and not sell. Someone is then tasks with "give this unit a face lift so we can get it back on the table" or "new codex time, let's give this unit an extra pass because it's been notoriously underrepresented the past few editions"... kind of a way to give them another day in the sun, and even to get those kits into the hand of newer players who never gave them a try.

But really, I think a lot of this ascribing malice to everything we disagree with and do not like... bad way of living life. You see the worst in everything, believe everything is done as part of some monstrous design. And we forget that people make mistakes all the time, and it doesn't make them bad. People misinterpret things all the time, it doesn't make them evil. And most importantly: smart people can do some REALLY dumb things. Doesn't make them stupid or bad, just shows that they're still fallible regardless of how smart they are.

If the result is the same, the reasons are moot. Really.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
So what factor does GW use to determine which ancient 3rd ed era/finecast sculpts they're going to seemingly arbitrarily ascend to competitive godhood?

Certainly doesn't seem like it's "Do we have this thing in stock, ready to sell to our competitive playerbase" to me. considering that whether it's shining spears, or talos pain engines, or vauls wrath batteries, or whatever, it basically instantly goes out of stock and stays that way for months.

You would think that would...not make GW any money, particularly if they do something like, I dunno, release a brand new plastic banshees unit and then the supporting rulebook that comes out with them makes Vauls Wrath guns ridiculously OP while leaving the brand new banshees garbage.

So the new unit GW just invested money into doesn't sell to competitive players, but they instantly run out of stock of the ancient old sculpt and everyone competitively minded goes to ebay to get those.

It also seems to me like, were I a corporation interested in instituting some kind of pay to win situation, I would do something to kind of use those competitive sales to drive my business. I might, for example, if I were considering releasing a big wave of CSMs and I was planning on having one of the new models be super duper tournament competitive, I might go ahead and put that bad boy right there in the big box and make it so you have to buy the big box with all the non-competitive units in it to get the super competitive thing.

I wouldn't, for example, release the big box with all the non-competitive junk units in it, and then release the thing lets name for the sake of argument a Lord of Discord in its own SEPARATE kit that then all my competitive players would just buy that and not buy the box set.

They bumble their way into making old models powerful.

Which means they're not spending time concocting strategies on how to sell those models. The result is a product of a poor play-testing process.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Purifying Tempest wrote:
Hey, I think we just discovered Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

I'm not going to be as brash as to call the designers "stupid" - I mean there are tons of data points and interactions these people have to account for, surely something unintended is going to slip through. But I also think attributing these mistakes to malice is just... really... childish.

There is no doomsday clock of when your units are going to absolutely suck and then suddenly swing into power houses. Everything cycles around. New units probably get a white glove pass because they're new and the company genuinely wants them to succeed... they literally spent a ton of money in design on them, you don't want it to flop. Do they make them intentionally OP? No, but I think they try to find that line and get REALLY close, because they want you to want it. The model is never going to sell as well as when it is premiered, so you definitely do not want to sell a turd.

And that means other models kind of languish under the radar. Their rules are infrequently updated, how the game plays after an edition update diminishes their value even more... the unit starts to age, and not sell. Someone is then tasks with "give this unit a face lift so we can get it back on the table" or "new codex time, let's give this unit an extra pass because it's been notoriously underrepresented the past few editions"... kind of a way to give them another day in the sun, and even to get those kits into the hand of newer players who never gave them a try.

But really, I think a lot of this ascribing malice to everything we disagree with and do not like... bad way of living life. You see the worst in everything, believe everything is done as part of some monstrous design. And we forget that people make mistakes all the time, and it doesn't make them bad. People misinterpret things all the time, it doesn't make them evil. And most importantly: smart people can do some REALLY dumb things. Doesn't make them stupid or bad, just shows that they're still fallible regardless of how smart they are.

That's part of the problem. Some people directly attribute improving a poorly performing unit or nerfing a strong one as no different than deliberately pushing rules. Damned if you do. Damned if you don't.

I think GW's biggest problem is there is no way to play test all these releases competently. Especially not in reference to each other. Indomitus started in earnest a year or more ago. The were designing units and a new edition about the same time the marines codexes hit. And according to Brian playtesting began in Dec/Jan, so, how did any of the new PAs get folded into those considerations?

I mean... like the obvious answer is... both.

GW is alternatively clueless and devious, and you can't be sure what rules are the result of which because GW's hardly going to tell you (I mean sometimes you can get a designer with a few beers in a convention and he'll go "Yeah we just didn't test malefic lords", but that's not gonna be on warcom).

But the result is, ultimately, the same.

Does GW make dumb mistakes? Obviously.

Does GW design their game with an eye to creating a constantly shifting meta so people are pushed to buy the next best thing? Also, obviously.

 Tyran wrote:
Again no comparable because a president is a government official. Also electricity is a basic need unlike plastic soldier so not comparable x2.

And if GK had been a good army you would still have "lost" the same amount of money.

that doesn't mean companies should be allowed to get away with shady practices because they are less relevant to life.

I mean, GW products also have powerful memetic potential, which can actually be dangerous.

This is why the new KO battletome did not bring me back to AoS. A nice balanced army. Fighting against the nonsense of slaanesh and OBR. No thank you.

^^^^ and yet it is wildly celebrated and cheered as having great balance.

I will never understand.

 auticus wrote:

This is why the new KO battletome did not bring me back to AoS. A nice balanced army. Fighting against the nonsense of slaanesh and OBR. No thank you.

^^^^ and yet it is wildly celebrated and cheered as having great balance.

I will never understand.

You're forgetting half of that sentence "...compared to 40k" Which is absolutely true. Even the worst of Slaanesh dominance was nowhere near as bad as marine dominance and lasted less than half as long. OBR wasn't ever that out of line, it just was an extremely lopsided army matchcup wise. Could you deal with petrifex? Yes, you win. No? You get stomped into dirt without killing a single model.

AoS isn't balanced, it's still a GW game. It's just a dam sight better balanced than 40k is.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Karol wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
Not really comparable, as one involves a health risk and the other involves plastic soldiers.

It involves money, and money is always the same kind of thing.

If the GK write up for ed 8 said, you are going to have a bad army for 2 years, and then maybe we will fix it just before 9th, I wouldn't have bought the army. I lost more then some health thinking I wasted money.

But if you want to have an example from no health related stuff, here you go. Our president told everyone to take electricity from polish companies, that it is going to be better, as there won't be any price hikes etc. Of course the prices went up, and durning election his defence was that he didn't say it as the city president, no matter that he said that with the president building in the back with offcials around him, but he said it as a private citizent. People voted him out, but he just got a well paid job at the electricity company. Although considering that 2 people died durning winter from cold, because they couldn't heat their homes, this probably is health related too.

A lot of this seems like you're really focused on blaming Reece for saying GK were a good army. What you're forgetting is that from Reece's perspective, it probably was. At least in the testing phase and Early release phase. If Reece found a relatively effective tactic early on and played the army very well, it's possible he racked up quite a lot of wins against people who were still trying to figure out their army. He has proven himself to be a good player, so it's definitely possible.

Continuing to say GK are good is obstinance, not false advertising.

ERJAK wrote:

 auticus wrote:

This is why the new KO battletome did not bring me back to AoS. A nice balanced army. Fighting against the nonsense of slaanesh and OBR. No thank you.

^^^^ and yet it is wildly celebrated and cheered as having great balance.

I will never understand.

You're forgetting half of that sentence "...compared to 40k" Which is absolutely true. Even the worst of Slaanesh dominance was nowhere near as bad as marine dominance and lasted less than half as long. OBR wasn't ever that out of line, it just was an extremely lopsided army matchcup wise. Could you deal with petrifex? Yes, you win. No? You get stomped into dirt without killing a single model.

AoS isn't balanced, it's still a GW game. It's just a dam sight better balanced than 40k is.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Karol wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
Not really comparable, as one involves a health risk and the other involves plastic soldiers.

It involves money, and money is always the same kind of thing.

If the GK write up for ed 8 said, you are going to have a bad army for 2 years, and then maybe we will fix it just before 9th, I wouldn't have bought the army. I lost more then some health thinking I wasted money.

But if you want to have an example from no health related stuff, here you go. Our president told everyone to take electricity from polish companies, that it is going to be better, as there won't be any price hikes etc. Of course the prices went up, and durning election his defence was that he didn't say it as the city president, no matter that he said that with the president building in the back with offcials around him, but he said it as a private citizent. People voted him out, but he just got a well paid job at the electricity company. Although considering that 2 people died durning winter from cold, because they couldn't heat their homes, this probably is health related too.

A lot of this seems like you're really focused on blaming Reece for saying GK were a good army. What you're forgetting is that from Reece's perspective, it probably was. At least in the testing phase and Early release phase. If Reece found a relatively effective tactic early on and played the army very well, it's possible he racked up quite a lot of wins against people who were still trying to figure out their army. He has proven himself to be a good player, so it's definitely possible.

Continuing to say GK are good is obstinance, not false advertising.

Slaanesh had like a 68 percent major winrate. That's not that far off the worst of the iron hands

stratigo wrote:

that doesn't mean companies should be allowed to get away with shady practices because they are less relevant to life.

I mean, GW products also have powerful memetic potential, which can actually be dangerous.

That would be getting into politics and state regulation. Not only that would derail the thread but honestly GW is very small potatoes at that scale.

 Tyran wrote:

stratigo wrote:

that doesn't mean companies should be allowed to get away with shady practices because they are less relevant to life.

I mean, GW products also have powerful memetic potential, which can actually be dangerous.

That would be getting into politics and state regulation. Not only that would derail the thread but honestly GW is very small potatoes at that scale.

Yes, but this is a forum that focuses largely on GW and not, say, Mosanto. Or whatever blackwater is calling itself today.

stratigo wrote:

ERJAK wrote:

 auticus wrote:

This is why the new KO battletome did not bring me back to AoS. A nice balanced army. Fighting against the nonsense of slaanesh and OBR. No thank you.

^^^^ and yet it is wildly celebrated and cheered as having great balance.

I will never understand.

You're forgetting half of that sentence "...compared to 40k" Which is absolutely true. Even the worst of Slaanesh dominance was nowhere near as bad as marine dominance and lasted less than half as long. OBR wasn't ever that out of line, it just was an extremely lopsided army matchcup wise. Could you deal with petrifex? Yes, you win. No? You get stomped into dirt without killing a single model.

AoS isn't balanced, it's still a GW game. It's just a dam sight better balanced than 40k is.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Karol wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
Not really comparable, as one involves a health risk and the other involves plastic soldiers.

It involves money, and money is always the same kind of thing.

If the GK write up for ed 8 said, you are going to have a bad army for 2 years, and then maybe we will fix it just before 9th, I wouldn't have bought the army. I lost more then some health thinking I wasted money.

But if you want to have an example from no health related stuff, here you go. Our president told everyone to take electricity from polish companies, that it is going to be better, as there won't be any price hikes etc. Of course the prices went up, and durning election his defence was that he didn't say it as the city president, no matter that he said that with the president building in the back with offcials around him, but he said it as a private citizent. People voted him out, but he just got a well paid job at the electricity company. Although considering that 2 people died durning winter from cold, because they couldn't heat their homes, this probably is health related too.

A lot of this seems like you're really focused on blaming Reece for saying GK were a good army. What you're forgetting is that from Reece's perspective, it probably was. At least in the testing phase and Early release phase. If Reece found a relatively effective tactic early on and played the army very well, it's possible he racked up quite a lot of wins against people who were still trying to figure out their army. He has proven himself to be a good player, so it's definitely possible.

Continuing to say GK are good is obstinance, not false advertising.

Slaanesh had like a 68 percent major winrate. That's not that far off the worst of the iron hands

That was the first place rate, if you look a little deeper you'll see that maybe 3 out of the top 16 were Slaanesh in any given event, whereas between 10-12 were IH when IH was tops and it only split between IH and Ravenguard when the first round of Nerfs came in.

So yeah, 68% 1st place rate was a clear mark of being unbalanced, not nearly as bad as being 80% of every top 16, with an 80% win rate.

ERJAK wrote:

stratigo wrote:

ERJAK wrote:

 auticus wrote:

This is why the new KO battletome did not bring me back to AoS. A nice balanced army. Fighting against the nonsense of slaanesh and OBR. No thank you.

^^^^ and yet it is wildly celebrated and cheered as having great balance.

I will never understand.

You're forgetting half of that sentence "...compared to 40k" Which is absolutely true. Even the worst of Slaanesh dominance was nowhere near as bad as marine dominance and lasted less than half as long. OBR wasn't ever that out of line, it just was an extremely lopsided army matchcup wise. Could you deal with petrifex? Yes, you win. No? You get stomped into dirt without killing a single model.

AoS isn't balanced, it's still a GW game. It's just a dam sight better balanced than 40k is.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Karol wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
Not really comparable, as one involves a health risk and the other involves plastic soldiers.

It involves money, and money is always the same kind of thing.

If the GK write up for ed 8 said, you are going to have a bad army for 2 years, and then maybe we will fix it just before 9th, I wouldn't have bought the army. I lost more then some health thinking I wasted money.

But if you want to have an example from no health related stuff, here you go. Our president told everyone to take electricity from polish companies, that it is going to be better, as there won't be any price hikes etc. Of course the prices went up, and durning election his defence was that he didn't say it as the city president, no matter that he said that with the president building in the back with offcials around him, but he said it as a private citizent. People voted him out, but he just got a well paid job at the electricity company. Although considering that 2 people died durning winter from cold, because they couldn't heat their homes, this probably is health related too.

A lot of this seems like you're really focused on blaming Reece for saying GK were a good army. What you're forgetting is that from Reece's perspective, it probably was. At least in the testing phase and Early release phase. If Reece found a relatively effective tactic early on and played the army very well, it's possible he racked up quite a lot of wins against people who were still trying to figure out their army. He has proven himself to be a good player, so it's definitely possible.

Continuing to say GK are good is obstinance, not false advertising.

Slaanesh had like a 68 percent major winrate. That's not that far off the worst of the iron hands

That was the first place rate, if you look a little deeper you'll see that maybe 3 out of the top 16 were Slaanesh in any given event, whereas between 10-12 were IH when IH was tops and it only split between IH and Ravenguard when the first round of Nerfs came in.

So yeah, 68% 1st place rate was a clear mark of being unbalanced, not nearly as bad as being 80% of every top 16, with an 80% win rate.

I'm fairly sure that IH reached low 70s.

And.... less people play slaanesh. Their winrate is their winrate, not thier top finish rate. Their winrate. It's how often they win. And since everyone had a space marine army, well, everyone could break out the new op faction pretty rapidly.

A.T. wrote:

Karol wrote:
If you are hyping up a bad faction, on an official company site or forum, then you are very much responsible for what you say. If a tester called with first and last name on a Coca Cola site said that corn syrup is great, and in no way a health risk and in fact it is so great people should want more of it in their Cola products, then they are very much responsible what happens later on.

Two entirely different things, as you well know.

Coca Cola will advertise every new flavour as fantastic no matter what they taste like, similarly GW and basically everyone will market their product as amazing regardless.

Now if GW started advertising primaris marines as a heath supplment, cure to cancer, whatever then it's a different story. The term is 'puffery' - it's all opinion, hyperbole, and hot air not claims of fact.

Oh I know that, but you are not going to tell me that when a playtester that knows an army is bad, writes that it is good, it is somehow a good thing, because all companies hype stuff up. I don't care what promo GW does, but I do care when a playtester, says something works or doesn't. When a suplment seller hypes some product, promissing us 20 year old size at the age of 15, I know he is bullshiting me. When my trainer does the same, or someone from my class, it is way different.

A lot of this seems like you're really focused on blaming Reece for saying GK were a good army. What you're forgetting is that from Reece's perspective, it probably was. At least in the testing phase and Early release phase. If Reece found a relatively effective tactic early on and played the army very well, it's possible he racked up quite a lot of wins against people who were still trying to figure out their army. He has proven himself to be a good player, so it's definitely possible.

Continuing to say GK are good is obstinance, not false advertising.

But that is what he said, and later he said that GK players just don't play GK the right way. And his right way was the same way everyone else was playing them.
Also there is a big difference between someone up the importance ladders says something, and a no body like me saying stuff. What I say does not matter at all. What a well known person in the community and playtester says something is a ton of weight. And yes I know that playtesters technicly aren't employed by GW.

stratigo wrote:

Yes, but this is a forum that focuses largely on GW and not, say, Mosanto. Or whatever blackwater is calling itself today.

Still small potatoes BTW.

And GW is not revolutionizing the way marketing works, if anything GW is still very new and inexperienced when it comes to it.

I mean, if the new Primaris are GW's attempt to shift the meta to create revenue, it is a very poor attempt. You don't tie meta shifting products to limited release ones as you limit your own potential profit. You also don't release OP units for already OP armies, as that also limits profit potential compared to e.g. Necrons being the new OP army and every competitive player needing to buy a Necron army likely from scratch.

 Tyran wrote:

stratigo wrote:

Yes, but this is a forum that focuses largely on GW and not, say, Mosanto. Or whatever blackwater is calling itself today.

Still small potatoes BTW.

And GW is not revolutionizing the way marketing works, if anything GW is still very new and inexperienced when it comes to it.

I mean, if the new Primaris are GW's attempt to shift the meta to create revenue, it is a very poor attempt. You don't tie meta shifting products to limited release ones as you limit your own potential profit. You also don't release OP units for already OP armies, as that also limits profit potential compared to e.g. Necrons being the new OP army and every competitive player needing to buy a Necron army likely from scratch.

I mean, the judicator stands out as a pretty hard counter for a number of armies.

But most of the boc stuff will come out individually, and the space marine stuff will come out individually rapidly (necrons probly have to wait a bit longer). I do suspect captain skeleton shield, or vulkite man might be a box exlusive and never come out later. But for building an OP army, you'll probly grab yourself a judicator.

And the eradicators.

Remember that one of the things GW banks on is everyone having a space marine army. I'm not sure if they'll ever flub/decide to make them bad again, but space marine meta is almost an entire gameline on its own. They're nerfing the points of the thunderfire cannon into the dirt for example, and I can tell you, every competitive marine player had a couple of those. There's so many space marines you can churn the meta of literally just space marines by choosing winner and looser units inside the codex itself.