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I raise two points to keep in mind about GW fluff:

-The old stuff isn't better. Seriously, go back and read it. There are good parts and bad parts just like today. But the bad parts often aren't as memorable (thankfully).

-The standard is not very high. Movies, books, comics, games, shows, the works are riddled with poorly written elements. Partly because there is more to appeal than quality, and partly because writing well is much harder than people often make it out to be.

-Be glad we aren't Warcraft

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
The standard is not very high. Partly because there is more to appeal than quality, and partly because writing well is much harder than people often make it out to be.

This is so incredibly true. Replace "writing" with just about any facet of 40k that people complain about, replace "appeal" with "running a successful games business", and you will be well on your way to seeing the full picture.

Meh. The points always shift all over the place and it will never be "perfectly balanced". Kinda how its always been right? I tend not to run out and buy a bunch whatever the current most points efficient thing is, and just have a wide variety of ok stuff, with not too many duplicates of one thing. I'll have a few units in the army that are the current hotness and then some suboptimal choices mixed in cus thats what I have available and I like how it fits in the army. Typically my usual opponents are in the same boat, so it mostly works out. I guess I just don't feel particularly strongly about the new changes. I collect several armies and it will be fun to shift them around and see what works well and doesn't.

 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.

I mean, the dart board does fit the requirement of "algorithm" if we interpret the dart board as a random number generator.

Their algorithm was probably:
1) Take X value (this is current points cost)
2) Select Y value from RNG seed which produces a range of negative and positive numbers such that -1 < Y <= 1.
3) X = X * (1 + Y)
4) Round X to nearest integer.

 auticus wrote:
Sure. Next time someone complains that too much balance is like chess and go play chess instead, I'll be sure to tag you all in it and scream it out for you.

You won't find the answer to azyr comp in dakka because there isn't much about azyr comp in dakka. I said that SPECIFICALLY pertaining to azyr comp and the complaints about too balanced that was the AZYR COMP facebook group that was active in 2015-2016, when fan comp was a thing before it was tanked by official points.

Its been a long long time but bell of lost souls had an article about azyr comp in august of 2015 that had a long comment list as well that may also contain some negative commentary about balance as well, though I can't confirm that since I have nto seen that thread in 5 years. I think warseer had something on it too but i was banned from warseer for promoting age of sigmar (that was considered trolling) so I don't know what the commentary there was like since I was not the one promoting azyr on warseer, that was one of our other tsters.

I did find an article on BoLS talking about your release and unfortunately all 115 of those comments are apparently behind a paid wall or some garbage like that. HOWEVER, I did find this at minimum:
http://www.lounge.belloflostsouls.net/showthread.php?57174-Age-of-Sigmar-Azyr-Composition-Rules-1-0b
Out of all 28 pages, I only found a total of four unique people that didn't like balance like you claim, with one person admitting they just wanted to argue least use your point values for the official rules, and the other one saying they preferred completely off kilter 1000 vs 4000 points anyway just because. Whether or not you got that many unique people using emails to give you criticisms or whatever I can't say. However what you're talking about is really just a terrible minority based on this thread alone, with people mostly trying to ask questions to get the most out of your rule set, trying to understand how you went about it, and offering actual balance suggestions too. Now I'm not big on the Facebook but I'm sure I can probably dig up something for the group you made mention of. Seeing as there's less likely to be trolls on Facebook (ya know, using your own social media profile and all that unless you're a Chad that gakposts on their main), you'd think that more trolls would've been present on the BoLS thread. However, only one of those four unique posters had actively been called a troll.

So honestly I think you're just remembering all the negative. Kinda like that phenomenon where you only remember how many red lights you dealt with on a stressful day compared to the green ones.


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SemperMortis wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
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.

well shoot, I just moved from that area to the other side of the country

My girlfriend likes Blood Angels for some stupid reason (probably because when i explained Marines i explicitly said they were my least favorite Chapter besides Space Wolves, Lamenters, and Imperial Fists). If you live in CA I'll gladly take them off your hands.

rooster92 wrote:
Meh. The points always shift all over the place and it will never be "perfectly balanced". Kinda how its always been right? I tend not to run out and buy a bunch whatever the current most points efficient thing is, and just have a wide variety of ok stuff, with not too many duplicates of one thing. I'll have a few units in the army that are the current hotness and then some suboptimal choices mixed in cus thats what I have available and I like how it fits in the army. Typically my usual opponents are in the same boat, so it mostly works out. I guess I just don't feel particularly strongly about the new changes. I collect several armies and it will be fun to shift them around and see what works well and doesn't.

For a lot of things, that's fine. The GK army I just finished building basically drops one model with the points changes and is otherwise largely intact. For some things however, it just doesn't work, stuff like Grots being made 5pts makes them simply fundamentally unfit for purpose for example, while DE are just kinda screwed as a whole, and for people without multiple builds/armies, that gets painful, especially when it happens to stuff that already wasn't an issue or was underperforming to begin with.

Okay, you were right Auticus, I initially recoiled at the idea that the more balanced a system was the more people will complain about it being too balanced, but that makes perfect sense now that I think about it. 95% of people want no trap choices, no auto-inclusions, no 4000 vs 2000 pts. But when your system is well balanced it's more likely to become popular so the 5% will rise from being 0 people to being 4 people or maybe even 200 people. I also just remembered reading someone that said what Slayer mentioned with massively imbalanced armies being neat in 40k.

Could you not accept that at least some people would like near-perfect balance? Given the people that complaints about balance issues in azyr comp seem to outweigh the ones that complain about too much balance outside of your deleted FB group would you claim that those people are asking for changes in bad faith because they think the system is balanced already but want buffs for their own balanced army to make it too strong or nerfs to their opponent's army to make it underpowered? I fully accept that all these people were wrong and none of them had done their math as diligently as your team, I'm just talking about their intentions and goals here.

If you accept that there are some that want great balance can you also accept that PL serves all the people that want great imbalance? It has poor balance within options in datasheets, poor internal faction balance, bad external balance between factions, it's basically an imbalance fiesta. Would it not make greater sense to have pts get as close to every choice and wargear option being viable as possible and let the people that want narrative 1000v4000 battles do their own thing and let the ones that want to exploit an easily exploitable system play PL? Why should people that want a good pts system care about these two groups of people? Why should they have an effect on pts? Are you claiming that the ones that want a balanced system don't know what they want?

Would you not also agree that the people that say that army composition goes away in a balanced system are wrong? After all, it might be Bloodthirsters are good, but only in a Khorne Detachment, or only in a monster mash list and they might only be good when used in specific ways within those lists, Bloodthirsters could still be niche viable without just being "50% overcosted in every scenario" bad.

auticus's argument was never that SOME people would have a problem with perfect balance, he's made it quite clear that he thinks the overall reception would be negative to it, because "its not what gamers actually want". I don't think anyone disagreed that you'll find the odd scrub who just wants to leverage the current top meta gak for ez wins.

I'd argue that PL as an alternative points system serves people who just want quick pick up games, and narrative players.

It serves the former because they just need to grab stuff out of their carrying case without thinking too much about the small points costs, and it serves the narrative player as their major concern is telling a story with the units they bring, rather than trying to optimize their lists.

It's a tool for those who don't need the granular crunch (or just want something a bit more soft to chew on), but I wouldn't call it for people who want imbalance. And if you're the sort of person who'd go out of their way to abuse PL, then you probably aren't the kind of player who should be playing PL.

That said, at the end of the day I'd love to see this game become more balanced. We don't need to reach the point where every unit is viable for every build, but at least tailoring units to be better in some builds so they have a place their viable would be nice. Make the things we want to take more meaningful to take. Feel free to tinker with the army, evolve it as the story goes on even, but definitely less of what we've gotten in the past for sure.

On a different note, thinking of the studio, I've hit up Warhammer TV about getting Stu Black on to do a show as a sort of dev commentary on the way devs approached updating 8th to 9th to see if we can get them to talk about their design process so maybe we can peek behind the curtain: https://www.facebook.com/WarhammerOfficial/posts/1146412369087073

text removed.

reds8n

There more I think about it the mroe w40k seems to be like sports. Maybe in dark days of 1st edition, it was like school yard sports. there is no meta, rules are a skelton thing and more resembled a free for all. Decades pass and now w40k is more like professional sports. There are metas, local and global. lists are figured about by a hive mind of what ever thousands of people play w40k .

And yeah some people may want to ask for playing the game like it was in the old days, where my grandpas team consisted of 17 mine factory workers that played in our league after work, but the reality is that the game right now is full of armies that are like Bayern or Real, and few people want to be ragged dolled by others with optimised armies. Specialy when the GW armies for w40k cost as much as they do.


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 Nitro Zeus wrote:
auticus's argument was never that SOME people would have a problem with perfect balance, he's made it quite clear that he thinks the overall reception would be negative to it, because "its not what gamers actually want". I don't think anyone disagreed that you'll find the odd scrub who just wants to leverage the current top meta gak for ez wins.

I heard an interesting argument regarding games balance and what players want, and what they are willing to do. Although not related to table tops, but Warcraft. The argument was that given free reign player to achive balance are willing to go, so far that they are accepting to make the expiriance a total unfun grind, just to be optimised.

Each time I hear about a horror w40k army story, and others say it would never happen. I start thinking about guys from my class who are being paid by their brother to grind pvp stuff 24/7 on changing shifts. And they have been doing it since march.


Balance made by players always end strange. All those american and UK playtesters go on how 9th is going to be MSU land, as if this was something new or better. I didn't get it at all, till someone explained to me that ITC and similar rule sets made running MSU not valid in 8th. So while I got to enjoy an 8th ed of 5 and 10 strong units being spamed, those playetesters didn't. And they don't seem to notice that, even when my and their levels of understanding the game are hard to compare.

Karol wrote:
I heard an interesting argument regarding games balance and what players want, and what they are willing to do. Although not related to table tops, but Warcraft. The argument was that given free reign player to achive balance are willing to go, so far that they are accepting to make the expiriance a total unfun grind, just to be optimised.

Each time I hear about a horror w40k army story, and others say it would never happen. I start thinking about guys from my class who are being paid by their brother to grind pvp stuff 24/7 on changing shifts. And they have been doing it since march.

The hunt for High Warlord is a harsh mistress.

 Nitro Zeus wrote:
auticus's argument was never that SOME people would have a problem with perfect balance, he's made it quite clear that he thinks the overall reception would be negative to it, because "its not what gamers actually want". I don't think anyone disagreed that you'll find the odd scrub who just wants to leverage the current top meta gak for ez wins.

Yeah no. There have been many polls done on this topic. Its not the odd scrub that doesn't like balance. Its about 25% of people that consider balance to be the bottom of what they care about and will tell you that if you want balance to go play chess. Thats still a significant portion of players.

In the gw world the polls usually break into about the following:

25% - really care about balance and want to see balance as top priority
50% - balance is somewhat a concern but not overly concerned and will keep playing in bad balance because they value other things more
25% - dont care about balance at all or feel that if you want balance to go play chess

If you put the same poll in other games you get a lot different results.

Example in the infinity world where this poll was asked you get about 80% of the people put balance as a top priority. In Kings of War you get a similar number. In Conquest it was 90%. Its only when you get into GW games that that number starts to significantly plummet.

Over balance being bad was the #1 complaint levied against Azyr. It was the most common message we received on the facebook or in the azyr email. Because it made listbuilding irrelevant to them. Thats all I said. How many messages said that? I'd say about 100 out of 1000, so about 10% of what we got was negative commentary on over balance and how we killed their game because they made it so their listbuilding didn't matter anymore.

10% is pretty significant. And 25% answering polls along the line about balance is the least of their concerns - go play chess - is also pretty significant.

I do also realize and am happy that there are about 25% of the gw fanverse that want better balance and will argue for it. Its just that they are usually in the minority and are screaming into the wind, and at the end of the day most everyone regardless of what they want will continue to ship the forklift carrying the crate of cash to GW's door anyway no matter what they deliver. Which is a major part of the problem to me.


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Would you not also agree that the people that say that army composition goes away in a balanced system are wrong?

I don't think they are wrong. The more balanced a system, the more viable more choices become, which means list building matters less for the overall outcome. Thats what they were complaining about specifically as it came to azyr comp.

The more viable you make listbuilding, the less viable you are making builds, so that the listbuilding begins to matter more. That can be seen as "boring" because you can't fiddle with micron levels of power to get different power levels when most things are comparable in power, so that its easy to throw together Build A and Build B together and they are comparable. I feel that is superior game design. Others see that as "boring".

GW games are I feel about 75% listbuilding. I've watched for many many many years high placing tournament players doing really bad when they aren't fielding OP filth. I was one of those tournament players. I used to say git gud all the time about 15 years ago.

And then I thought I was good no matter what army I was fielding and saw how wrong I was.

Now whether all of those tournament players want OP listbuilding so that they can continue to do well I cannot say since realistically anyone can copy the netlist to at least make listbuilding negligible vs their opponent (thats what we do, we chase the meta to make listbuilding negligible so we aren't beaten because the math was so bad and listbuilding did all the work).

But I will say from being a game designer myself and from doing a tabletop point system for a gw game that it was a heavy complaint about too much balance is bad and I have sat in several design meetings for other systems I have been a part of where this very thing is discussed. It is a topic of debate at conferences.

So to be hand waived and pooh pooh'd even though the numbers clearly have spoken for themselves and I have had my own code altered by marketing because it was "too balanced and will cost sales" for someone in a dakka forum to tell me what people really want is a lot of balance even after they sent GW their next child in payment for the next edition of another badly balanced 40k is a bit irritating.

Can I get a source for, uh, all of that? Hell, any of that?

This isn't an high competitive game, it is mostly a narrative one. Even the ones that play it competitively, are still mostly narrative players which will not switch from one FoTM to the next in the blink of an eye. Almost all of us are attached to our factions, to our fluff, to those models that we can't leave home and so on. This isn't starcraft, this isn't MtG. Most don't care about winning, they only care about winning with "My dudes" even if that means being at a disadvantage at times. As long as the balance of the game is good enough that I'm not at an overwhelming disadvantage to play what I like, then most don't care about perfect balance.

As such, the results of that poll make a lot of sense.

 Nitro Zeus wrote:
Can I get a source for, uh, all of that? Hell, any of that?

Look. I don't go around taking polls and keeping bookmarks of them. I dont' think anyone here has done that. There have been polls in this very 40k topic on dakka about balance. There was one i did in aos some years ago on dakka. There were a bunch done on facebook. There were polls done on bell of lost souls. There were several marketing polls I had to be a part of in games I was working in. They were all very similar.

If at the end of the day you choose to not believe me, thats fine. I'm not going to go do the work to dig out old polls because it doesn't really matter to me very much if you do or do not believe me. It will not change that most of you will continue to write blank checks to GW for your new 40k fix regardless of how badly balanced it is. If I thought it was going to change anything, I'd be more inclined.

And I say that because everytime I have been challenged to go show proof, and have, the goal posts get shifted around and I end up just wasting my time with "yeah but this" counters.

If you're really interested in seeing what your peers have to say about balance, put up a poll in 40k, put up the poll in AOS, put up the poll in middle earth, then put up the poll in infinity, kings of war, conquest, xwing, whatever games you want to cross sample. Simple three choices:

* i care about balance as one of my top priorities
* i somewhat care about balance but it is not one of my main concerns
* i don't really care about balance and if you want balance go play chess

Then let the poll sit for a while and watch where the numbers land.

Then realize why GW doesn't put effort into balance when its not something that their fanbase vocally says they don't care much about. I have a hunch their own private polls they put out in that annual thing they do say very similar things, except their designers don't communicate with the plebs ever so you'll never get that answer directly from their mouth.

Jesus christ

As such, the results of that poll make a lot of sense.

Thats great. I'd agree except:

1) in the USA its played primarily competitively at least in my entire region but if you ask people about balance they will hand waive it and say doesn't interest them that much. So in my experience with 40k which spans back into the 1990s, I have known disproportionately more competitive players than narrative players, and most of those competitive players either didn't care about balance, or actively disliked a lot of balance in their games.

2) i'm being told that i'm full of crap and that most people really want tight balance despite what many years of my own experience have told me, polls have shown, and my own experience as a game designer has shown.

Actions and peoples' words here are in conflict.

Ohhhhhhh. I finally understand this discussion. This is: "if only coach had put me in the fourth quarter we would have gone to states, and I heard that my friend Tony told me that there was a talent agent in the audience, and I could've thrown that long bomber to Johnny Stevens in the end zone and I would've definitely gone pro.

But coach - coach definitely told me this afterwards you see - coach said he thought the game was in the bag so he didn't put me in because I was too GOOD at football, so I got benched that game. I was just too reliable, had the old cannon you see right here, click click pow, cannon they used to call me.

So anyway, that's why I'm a plumber, you were probably thinking to yourself when you saw me 'look at that specimen why the heck is he not on a pro football team?' so that's the reason right there."

Yeah I'm not really sure why people are still taking him at his word.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
Yeah I'm not really sure why people are still taking him at his word.

I didn't realize this "azyr comp" or whatever it was was his 'thing'. That makes the whole thing make a whole lot more sense now.

"The problem with it people had was it was TOO balanced, a perfect wargame that we had crafted! The government came in their black vanlicopters and took away the final revision of the points - it was THAT BALANCED!"

Wow you guys are something else. (y)

Even if balance isn't the top priority for someone, doesn't mean they DON'T want better balance.

It just means they're more concerned with other factors.

I'd argue that PL as an alternative points system serves people who just want quick pick up games, and narrative players.

It serves the former because they just need to grab stuff out of their carrying case without thinking too much about the small points costs, and it serves the narrative player as their major concern is telling a story with the units they bring, rather than trying to optimize their lists.

It's a tool for those who don't need the granular crunch (or just want something a bit more soft to chew on), but I wouldn't call it for people who want imbalance. And if you're the sort of person who'd go out of their way to abuse PL, then you probably aren't the kind of player who should be playing PL.

That said, at the end of the day I'd love to see this game become more balanced. We don't need to reach the point where every unit is viable for every build, but at least tailoring units to be better in some builds so they have a place their viable would be nice. Make the things we want to take more meaningful to take. Feel free to tinker with the army, evolve it as the story goes on even, but definitely less of what we've gotten in the past for sure.

That sums it up perfect. Sometimes, my group shows up wit no particular lists drawn and no specific plans. We don't feel like dealing with points and just go PL and get to playing quickly. It's also great for introducing a new player who's never played a game like this before. Quick, easy, and you don't overwhelm them with too many things. It can get wonky as PL hasn't been adjusted and there are "skew" units like Plague marines that can end up on either side of the extremes (too powerful or not nearly powerful enough) depending on how they're taken, but honestly, PL has it's place imo. It's not well balanced, but it is quick and easy and sometimes that's all you need.

On a different note, thinking of the studio, I've hit up Warhammer TV about getting Stu Black on to do a show as a sort of dev commentary on the way devs approached updating 8th to 9th to see if we can get them to talk about their design process so maybe we can peek behind the curtain: https://www.facebook.com/WarhammerOfficial/posts/1146412369087073

Awesome idea! I fear though, that we can't handle the truth ...

Saying 40k is 75% about lists is a bit like saying 75% of poker is getting good cards.

Sure having the odds in your favour helps - but the implication is that you don't know what makes good players "good".

Realistically we see good players take lists that are off-meta and still go 5-1 at tournaments. They do that because they make good decisions and so get the odds in their favour despite a superficially weaker list.

I've yet to understand how achieving the mythical "perfect balance" would somehow destroy list building and army construction.

That sounds like faults in your methodology and approaches to design/balance rather than anything else.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Even if balance isn't the top priority for someone, doesn't mean they DON'T want better balance.

It just means they're more concerned with other factors.

I literally posted that on average 50% of the polls come out to people saying that balance is somewhat of a concern of theirs but not the most important factor to why they play. So there's no argument there from me on that topic.


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 Bosskelot wrote:
I've yet to understand how achieving the mythical "perfect balance" would somehow destroy list building and army construction.

That sounds like faults in your methodology and approaches to design/balance rather than anything else.

No one's mentioned anything about perfect balance, because perfect balance is not achievable.


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Tyel wrote:
Saying 40k is 75% about lists is a bit like saying 75% of poker is getting good cards.

Sure having the odds in your favour helps - but the implication is that you don't know what makes good players "good".

Realistically we see good players take lists that are off-meta and still go 5-1 at tournaments. They do that because they make good decisions and so get the odds in their favour despite a superficially weaker list.

I realize here on the internet that we worship tournament players that do well as if they were like the athletes that make the hall of fame. I get that.

And some of them really are that good yes. I've known a few myself that were really good. Most of us though don't come anywhere near that. However for most of us, non hall of fame enshrined deity level players (that is 99.9% of the player population) the list does make up most of why we win or lose on a regular basis.

I was a GT player back in the GW GT days. I placed top 10 in one 40k and 3 whfb. It was 100% because of the lists I was running. When I wasn't running those lists my win/loss fell to about 0.500. As are virtually everyone else I have ever met that played competitively over the past twenty years bar a couple of fellows that were in that zeus category that we get on our hands and knees and worship on here daily. Those guys were really just that good. But they were also gross outliers to the normal popluation.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

stratigo wrote:
Striking scorpians aren't the only aspect to be gak upon. Almost all the aspects are trash. Except the ones that were already viable in 8th. You know, dark reapers and shining spears. Reapers being a 3 plus save unit.

This idea that GW has some firm grasp of the balance they want is laughable. They simply did not want to pay writers or give them the time to flesh out the points properly. Indeed, I suspect the rules designers were maybe a third of the way through actually doing a unit by unit balance pass after the algorithm hit it and GW went "Okay, it has to be out now" and they're like "it's not done" and GW is "feth it, deadlines. No pandemic will stop us".

Oh I know how bad they are. I've been working on Iyanden for a couple weeks now and had to laugh that I lucked into the halfway decent Craftworld option for this edition.

My point wasn't that GW isn't really trying to balance anything. They're trying to adjust the look and feel of an army to fall into a certain design when it's put on the board. For most armies this balances the options internally, but external balance is a crapshoot at best.

But this is so evidently wrong. This has only happened with a handful of units. For the vast VAST majority of points changes, there is no discernible reason. Because the rules writers weren't allowed to finish their balance pass.

Citation needed on that one. What do you mean rules writers "weren't allowed to finish"?

I've not seen the point changes for all factions, but out of sisters, tyranids and marines, which I was interested in, most of the point changes fall into the "Makes sense" or "Weakly disagree" caterogies.


There are only an handful of cases which are really weird (condemnor boltguns and eradicators).

I understand that guardians, gretchins and kabalites fall into this last category, but if the average of the factions is like the 3 that I have studied, then it's not a praise worthy work, but neither a bad one.