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The balance makes 40K=chess argument has been thrown out so many times.

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!"

Yeah, "Unit A is bad so to fix it, make "Unit B" worse is classic GW design and I hate it. I've always been a proponent of saying, "If codex A is fun to play but OP because it's turned up to 11 while everyone else is on 8 ... then let's get those other books up to 11 as well". Obviously this has limitations, and there will always be times where your only immediate choice is to make a unit slightly worse, but I hate the GW approach of "This unit is bad so let's drag other units DOWN to its level to fix it - once all the units around it are bad, the army will be more fun ..."

Martel732 wrote:
The balance makes 40K=chess argument has been thrown out so many times.

Exactly. It is a common counter argument to wanting balance. And yet people demand proof of one of the most common of arguments that you see. I don't understand but have stopped trying to understand long ago.

There are so many models in 40K and GW puts in so little effort that I think any kind of reasonable expectation is unrealistic. They've got enough people brainwashed that it doesn't matter what they publish now. GW thinks that grot = guardsmen. I think that's enough of an indictment to make any further investigation redundant.

Brainwashed? Rather harsh way of saying that people's expectations are being met. Not everyone plays this game to go win Nova or the ITC. And for less competitive players, especially narrative ones, the game works fine. It's not perfect, but the Crusade system helps quite a bit.

I think it's brainwashing. That's my opinion after watching the same gak unfold for 8 editions now. I find GW's philosophies and policies borderline abusive, so I guess maybe Stockholm Syndrome is more accurate. I just want an interesting matchup where in-game decisions matter. Starcraft is still doing that way better. It's still WAY too easy to make a dysfunctional 40K list because of trap choices and gotcha rules.

Martel732 wrote:
I think it's brainwashing. That's my opinion after watching the same gak unfold for 8 editions now. I find GW's philosophies and policies borderline abusive, so I guess maybe Stockholm Syndrome is more accurate.

I feel you're taking shots at people who don't agree with you.

The more competitive you, or your local meta is, the more game balance is important to you. The problem is that what that balance should look like often causes arguements.

The big difference between starcraft and GW is that GW sells individual miniatures and that creates incentives re: balance that don't exist in a format where relative power levels between units don't affect purchasing decisions because you can't purchase individual units. I.e. if zerglings suddenly become powerful in starcraft it doesn't result in millions of people going to buy download packs full of them to use in their games.

I think it is pretty undeniable that part of the reason tanks became more powerful this edition is that they wanted to sell more tank models, after an edition in which tank sales weren't great because they didn't do great on the tabletop. Same for the anti-horde changes.

When it comes down to it GW is a corporation that sells models and their priority is always going to be on selling models rather than creating a balanced game. Primaris are a good example of this. From a gameplay balance perspective it would have been smarter to just redo the marine line with new sculpts while updating their rules, not to come out with a whole new line of marines. But that wouldn't force everyone to rebuy their whole space marine armies, because you'd still be able to use your old models. So we got Primaris.

I don't care if people agree with me, really. I look at how GW functions and I have to chalk up a lot of customer loyalty to brainwashing or Stockholm Syndrome.

I'm not naming names. I'm talking in generalities. The BA facebook group is even worse than Dakka in many ways.

Yes, I took a lot of gak here because I refused to comprehend just how mind-numbingly broken tripointing was for much of 8th. That's on me. After implementing that fethery, that still doesn't raise my opinion of GW. It makes it worse, actually.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

yukishiro1 wrote:
The big difference between starcraft and GW is that GW sells individual miniatures and that creates incentives re: balance that don't exist in a format where relative power levels between units don't affect purchasing decisions because you can't purchase individual units. I.e. if zerglings suddenly become powerful in starcraft it doesn't result in millions of people going to buy download packs full of them to use in their games.

I think it is pretty undeniable that part of the reason tanks became more powerful this edition is that they wanted to sell more tank models, after an edition in which tank sales weren't great because they didn't do great on the tabletop. Same for the anti-horde changes.

When it comes down to it GW is a corporation that sells models and their priority is always going to be on selling models rather than creating a balanced game. Primaris are a good example of this. From a gameplay balance perspective it would have been smarter to just redo the marine line with new sculpts while updating their rules, not to come out with a whole new line of marines. But that wouldn't force everyone to rebuy their whole space marine armies, because you'd still be able to use your old models. So we got Primaris.

They could have done that in 4th, 5th, 6th or 7th. GW CONSTANTLY releases new kits with TERRIBLE rules. They CONSTANTLY overpower ancient kits. I can't even attribute their behavior to power creep. Because they fail at power creep.

Yeah, many times the broken stuff is something that you have to scrap build because there isn't even a model for it.

Balance and marketing havn't met for a while in GW.

I'm not suggesting they usually go out to deliberately overpower models to sell them. Just that they don't have any real incentive to create a stable, balanced game where all choices are valuable. They make more money from having an unbalanced game that causes people to chase the meta. And although I agree that I'm not sure GW is competent enough to make specific balance decisions in order to drive sales, I have not the slightest doubt they are smart enough to realize that meta-chasing is good for their bottom line generally.

I think they would make FAR more money if every unit were viable within a 20% ish margin of error. I don't think meta chasing is as good as people think.

I think the problem for me is that with balance as awful as it is, its hard living in a competitive region in the usa where if you want to do for fun casual narrative campaigns, you will struggle.

My last casual narrative for fun game I got paired up with a guy's ITC all knight list that tabled me in two turns.

So I feel for me to enjoy 40k i have to constantly buy a new army every year to chase the meta because our guys idea of "for fun" is often their ITC tournament list.

And because of that I can't really get into it anymore. Which is a shame because I have a ton of gw models I'd love to use again.

I'm moving to Boston next year, and I'm probably ditching 80% of my BA, mostly oldbois. I don't even know when I'll be able to try 9th outside of TT simulator.

The big difference between starcraft and GW

Is that it's a totally unfair and completely inappropriate comparison. With something like a video game that exists online, you have no idea the vast amounts of data being collected constantly and in real time. No. Idea.

At one point there was actual a piece of malicious code that would have given a PS4 the ability to literally map your house to figure out how big it was, and cross reference that against your IP to determine your zip code so that the company (I want to say it was Epic but I may be misremembering) who installed it could figure out roughly how much money you probably had ...

And that's just the TIP of the iceberg. That particular thing never made it into the wild as far as I know, but the point is, they are CONSTANTLY collecting data that goes right to people trained to do nothing but analyze that data and work through what it means and what to do about it. The process is so far removed from anything GW (or any miniature wargaming company for that matter) even CAN do, that on any level it's a false comparison IMO.

9th edition is probably the first one which is going to be able to collect any meaningful data.

In 8th there was a try to do that, but due to the fragmentation of formats, the data was useless. ITC data was not accepted by ETC or CA players, CA data was not accepted by ETC and ITC players and ETC data was not accepeted by CA and ITC players.

Even a nice effort like 40stats was made into something useless due to that.

Tycho wrote:

The big difference between starcraft and GW

Is that it's a totally unfair and completely inappropriate comparison. With something like a video game that exists online, you have no idea the vast amounts of data being collected constantly and in real time. No. Idea.

At one point there was actual a piece of malicious code that would have given a PS4 the ability to literally map your house to figure out how big it was, and cross reference that against your IP to determine your zip code so that the company (I want to say it was Epic but I may be misremembering) who installed it could figure out roughly how much money you probably had ...

And that's just the TIP of the iceberg. That particular thing never made it into the wild as far as I know, but the point is, they are CONSTANTLY collecting data that goes right to people trained to do nothing but analyze that data and work through what it means and what to do about it. The process is so far removed from anything GW (or any miniature wargaming company for that matter) even CAN do, that on any level it's a false comparison IMO.

Except that it falsifies the balance = chess hypothesis. No one is asking GW to be as effective as Blizzard.

Spoletta wrote:
9th edition is probably the first one which is going to be able to collect any meaningful data.

In 8th there was a try to do that, but due to the fragmentation of formats, the data was useless. ITC data was not accepted by ETC or CA players, CA data was not accepted by ETC and ITC players and ETC data was not accepeted by CA and ITC players.

Even a nice effort like 40stats was made into something useless due to that.

If GW can nail their app and make something that competes with BCP while tracking mission objectives in games they could very easily gain a lot of information on how the game is being played, which could lead to them drilling down into the "why" it's being played that way, resulting in a better balanced game.

That requires them to really dial the app in and not screw it up though.

Except that it falsifies the balance = chess hypothesis. No one is asking GW to be as effective as Blizzard.

No. The only similarity is that they are both dealing with "games". That's literally it. The target goals for each company are both extremely different (some of the things gaming companies do to drive profit would really surprise you), and they have to support very different things. A company like blizzard is also working with a completely different tool set that in no way shape or form will EVER be available to a company like a GW. They are just so different. I worked in video games for a very long time.

It seems like a valid comparison. Trust me. It isn't.

Perfect balance does not need to be achievable, you just have to eliminate the serious outliers to allow a game to thrive with multiple factions competing. There should never be an auto take unit balance wise.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
9th edition is probably the first one which is going to be able to collect any meaningful data.

In 8th there was a try to do that, but due to the fragmentation of formats, the data was useless. ITC data was not accepted by ETC or CA players, CA data was not accepted by ETC and ITC players and ETC data was not accepeted by CA and ITC players.

Even a nice effort like 40stats was made into something useless due to that.

If GW can nail their app and make something that competes with BCP while tracking mission objectives in games they could very easily gain a lot of information on how the game is being played, which could lead to them drilling down into the "why" it's being played that way, resulting in a better balanced game.

That requires them to really dial the app in and not screw it up though.

Heh. That ship already sailed.

But 'why' isn't really a question that an app like that can reach with data collection. Is it points, is it price, is it aesthetics, is it meta, is it something else? The only way to answer that outside of surveys (which have their own issue) is toggle each of those variables, and that isn't practical, or even achievable at all in several cases.

Voss wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
9th edition is probably the first one which is going to be able to collect any meaningful data.

In 8th there was a try to do that, but due to the fragmentation of formats, the data was useless. ITC data was not accepted by ETC or CA players, CA data was not accepted by ETC and ITC players and ETC data was not accepeted by CA and ITC players.

Even a nice effort like 40stats was made into something useless due to that.

If GW can nail their app and make something that competes with BCP while tracking mission objectives in games they could very easily gain a lot of information on how the game is being played, which could lead to them drilling down into the "why" it's being played that way, resulting in a better balanced game.

That requires them to really dial the app in and not screw it up though.

Heh. That ship already sailed.

But 'why' isn't really a question that an app like that can reach with data collection. Is it points, is it price, is it aesthetics, is it meta, is it something else? The only way to answer that outside of surveys (which have their own issue) is toggle each of those variables, and that isn't practical, or even achievable at all in several cases.

Nah, that ship can still pull into port if they do a better job than BCP, which has known issues all its own. Like the regular crashing issues when large events are going on.

 auticus wrote:
I think the problem for me is that with balance as awful as it is, its hard living in a competitive region in the usa where if you want to do for fun casual narrative campaigns, you will struggle.

My last casual narrative for fun game I got paired up with a guy's ITC all knight list that tabled me in two turns.

So I feel for me to enjoy 40k i have to constantly buy a new army every year to chase the meta because our guys idea of "for fun" is often their ITC tournament list.

And because of that I can't really get into it anymore. Which is a shame because I have a ton of gw models I'd love to use again.

What if GW thinks exacly that way. What if in other to enjoy table top gaming produced by GW, you are expected to buy multiple factions of all their game. So while not all armies or even games maybe fun at all times, you can expect that maybe something you picked is good. Maybe your W40k army is bad, but your AoS one is good, or maybe both are bad, but your necromunda gand is real fun to play.
What if for GW there are no w40k or AoS players, but just GW product users, and if something doesn't work users are expected to change to another product of the same company.

I totally agree... that is the transparent marketing of what they are doing. They are making you want to buy all of their models to stay viable. And it works great, but at some point you have to either keep on buying or get off of the merry go round.

 bullyboy wrote:
Perfect balance does not need to be achievable, you just have to eliminate the serious outliers to allow a game to thrive with multiple factions competing. There should never be an auto take unit balance wise.

Just as well, there should be no unit where you kinda laugh at the profile and wonder what GW was thinking when they made it.

Units aren't that bad, at least when an army doesn't run on a skeleton number of unit. The problems start when we get something like necron in 8th, where you can't just make an army which is resonable. Also armies that get hard countered by the faction played by majority of players, is a thing that should not happen. Just as well as there shouldn't be armies that hard counters the faction that makes up the majority of player. And army that destroys marines, but is not that good versus lets say GSC is not a good thing. And I think that it isn't just when you play just against 2-3 people, as well as you play in stores with 100+ players.

 auticus wrote:
I totally agree... that is the transparent marketing of what they are doing. They are making you want to buy all of their models to stay viable. And it works great, but at some point you have to either keep on buying or get off of the merry go round.

I mean, yes. GW does produce games where there is no manufactured discontent like this. GW even produces a game you can play with your current WH40k army with no manufactured discontent.

People dont like it, because the feeling of getting your new stuff and finally feeling like you can win games again is fun. For people to have that fun, other people need to be in the incubationary period where their stuff is aging, and they're waiting, and they don't get the special goodies.

There is absolutely positively 0 reason why GW could not fix problems like:

1) Some factions have subfaction traits that apply only to their infantry. Other factions have subfaction traits that apply to all their models, vehicles/monsters/flyers included.

2) Some factions get extra-special bonus army wide rules for taking your whole army from a single faction. Others do not.

3) Some factions have 1 relic, 1 stratagem, and 1 warlord trait that comes along with their subfaction. Others have 6, 6, and 6.

They could, if they so desired, decide to make changes like that all at once, and put out a book that gives a whole bunch of gak to everyone's subfactions. Or, they could update subfaction traits that are aged and gakky like the Eldar, Admech and CSM ones all at once. They could put out a FAQ stating that all units in all armies get access to subfaction traits unless they specifically do not have the <subfaction> keyword.

They do not do that because it gives them more low-hanging fruit to fix when they release a codex, so it feels more like you get a marked improvement when you go out and buy that new codex for 40$.

When a new codex doesn't change enough, people complain about it, call it lazy, and call it a gakky codex. New codexes need to be major, substantive overhauls, and the ones that people love the most are the ones that take armies from zeroes to heroes.

In order to get that, you need to have armies that are zeroes, and you have to let these little problems fester without fixing them even when you could easily do simple things to keep stuff even. I guarantee you, I bet you a million dollars to one single donut, that an early codex in 9th ed is going to be Codex Chaos Space Marines, and it's going to have something to account for the imbalance between SM getting doctrines and CSM not, and SM getting vehicles with traits and CSM not, and SM getting redesigned, good chapter tactics and CSM not. GW did not fix these simple low-hanging fruit changes with the CSM rules releases in PA and with Shadowspear because to do so would reduce the reason CSM players would have to buy the 9th ed codex.

the_scotsman wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

 auticus wrote:
So we have more actual tangible proof that they dont use points to balance the game.

But people will dryhump that idea into oblivion that the points bring balance so everything is fine just git gud.

And continue sending GW forklifts loaded down with crates of cash. To continue buying in.

I'm perfectly fine with blaming power level wanknards that GW made all wargear cost the same. Thank you for ruining pts power level fanboys, can't let us have nice things, balance is an illusion so there is no reason to put any effort into making a mostly balanced system.

this is a wild fun take. People who play power level ruined the points system? wut?

You mean all those top-level tournament players that they touted as the people testing and fine-tuning the balance of the game, they were secretly "power level wanknards" the whole time? Those ITC guys and the Tabletop Titans guys, the ones playing tournaments, they don't like playing points?

It was made for fun, kind of like the people saying that anyone who wants a modicum of balance should just give up and move to a different game. Obviously the fault lies at whoever decided on the pts and I don't think playtesters decided on the pts or were heavily involved in what the pts were going to be, I have yet to hear someone defend the pts beyond "GW are gak at pts, this was as good/bad as I expected". The members of the Splintermind Podcast think that competitive players will really enjoy Crusade and they seem to have been involved further back than the couple of Youtube squads that said they had no influence on this first round of pts, they also kept mentioning power level as a legitimate way to play the game, the stuff people say on the internet when they don't think anyone is listening... They also kept saying that anyone with criticism of the new edition was narcissistic, I guess they were too high on the smell of their own farts to realise who the narcissists were. They did say the classics never die, I guess weird units like Guardians, Kabalites and Dire Avengers are not classics. They had no critisism of pts and thought the game was going to be balanced, I can't help but hate these people immensely. They also attack the concept of weapon options being overcosted, they seem like just the people GW has needed to test their game for them. You know what, I went into it thinking it was mostly a joke and it was just GW using ye olde dartboard method, but maybe it's the freaking knife ears from this stupid podcast.

@Auticus I tried searching azyr comp on Google after failing to get any hits on FB and the first thread I find is that it is unbalanced and the designers don't listen to criticism when they said a unit was OP. So... The opposite of finding that the system is too balanced.

Next comment thread about it is about how some types of units in the system are underpowered. Then someone says that the system is basically all about finding underpriced units and making the most of them like in 8th (don't know whether the poster was referring to 40k or WHFB).

Then a thread about the rules being hard to parse. Humans are primates though and I don't think it's makes sense to hold this thread against azyr comp.

Finally, one guy who really liked the system and the balance it provided to his games and the fact it allowed his group to play tournaments. I didn't find any criticism about the game being too balanced though, maybe you could post it in this thread?

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Spoiler:

Voss wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
9th edition is probably the first one which is going to be able to collect any meaningful data.

In 8th there was a try to do that, but due to the fragmentation of formats, the data was useless. ITC data was not accepted by ETC or CA players, CA data was not accepted by ETC and ITC players and ETC data was not accepeted by CA and ITC players.

Even a nice effort like 40stats was made into something useless due to that.

If GW can nail their app and make something that competes with BCP while tracking mission objectives in games they could very easily gain a lot of information on how the game is being played, which could lead to them drilling down into the "why" it's being played that way, resulting in a better balanced game.

That requires them to really dial the app in and not screw it up though.

Heh. That ship already sailed.

But 'why' isn't really a question that an app like that can reach with data collection. Is it points, is it price, is it aesthetics, is it meta, is it something else? The only way to answer that outside of surveys (which have their own issue) is toggle each of those variables, and that isn't practical, or even achievable at all in several cases.

Nah, that ship can still pull into port if they do a better job than BCP, which has known issues all its own. Like the regular crashing issues when large events are going on.

Paper solves that problem. If that's your only concern, don't use the 40k app or whatever BCP is.

 vict0988 wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

 auticus wrote:
So we have more actual tangible proof that they dont use points to balance the game.

But people will dryhump that idea into oblivion that the points bring balance so everything is fine just git gud.

And continue sending GW forklifts loaded down with crates of cash. To continue buying in.

I'm perfectly fine with blaming power level wanknards that GW made all wargear cost the same. Thank you for ruining pts power level fanboys, can't let us have nice things, balance is an illusion so there is no reason to put any effort into making a mostly balanced system.

this is a wild fun take. People who play power level ruined the points system? wut?

You mean all those top-level tournament players that they touted as the people testing and fine-tuning the balance of the game, they were secretly "power level wanknards" the whole time? Those ITC guys and the Tabletop Titans guys, the ones playing tournaments, they don't like playing points?

It was made for fun, kind of like the people saying that anyone who wants a modicum of balance should just give up and move to a different game. Obviously the fault lies at whoever decided on the pts and I don't think playtesters decided on the pts or were heavily involved in what the pts were going to be, I have yet to hear someone defend the pts beyond "GW are gak at pts, this was as good/bad as I expected". The members of the Splintermind Podcast think that competitive players will really enjoy Crusade and they seem to have been involved further back than the couple of Youtube squads that said they had no influence on this first round of pts, they also kept mentioning power level as a legitimate way to play the game, the stuff people say on the internet when they don't think anyone is listening... They also kept saying that anyone with criticism of the new edition was narcissistic, I guess they were too high on the smell of their own farts to realise who the narcissists were. They did say the classics never die, I guess weird units like Guardians, Kabalites and Dire Avengers are not classics. They had no critisism of pts and thought the game was going to be balanced, I can't help but hate these people immensely. They also attack the concept of weapon options being overcosted, they seem like just the people GW has needed to test their game for them. You know what, I went into it thinking it was mostly a joke and it was just GW using ye olde dartboard method, but maybe it's the freaking knife ears from this stupid podcast.

@Auticus I tried searching azyr comp on Google after failing to get any hits on FB and the first thread I find is that it is unbalanced and the designers don't listen to criticism when they said a unit was OP. So... The opposite of finding that the system is too balanced.

Next comment thread about it is about how some types of units in the system are underpowered. Then someone says that the system is basically all about finding underpriced units and making the most of them like in 8th (don't know whether the poster was referring to 40k or WHFB).

Then a thread about the rules being hard to parse. Humans are primates though and I don't think it's makes sense to hold this thread against azyr comp.

Finally, one guy who really liked the system and the balance it provided to his games and the fact it allowed his group to play tournaments. I didn't find any criticism about the game being too balanced though, maybe you could post it in this thread?

Reading this post gave me big "guy comes up to me at the bus stop and explains in extreme detail how a minor local government clerk I've never heard of has bugged his house and watches his every move" energy.

"It's all Gary Schlabotnik, you see, HE'S the one behind this, I TOL EM but they wouldn't listen to me I go shout in the lobby of the RMV every tuesday I do but what do they do? eh? They throws me out every time, filthyfrigginknifeears they do!"