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Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 auticus wrote:

I demand to see the posts complaining about "too balanced too boring and list building does not matter"

Knowing you how I know you, all of the posts in the world being posted here right now would illicit a countering moving of the goal posts lol. Too much balance is boring has been said many times in the aos forums and too much balance makes list building not matter as a complaint was said in the azyr comp facebook group when that was a thing in 2015 and 2016. it was the #1 complaint about azyr comp, that it was too balanced and therefore boring and it made listbuilding not matter.

Nice copout to get out of showing proof.

I'll chime in on this one. I've said multiple times in the past that auticus's (and many other people's) definition of balance as "every combination of 2000pts should be exactly as good as every other combination of 2000pts regardless of what you take" is asinine because it means player choice in the list building stage is irrelevant and differentiation between units becomes so meaningless you might as well just take 2000pts of whatever the cheapest model monetarily is and be done with it.

What that means is that there should be clear strengths and weakness to units and other units should work together with them to either enhance their strengths or cover their weaknesses. If that means taking a gravis captain and a techmarine alongside a jetpack army is significantly weaker than taking appropriate characters like shrike, so be it.

Auticus, being auticus, strawmanned it down to 'some people don't want balance because it boring (while heavily implying that it's actually that they want to pick OP stuff in list building)' which is stupid. Every unit in a book should have an effective strategic use, I just don't think you should be able to slap down a grabbag of nonsense with no thought or consideration for how units work together and win tournaments.

It's the same school of thought as 'I don't think someone should be able to castle up in a corner of the board and just shoot stuff for 5 turns and win all the time' just at the list building stage rather than the tabletop stage.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

the_scotsman wrote:

A.T. wrote:

 vipoid wrote:
Yeah, I keep hearing that an algorithm was used but I've yet to see any evidence of that. There are far too many instances of similar units or pieces of wargear getting drastically different point changes for no discernible reason.

Similar in terms of abilities, or similar in terms of original cost?

Identical in many cases.

See hand flamers for Sisters vs Hand Flamers for GSC.

GSC: 1pt to 2pts
Sisters: 1pt to 5pts

Hand Flamers are almost certainly stronger for GSC than sisters - GSC can put them on every single member of their squads, which are melee units, and have a stratagem to deep strike 3" away and still shoot.

Handflamers are 2pts on the unit that actually use them, seraphim. They also have a stratagem that extends a pistol range for 6" so they can shoot them out of deepstrike.

the_scotsman wrote:
See hand flamers for Sisters vs Hand Flamers for GSC.

GSC: 1pt to 2pts
Sisters: 1pt to 5pts

Sisters do pay 2 points for hand flamers on the seraphim, so the suggestion that everything was very roughly adjusted and rounded out by a formula and then designer-edited in a handful of cases still holds water.

Sisters are also an example of where nothing except for an automated adjustment makes sense with their 5pt condemnor boltgun.

Anyone who thinks too much balance ruins list building has no idea how to build a list.

ERJAK wrote:
I've said multiple times in the past that auticus's (and many other people's) definition of balance as "every combination of 2000pts should be exactly as good as every other combination of 2000pts regardless of what you take" is asinine because it means player choice in the list building stage is irrelevant and differentiation between units becomes so meaningless you might as well just take 2000pts of whatever the cheapest model monetarily is and be done with it.

Agreed, A 2000pt mixed Take-all-comers list vs a 2000pt mixed Take-all-comers list should have around a 50/50 win/loss rate on both sides, with deployment and choices being the main reason for victory.
On the other hand, a 2000pt vehicle based Take-All-Comers list Vs a Horde Infantry based Take-all-comers list should have varying degrees of success and failure dependent on the mission type being played.

 Nitro Zeus wrote:
Anyone who thinks too much balance ruins list building has no idea how to build a list.

Someone saying too much balance ruins list building is saying that it doesn't matter what you build if its all balanced. If they take an hour to tweak a list but your 2000 point list that you spent 5 minutes on is just as viable, then to them that ruins listbuilding. It is ingrained in gamer culture that list building should be the most important factor.

 auticus wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:
Anyone who thinks too much balance ruins list building has no idea how to build a list.

Someone saying too much balance ruins list building is saying that it doesn't matter what you build if its all balanced. If they take an hour to tweak a list but your 2000 point list that you spent 5 minutes on is just as viable, then to them that ruins listbuilding. It is ingrained in gamer culture that list building should be the most important factor.

Yeah you still haven't shown off these posts you've been talking about.

ok. I already responded once to you. If you're looking for more, sorry. You are the king of goal post moving and **** talking so arguing with you is like screaming at a hurricane moving in; pointless and a waste of time. For everything I post that gives you what you want, you have a long storied history of following it with "yeah but that doesn't count". I have sat through several design meetings in other games where this comes up, and heavy balance is always discouraged due to people not liking it. I also collected a number of negative comments in my time doing azyr comp from people upset at too much balance.

Trying to convince you otherwise is not on my itinerary for the day. Whether you personally don't believe me gives me as much emotional impact and caring as the last time you didn't believe me. That being: zero. But if it pleases you, by all means continue.

A balanced game is one where every option has a reason to exist and when used correctly performs as expected.

Not that you can use anything without any single second of tought put into it and it should work.

If in a game of starcraft you start building random units in random orders you are gonna get destroyed every single time. And it is not a problem of the units or the choices, is a problem of you playing badly.

In wargames, list building should be relevant in the way of making the list you want to play. But there should be NO clearly better choices or traps in list building, just different ways to build an army for different play styles.

If you study game design in enough detail you will recognize that point systems are a mostly illusory construct to begin with and don't really function the way people seem to think they do (unfortunately, that sometimes includes game designers too). No game - at least none that I know of - ever really use points in an objective, quantifiable, qualifiable, scientific manner that is directly correlated to a formula which accurately predicts and indicates a units on-table performance capabilities - the ability to objectively calculate such a thing simply does not exist because any such attempt at calculating something like that would be subject to the biases of the person trying to determine how the formula should be weighted in order to account for intangible factors. Points are *always* used to "mold" or "train" the way players build an army, with the idea being that once the army is built to a standard it should have a hopefully 50/50 shot against any other army built to the same standards.

Says points aren't about balance. Gives the definition of balance in describing what points are "actually" for ...

I can't speak to Boyz, but CSM are where they are because they mirror a unit (the SM tactical squad) that GW is consciously trying to shuffle into obsolescence. You can't improve CSM without also improving tacticals, but then people might take them over primaris.

No. That's incorrect IMO. It certainly doesn't help matters any, but it's not the main reason. Actual Chaos Marines have been trash level since roughly their 6th ed codex (arguably they were also terrible in the previous codex but since that book lacked proper cultists the shortcomings were slightly less noticeable).

Second ed CSM had some cool things that kept them on par w/tacs, while speaking to their fluffy differences, and the 3.5 book pushed that to 11. Then, similar to 5th Ed Grey Knights, CSM had to go on their global apology tour. Some will tell you it's because Chaos won the 13th Black Crusade campaign and GW couldn't handle the bad guys winning, others will tell you it's because chaos should be NPCs in GWs eyes. Personally, I think the problem is just a lack of vision and interest in whomever ends up writing them.

CSM have under-performed for a very long time. Phil Kelly taking away our extra leadership point just t ocharge us for shoe-horning it back in starting in the 6th ed book, plus adding all those terrible rules that GW somehow thought would be both fun and good really wrecked them. On top of all of that, they can never seem to decide if the CSM troop selection should represent a random piratical renegade band, or an actual Legion squad, each requiring very different rules and gear. The truth is, Chaos is every bit as big as the Imperial side, but there's not enough time in the day to flesh out Chaos the way Imperials are, and Imperial stuff just sells, sells, sells, so we're left with a troop unit that tries to serve multiple things at once, and does all of them poorly.

If you need evidence of the fact that GW literally just doesn't know what to do with Chaos Marines, look no further than this points update. They want Chaos armies to use actual Marines. So naturally they made the Marines better right? That would make total se..... oh no. Nope. They just made Cultists worse. So CSM are still bad, but now they might be slightly less bad than before when compared to cultists.

Saw the Tabletop Tactics guys talking about these adjustments yesterday, and they seemed to be agreeing that the points as they sit are essentially pants, but to hang on because they know what rules are coming for a lot of these units and it will all make sense later. I hope that's true. I am also very skeptical though.

 auticus wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:
Anyone who thinks too much balance ruins list building has no idea how to build a list.

Someone saying too much balance ruins list building is saying that it doesn't matter what you build if its all balanced. If they take an hour to tweak a list but your 2000 point list that you spent 5 minutes on is just as viable, then to them that ruins listbuilding. It is ingrained in gamer culture that list building should be the most important factor.

If every unit was balanced, taking whatever the hell you like would still lose every time to a well structured game plan. Anyone who made this complaint is an utter scrub, but honestly I’m starting to think it didn’t really happen, this just seems like one of those “stories” that I don’t think would ever really happen. But it’s possible I’m overestimating warhammer players here.

A.T. wrote:

 vipoid wrote:
Yeah, I keep hearing that an algorithm was used but I've yet to see any evidence of that. There are far too many instances of similar units or pieces of wargear getting drastically different point changes for no discernible reason.

Similar in terms of abilities, or similar in terms of original cost?

Both.

 auticus wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:
Anyone who thinks too much balance ruins list building has no idea how to build a list.

Someone saying too much balance ruins list building is saying that it doesn't matter what you build if its all balanced. If they take an hour to tweak a list but your 2000 point list that you spent 5 minutes on is just as viable, then to them that ruins listbuilding. It is ingrained in gamer culture that list building should be the most important factor.

The actual non-strawman complaint I've heard regarding AOS listbuilding that I kind of agree with is that because units hit and wound on fixed numbers and monsters are just infantry with lots and lots and lots of wounds, there doesn't appear to be as much separation in different types of weaponry. A unit that can shred through a horde of infantry with 30 wounds can just as easily shred through a big bad monster with 30 wounds. Similarly, if you have for example a big cannon in age of sigmar that does 6 damage in a single shot, if you point it at infantry it removes 6 models, because damage spills over in AOS.

That makes it so that there isn't really ever a distinction between "anti-heavy weapons" and "anti-infantry weapons" in AOS in the same way there is in 40k. Rend is really the only stat that can possibly make that difference - you can have like a rend 3 weapon that is less efficient against Sv6+ cheapo models. But that's really it.

It does make it a whole lot easier on the surface level to balance the game via a simple spreadsheet - you know, just by looking at a unit, how many hits it takes to kill, and how much damage it causes, and how fast it moves, so you can very easily assign a points value to it and all you have to do is figure out how much its special abilities are worth. But it does make certain unit choices feel like they just..don't matter at all. I have a unit that has a choice between a weapon that gets 3 shots, hits on 3s, wounds on 3s, and deals 1 damage, or a weapon that gets 1 shot, hits on 3s, wounds on 3s, and does 3 damage. I'm just choosing basically between whether the weapon is "all or nothing" or not, the average damage is always going to be exactly the same.

the_scotsman wrote:

 auticus wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:
Anyone who thinks too much balance ruins list building has no idea how to build a list.

Someone saying too much balance ruins list building is saying that it doesn't matter what you build if its all balanced. If they take an hour to tweak a list but your 2000 point list that you spent 5 minutes on is just as viable, then to them that ruins listbuilding. It is ingrained in gamer culture that list building should be the most important factor.

The actual non-strawman complaint I've heard regarding AOS listbuilding that I kind of agree with is that because units hit and wound on fixed numbers and monsters are just infantry with lots and lots and lots of wounds, there doesn't appear to be as much separation in different types of weaponry. A unit that can shred through a horde of infantry with 30 wounds can just as easily shred through a big bad monster with 30 wounds. Similarly, if you have for example a big cannon in age of sigmar that does 6 damage in a single shot, if you point it at infantry it removes 6 models, because damage spills over in AOS.

That makes it so that there isn't really ever a distinction between "anti-heavy weapons" and "anti-infantry weapons" in AOS in the same way there is in 40k. Rend is really the only stat that can possibly make that difference - you can have like a rend 3 weapon that is less efficient against Sv6+ cheapo models. But that's really it.

It does make it a whole lot easier on the surface level to balance the game via a simple spreadsheet - you know, just by looking at a unit, how many hits it takes to kill, and how much damage it causes, and how fast it moves, so you can very easily assign a points value to it and all you have to do is figure out how much its special abilities are worth. But it does make certain unit choices feel like they just..don't matter at all. I have a unit that has a choice between a weapon that gets 3 shots, hits on 3s, wounds on 3s, and deals 1 damage, or a weapon that gets 1 shot, hits on 3s, wounds on 3s, and does 3 damage. I'm just choosing basically between whether the weapon is "all or nothing" or not, the average damage is always going to be exactly the same.

Yeah. In Age of Sigmar you only need to run a couple calculations on a app to find the most optimal weapon option in most units, like varanguard or chaos knights. Yeah, better quality weapons bennefit more from bonus to number of attacks and low quality ones with many attacks beneffit more from bonus to damage but... thats marginal from a gameplay perspective.

Auticus, Imma echo the calls for you to actually SHOW the posts of people complaining it's "too balanced". You've repeated that claim multiple times, in various threads, and yet never showed it.

 auticus wrote:
Someone saying too much balance ruins list building is saying that it doesn't matter what you build if its all balanced. If they take an hour to tweak a list but your 2000 point list that you spent 5 minutes on is just as viable, then to them that ruins listbuilding. It is ingrained in gamer culture that list building should be the most important factor.

A new style of wargame for the lockdown era perhaps - build your list, upload to the server and it declares one of you the winner.

When did this ingraining start though? I would have though 'playing the game' should be the most important factor in playing the game, perhaps that's old fashioned of me.

 Nitro Zeus wrote:

 auticus wrote:

 Nitro Zeus wrote:
Anyone who thinks too much balance ruins list building has no idea how to build a list.

Someone saying too much balance ruins list building is saying that it doesn't matter what you build if its all balanced. If they take an hour to tweak a list but your 2000 point list that you spent 5 minutes on is just as viable, then to them that ruins listbuilding. It is ingrained in gamer culture that list building should be the most important factor.

If every unit was balanced, taking whatever the hell you like would still lose every time to a well structured game plan. Anyone who made this complaint is an utter scrub, but honestly I’m starting to think it didn’t really happen, this just seems like one of those “stories” that I don’t think would ever really happen. But it’s possible I’m overestimating warhammer players here.

You do not have to believe it, but he is not wrong.

There are people who believe that the numbers are everything and that they should be rewarded for 'cracking the code' by number-crunching and running 'simulations' of how everything would work.

When did this ingraining start though? I would have though 'playing the game' should be the most important factor in playing the game, perhaps that's old fashioned of me.

I don't know Auticus, so I'm not necessarily saying this does, or does not apply to him, but I've seen this same sentiment in players who would actually go to tournaments, but can't deal with losing, and also feel like they should be able to casually throw together "whatever" into a list and show up and have the same chance as someone who really thought through the list and practiced with it, fine tuned it, etc etc.

The excuse becomes "it's all about list hammer" so there's no point in trying. IDK - it's weird. I haven't had time for tournaments this year, but when I did, I didn't expect to show up after my 5 or 6 practice games and have the same experience in that tournament as the person who played 50 practice games with their list. It's just a weird mindset. A lot of mental gymnastics involved imo.

A.T. wrote:

 auticus wrote:
Someone saying too much balance ruins list building is saying that it doesn't matter what you build if its all balanced. If they take an hour to tweak a list but your 2000 point list that you spent 5 minutes on is just as viable, then to them that ruins listbuilding. It is ingrained in gamer culture that list building should be the most important factor.

A new style of wargame for the lockdown era perhaps - build your list, upload to the server and it declares one of you the winner.

When did this ingraining start though? I would have though 'playing the game' should be the most important factor in playing the game, perhaps that's old fashioned of me.

Some people want to be able to build a list that smashes anything.

I would consider them to be a minority, though-no one at my local GW built lists like that, outside of the occasional tournament player who was practicing for one, and when THAT happened, they'd either be facing other tournament players or ask their opponent to bring their hardest list.

A good game is one that's decided turn five by three points, not turn two by fifteen points.

List-building can still be part of a balanced game anyway. It should NOT be the main determinant in victory, but a well-built list should have a clear advantage over a poorly-built one. That being said, making a well-built list (not necessarily hyper-optimized, but a good list) shouldn't be hard. If I build a good TAC list, and a grand tournament topping player builds his best TAC list, he should have an advantage over me. And if we switch lists? He should still be able smash me, because despite me having the better list now, he's a much more skilled player.

stratigo wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
So something I want to remind people is that we should be disagreeing with the statements made by the playtesters, not attacking them.

It's fine to disagree with people, but once we start slapping labels on them like "shills" we're not addressing their points, we're just acting in bad faith.

I personally buy the theory because GW has a track record in the past of balancing books internally, but rarely balancing them exterally. Obviously they did a lot of external balancing in 8th, but there is the chance that the devs feel that the factions were no longer balanced internally like they should be, leading to a rough pass to adjust things both for internal balance, and perhaps for the missions, but left external balance alone as the shifting meta from the changes to the game already threw that out of whack and they want more info before they adjust those points.

As such we could see some massive points shifts across the game as they push to keep internal balance the same but drastically rework things relative to each other.

Or we could be going back to a 3rd to 5th design philosophy where internal balance is the main focus to keep the faction "feeling" correct and external balance is largely ignored.

Honestly, I'm not really sure amd unless GW starts communicating more about why they make the changes they do, all we can do is make guesses at what they're doing and why.

This doesn't make sense in the context of GW making so many bad units much much worse. I mean, unless we're thinking GW just hates aspect warriors and wants no one to use them in an eldar army.

GW flatly, didn't balance very much in the update. They cut corners and it shows.

Balancing units relative to each other and pointing them based on lore justifications (such as a 3+ armour save being rare for Craftworlds so it needs to be expensive) is something GW has done for years. Points traditionally have been more about trying to make armies feel a certain way over making them balanced against each other.

As I said earlier in the thread, I don't hate this balance approach for inner codex balancing, but when it comes to external balance then we need a fair bit of rules to fill the gap or GW ia going to have to make another shift upwarss that allows these units to be better relatve to each other while fitting into their roles inside of their own codex.

Tycho wrote:

When did this ingraining start though? I would have though 'playing the game' should be the most important factor in playing the game, perhaps that's old fashioned of me.

I don't know Auticus, so I'm not necessarily saying this does, or does not apply to him, but I've seen this same sentiment in players who would actually go to tournaments, but can't deal with losing, and also feel like they should be able to casually throw together "whatever" into a list and show up and have the same chance as someone who really thought through the list and practiced with it, fine tuned it, etc etc.

The excuse becomes "it's all about list hammer" so there's no point in trying. IDK - it's weird. I haven't had time for tournaments this year, but when I did, I didn't expect to show up after my 5 or 6 practice games and have the same experience in that tournament as the person who played 50 practice games with their list. It's just a weird mindset. A lot of mental gymnastics involved imo.

You understand that these "practice games" aren't necessarily just for actually getting a grasp on playing the army, yeah?

They're about 'checking the math'. Seeing what they can further optimize.
Did Unit A do well? No? Then can we ditch it?
Repeat until everything 'clicks' with the minimal amount of moving parts.

The end goal is the most effective list with the most mitigation of outside factors such as dice rolls.

You understand that these "practice games" aren't necessarily just for actually getting a grasp on playing the army, yeah?

They're about 'checking the math'. Seeing what they can further optimize.
Did Unit A do well? No? Then can we ditch it?
Repeat until everything 'clicks' with the minimal amount of moving parts.

The end goal is the most effective list with the most mitigation of outside factors such as dice rolls.

Um ... yes? I feel like I pretty much stated their importance? lol Sort of what I meant when I said "Refining the list" ...

 vipoid wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 Galas wrote:
Ones doesnt need a game degree design to see that this CA points are half done.

Using a formula to reach a standarized point is just the first point of a good point system. After that you need to adjust it individually, or you end with the ton of problems we have now like many weapon options costing all the same with ones being clearly worse or better than others.

GW adjusted individually some point costs, and thats good, but it was in a minimal fraction of the total weapon and unit options of the game.

I mean, the problem is that if they did it via algorithm, they did it via a really weird, gakky algorithm.

If a weapon choice is balanced at 1pt, if you want to create "rounder" point values the sensible thing to do is round it to 0, not round it to fething 5 across the board. Who cares if sisters get 0pt hand flamers on their sergeants, that makes absolute sense, you go down to have a 6" range on a unit that generally has a 12" preferred engagement range. Absolutely give them 0pt hand flamers.

And if you want to have everything go up in points....have...everything go up in points? Don't give a 20% price hike for some factions and a 0% price hike to fething Custodes, the army that is singularly most buffed by every single rule of 9th ed?

Yeah, I keep hearing that an algorithm was used but I've yet to see any evidence of that. There are far too many instances of similar units or pieces of wargear getting drastically different point changes for no discernible reason. Even the whole 'round to the nearest 5' thing only appears to have been applied to some options.

If anything, it seems like GW returning to their time-tested method of pricing every unit by use of a dart-board.

Goonhammer talked about it when they talked about the points changes: https://www.goonhammer.com/the-9th-edition-munitorum-field-manual-points-review/

 JNAProductions wrote:
List-building can still be part of a balanced game anyway. It should NOT be the main determinant in victory, but a well-built list should have a clear advantage over a poorly-built one.

Agreed. I think something 40k has lost over the years with increase in unit/rule variety and decrease in restrictions is that you have much less of a target to aim for with a build/plan, so '!moar powah!' is really the only safe bet.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

stratigo wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
So something I want to remind people is that we should be disagreeing with the statements made by the playtesters, not attacking them.

It's fine to disagree with people, but once we start slapping labels on them like "shills" we're not addressing their points, we're just acting in bad faith.

I personally buy the theory because GW has a track record in the past of balancing books internally, but rarely balancing them exterally. Obviously they did a lot of external balancing in 8th, but there is the chance that the devs feel that the factions were no longer balanced internally like they should be, leading to a rough pass to adjust things both for internal balance, and perhaps for the missions, but left external balance alone as the shifting meta from the changes to the game already threw that out of whack and they want more info before they adjust those points.

As such we could see some massive points shifts across the game as they push to keep internal balance the same but drastically rework things relative to each other.

Or we could be going back to a 3rd to 5th design philosophy where internal balance is the main focus to keep the faction "feeling" correct and external balance is largely ignored.

Honestly, I'm not really sure amd unless GW starts communicating more about why they make the changes they do, all we can do is make guesses at what they're doing and why.

This doesn't make sense in the context of GW making so many bad units much much worse. I mean, unless we're thinking GW just hates aspect warriors and wants no one to use them in an eldar army.

GW flatly, didn't balance very much in the update. They cut corners and it shows.

Balancing units relative to each other and pointing them based on lore justifications (such as a 3+ armour save being rare for Craftworlds so it needs to be expensive) is something GW has done for years. Points traditionally have been more about trying to make armies feel a certain way over making them balanced against each other.

As I said earlier in the thread, I don't hate this balance approach for inner codex balancing, but when it comes to external balance then we need a fair bit of rules to fill the gap or GW ia going to have to make another shift upwarss that allows these units to be better relatve to each other while fitting into their roles inside of their own codex.

The problem is, that's just the single stupidest way to do things.

GW has no problem limiting units in certain circumstances: Taking a beastmaster in Drukhari lets you take a certain number of beasts units. Tau commanders are 0-1 per detachment. Genestaler cults characters are Unique one per detachment for some dumb reason.

There is almost no unit that you could justify having a dumb, stupid, artificially high cost with "but muh fluff" that you couldn't just as easily make not spammed by limiting them in a similar manner.

Grots: Up to 2 squads of grots per runtherd in your army.

Cultists: up to 3 squads of cultists per dark apostle in your army.

Servitors: Up to 1 squad of servitors per TECHMARINE in your army.

Blue and Brimstone Horrors: Cannot be taken in army lists, can only be fielded via the Split rule.

Guardians and all Dark Eldar Troops: I don't know, just don't fething nerf them I guess, why the feth are these units supposed to be artificially limited in a craftworld or drukari list, they're literally the fething troops of the army?

Conscripts: 1 squad per COMMISSAR in your army

Literally every unit that you could point at and go "oooh people will make spammy unfluffy lists with lots of them!!! clutch muh pearls!" you could better limit by actually limiting them than by arbitrarily throwing out the fact that points are supposed to be for balance and making them 100% always awful.

Limit commander type units like Hive Tyrants, Tank Commanders, and Tau Commanders that people spam by making them 0-1 per detachment.

Limit units that are "rare" in the fluff like Wraithknights, Aspect Warrior squads, space marine squads (/s but c'mon), Riptides etc by making them 0-1 per army.

Tycho wrote:

You understand that these "practice games" aren't necessarily just for actually getting a grasp on playing the army, yeah?

They're about 'checking the math'. Seeing what they can further optimize.
Did Unit A do well? No? Then can we ditch it?
Repeat until everything 'clicks' with the minimal amount of moving parts.

The end goal is the most effective list with the most mitigation of outside factors such as dice rolls.

Um ... yes? I feel like I pretty much stated their importance? lol Sort of what I meant when I said "Refining the list" ...

Tycho wrote: don't know Auticus, so I'm not necessarily saying this does, or does not apply to him, but I've seen this same sentiment in players who would actually go to tournaments, but can't deal with losing, and also feel like they should be able to casually throw together "whatever" into a list and show up and have the same chance as someone who really thought through the list and practiced with it, fine tuned it, etc etc.

The excuse becomes "it's all about list hammer" so there's no point in trying. IDK - it's weird. I haven't had time for tournaments this year, but when I did, I didn't expect to show up after my 5 or 6 practice games and have the same experience in that tournament as the person who played 50 practice games with their list. It's just a weird mindset. A lot of mental gymnastics involved imo.

You seemed more interested in painting the picture of listhammer being an excuse for players when they get outplayed. That's not the case.

"Practice" implies that you have been building up your skill level utilizing it. That's not what is happening there.
You might build up practice at listbuilding, but not really playing that specific list since you decide to go and keep changing the list.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 Galas wrote:
Ones doesnt need a game degree design to see that this CA points are half done.

Using a formula to reach a standarized point is just the first point of a good point system. After that you need to adjust it individually, or you end with the ton of problems we have now like many weapon options costing all the same with ones being clearly worse or better than others.

GW adjusted individually some point costs, and thats good, but it was in a minimal fraction of the total weapon and unit options of the game.

I mean, the problem is that if they did it via algorithm, they did it via a really weird, gakky algorithm.

If a weapon choice is balanced at 1pt, if you want to create "rounder" point values the sensible thing to do is round it to 0, not round it to fething 5 across the board. Who cares if sisters get 0pt hand flamers on their sergeants, that makes absolute sense, you go down to have a 6" range on a unit that generally has a 12" preferred engagement range. Absolutely give them 0pt hand flamers.

And if you want to have everything go up in points....have...everything go up in points? Don't give a 20% price hike for some factions and a 0% price hike to fething Custodes, the army that is singularly most buffed by every single rule of 9th ed?

Yeah, I keep hearing that an algorithm was used but I've yet to see any evidence of that. There are far too many instances of similar units or pieces of wargear getting drastically different point changes for no discernible reason. Even the whole 'round to the nearest 5' thing only appears to have been applied to some options.

If anything, it seems like GW returning to their time-tested method of pricing every unit by use of a dart-board.

Goonhammer talked about it when they talked about the points changes: https://www.goonhammer.com/the-9th-edition-munitorum-field-manual-points-review/

Interesting.

I suppose when I think of an algorithm, I don't generally think of nonsense like "If your army is a faction where hordes (Tyranids, GSC, Guard) are thematic, add 1ppm; If your army is a faction where hordes aren’t thematic, increase cost by 50%."

 Kanluwen wrote:
There are people who believe that the numbers are everything and that they should be rewarded for 'cracking the code' by number-crunching and running 'simulations' of how everything would work.

And then there are people who think that points are just something "WAAC tournament players" use even though they've been part of the basic structure of the game for over 20 years.

You seemed more interested in painting the picture of listhammer being an excuse for players when they get outplayed. That's not the case.

No. I said it's an excuse for a certain subset of players who seem to think people are "winning" by simply "doing some math" and calling it a day and now they can't lose. It's a reference to a very certain subset. NOT a blanket statement.

"Practice" implies that you have been building up your skill level utilizing it. That's not what is happening there.
You might build up practice at listbuilding, but not really playing that specific list since you decide to go and keep changing the list.

But you absolutely ARE building up skill level by practicing. That's how it works. lol To suggest otherwise is just bizarre imo. For example, one of the things that took me a lot of practice games to learn was proper order of operations for my TSons psychic powers. Knowing which power to use on which unit and when - that took a bunch of games. Particularly seeing the army against multiple opponents in multiple situations. I'm actually a really good example of this because I literally can't mathhammer so I HAVE to just see things in action. Seeing a unit underperform consistently and removing it comes from practice. I'm not sure what your point is? Are you suggesting that practicing is unfair and applying any lessons learned from practice games is somehow cheating the system? I mean, practice games are how any competitive player in any game system gets better. I literally don't understand your issue here?

And yeah, some players do use math but I also don't get the issue with that. "Game that involves numbers can be effectively played using math" .. who would have guessed it!? lol Honestly, those people are STILL playing practice games to make sure the math pans out and working through the numbers. It's no different than a sports team holding practices to get better vs a team who just shows up and plays. I'm sure I'm misunderstanding your complaint here, but it feels like you're one of those players who would expect a post-game interview with the new LVO Champ to go something like this:

"So how did you do it champ?"

"Well, you know, I busted out my graphing calculator, did some math, and called it a day like all good players do."

"No practice needed huh champ?"

"Nah. It's all in the numbers. Once you've done your math you're pretty much invincible."

Apologies if I'm not understanding you, but I've run into this kind of thought process so many times in recent years. If anyone expects to just build a random list, not practice, not fine tune, and then show up and have success against someone who DID ... that's a ridiculous expectation under any rule system, or any kind of competition what-so-ever.

EDIT:

To be clear because I really do think I'm legitimately misunderstanding the complaint - IF the complaint is, "Armies like Iron Hands can make a list that is almost impossible to beat", that I can get behind, but that's not the players "gaming the system". It's an unfortunate side-effect of poor rules writing and GW ostensibly not listening to its play testers.

I'm a fan of more restrictive force organization charts too, rather than taking the sledge hammer to efficient units like cultists to make them inefficient...but GW very much isn't. We know this because the whole PR campaign with 9th was "take the units you want! you shouldn't have to take troops! taxes are bad! just take a whole army of only tanks if that makes you happy!"

Now mind you, what they actually did is somewhat different from their PR. But their PR makes it very clear they don't like the model of "you have to take an internally balanced army."

 JNAProductions wrote:
Auticus, Imma echo the calls for you to actually SHOW the posts of people complaining it's "too balanced". You've repeated that claim multiple times, in various threads, and yet never showed it.

I have dug numerous quotes out of dakka and other forums multiple times over the course of posting here and in other places. And each time it is rebutted by "yeah but thats just a handful of people that doesn't count". So ... no. I'm not going to spend time digging through forums to find the equivalent of "balance is boring" again for you so the goalposts can get moved and be told it doesn't count because its just one or two people or whatever. You can have a looky lieu with the search function or dig through facebook or Bell of Lost Souls comments or Warseer comments as well as I can if you're really interested in studying the topic.