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Karol wrote:
What is the difference between a tester and a designer?
Besides the salary, maybe. they both have to follow what ever GW tells them the game should be.

Designers actually make the game, testers are third party folks who test the game. In this case Tony tests the game for competetive/matched play.

And the dev team has more free reign than you seem to think.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Karol wrote:
What is the difference between a tester and a designer?
Besides the salary, maybe. they both have to follow what ever GW tells them the game should be.

Designers actually make the game, testers are third party folks who test the game. In this case Tony tests the game for competetive/matched play.

I'm still curious if they had any playtesters who weren't there for competitive/matched play gaming, given they don't seem to be getting asked to talk about their experiences on WHC (if they exist).

I'm definitely on team "it's GW's fault" and not "it's the playtester's faults", most of the playtesters are unpaid interns with no prior experience playtesting a game or experience playtesting 8th being the only other experience they have playtesting, GW should be able to advise them on how playtesting should be done and reported. I would really just love to know how they structure development and mess with their development methods. The NDAs that are preventing the playtesters from talking about how they did or did not affect the balance annoy me.

 Dysartes wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Karol wrote:
What is the difference between a tester and a designer?
Besides the salary, maybe. they both have to follow what ever GW tells them the game should be.

Designers actually make the game, testers are third party folks who test the game. In this case Tony tests the game for competetive/matched play.

I'm still curious if they had any playtesters who weren't there for competitive/matched play gaming, given they don't seem to be getting asked to talk about their experiences on WHC (if they exist).

Members of the Splintermind Podcast.

the_scotsman wrote:
Sure, it's only in orks, imperial guard, Tau, drukhari (teeeeeeeeeechnically not characters because they did remove the CHARACTER keyword from the court of the archon guys for some reason nobody understands but, they're basically character units), and GSC where you can take super cheap elite slot or slotless characters to do the jobs that light infantry used to do and do it vastly better.

The factions that can't are basically the factions that get to have functional elite infantry anyway. Except for eldar, who goes to cry in the corner with their 30pt supplementary support characters who take up HQ slots for reasons.

Here are a short sampling of the various character keyword models who cost 30pts or less who can perform actions as INFANTRY keyword models without needing to give up any of their abilities:

-Techpriest Enginseer
-Mek
-Sslyth
-Dark Disciples
-Kroot Shaper
-Lictor
-Nexos
-Acolyte

If you don't think these various little gaks are going to turn up in a ton of competitive lists to hide somewhere out of LOS and perform cheeky actions for secondary points then I dunno, maybe you just aren't evil enough.

I think its a fair observation - but character protection (or not in some cases) and LOS aside - killing these is not that difficult.

I'm not sure what points say grots should be - 4 points, 3 points - but I can see the argument that if you could just blob down 360 of them, get them onto enough objectives turn 2 and just deny your opponent the primary... it potentially breaks the game. At 3 points you'd have near half your army to mess around with too.

With say Guardsmen - you can argue (by degree) that you are limited to 10 in a squad, and so if you want to bring more than 120, you are paying a CP tax.

But tbh. I have to wonder whether anyone seriously tested "what if I bring all the grots/cultists/conscripts etc and just hope they can't kill me in time so my obsec is forever". It seems doubtful.

Tyel wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
Sure, it's only in orks, imperial guard, Tau, drukhari (teeeeeeeeeechnically not characters because they did remove the CHARACTER keyword from the court of the archon guys for some reason nobody understands but, they're basically character units), and GSC where you can take super cheap elite slot or slotless characters to do the jobs that light infantry used to do and do it vastly better.

The factions that can't are basically the factions that get to have functional elite infantry anyway. Except for eldar, who goes to cry in the corner with their 30pt supplementary support characters who take up HQ slots for reasons.

Here are a short sampling of the various character keyword models who cost 30pts or less who can perform actions as INFANTRY keyword models without needing to give up any of their abilities:

-Techpriest Enginseer
-Mek
-Sslyth
-Dark Disciples
-Kroot Shaper
-Lictor
-Nexos
-Acolyte

If you don't think these various little gaks are going to turn up in a ton of competitive lists to hide somewhere out of LOS and perform cheeky actions for secondary points then I dunno, maybe you just aren't evil enough.

I think its a fair observation - but character protection (or not in some cases) and LOS aside - killing these is not that difficult.

I'm not sure what points say grots should be - 4 points, 3 points - but I can see the argument that if you could just blob down 360 of them, get them onto enough objectives turn 2 and just deny your opponent the primary... it potentially breaks the game. At 3 points you'd have near half your army to mess around with too.

With say Guardsmen - you can argue (by degree) that you are limited to 10 in a squad, and so if you want to bring more than 120, you are paying a CP tax.

But tbh. I have to wonder whether anyone seriously tested "what if I bring all the grots/cultists/conscripts etc and just hope they can't kill me in time so my obsec is forever". It seems doubtful.

And look at Scotsman over here, thinking the Lictor has the character keyword! He was so good, they had to take it away from him so he wouldn't be OP. Right GW? RigHt? RIGHT!?!?!1/1!?1?

Karol wrote:
What is the difference between a tester and a designer?
Besides the salary, maybe. they both have to follow what ever GW tells them the game should be.

Testers aren't salaried. They don't get paid by GW, except in access to rules and getting free stuff a bit earlier than the rest of us. They don't have to follow anything GW tells them. In fact, a lot of their feedback is likely pushing back against what GW tells them the game should be. The thing to remember about the testers is all they can really do is provide feedback. Ultimately they have no real power to change anything other than making suggestions that can be actioned or ignored for a whole variety of reasons including no reason at all.

 Dysartes wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Karol wrote:
What is the difference between a tester and a designer?
Besides the salary, maybe. they both have to follow what ever GW tells them the game should be.

Designers actually make the game, testers are third party folks who test the game. In this case Tony tests the game for competetive/matched play.

I'm still curious if they had any playtesters who weren't there for competitive/matched play gaming, given they don't seem to be getting asked to talk about their experiences on WHC (if they exist).

There is a separate batch for narrative play. Though they're less vocal it seems.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tyel wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
Sure, it's only in orks, imperial guard, Tau, drukhari (teeeeeeeeeechnically not characters because they did remove the CHARACTER keyword from the court of the archon guys for some reason nobody understands but, they're basically character units), and GSC where you can take super cheap elite slot or slotless characters to do the jobs that light infantry used to do and do it vastly better.

The factions that can't are basically the factions that get to have functional elite infantry anyway. Except for eldar, who goes to cry in the corner with their 30pt supplementary support characters who take up HQ slots for reasons.

Here are a short sampling of the various character keyword models who cost 30pts or less who can perform actions as INFANTRY keyword models without needing to give up any of their abilities:

-Techpriest Enginseer
-Mek
-Sslyth
-Dark Disciples
-Kroot Shaper
-Lictor
-Nexos
-Acolyte

If you don't think these various little gaks are going to turn up in a ton of competitive lists to hide somewhere out of LOS and perform cheeky actions for secondary points then I dunno, maybe you just aren't evil enough.

I think its a fair observation - but character protection (or not in some cases) and LOS aside - killing these is not that difficult.

I'm not sure what points say grots should be - 4 points, 3 points - but I can see the argument that if you could just blob down 360 of them, get them onto enough objectives turn 2 and just deny your opponent the primary... it potentially breaks the game. At 3 points you'd have near half your army to mess around with too.

With say Guardsmen - you can argue (by degree) that you are limited to 10 in a squad, and so if you want to bring more than 120, you are paying a CP tax.

But tbh. I have to wonder whether anyone seriously tested "what if I bring all the grots/cultists/conscripts etc and just hope they can't kill me in time so my obsec is forever". It seems doubtful.

Instead of making Grots cheaper I'd rather see things get more expensive. If 5ppm is the new floor then everything needs to adjust up to make that work.

That or adding more rules to units.

 Gene St. Ealer wrote:

Tyel wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
Sure, it's only in orks, imperial guard, Tau, drukhari (teeeeeeeeeechnically not characters because they did remove the CHARACTER keyword from the court of the archon guys for some reason nobody understands but, they're basically character units), and GSC where you can take super cheap elite slot or slotless characters to do the jobs that light infantry used to do and do it vastly better.

The factions that can't are basically the factions that get to have functional elite infantry anyway. Except for eldar, who goes to cry in the corner with their 30pt supplementary support characters who take up HQ slots for reasons.

Here are a short sampling of the various character keyword models who cost 30pts or less who can perform actions as INFANTRY keyword models without needing to give up any of their abilities:

-Techpriest Enginseer
-Mek
-Sslyth
-Dark Disciples
-Kroot Shaper
-Lictor
-Nexos
-Acolyte

If you don't think these various little gaks are going to turn up in a ton of competitive lists to hide somewhere out of LOS and perform cheeky actions for secondary points then I dunno, maybe you just aren't evil enough.

I think its a fair observation - but character protection (or not in some cases) and LOS aside - killing these is not that difficult.

I'm not sure what points say grots should be - 4 points, 3 points - but I can see the argument that if you could just blob down 360 of them, get them onto enough objectives turn 2 and just deny your opponent the primary... it potentially breaks the game. At 3 points you'd have near half your army to mess around with too.

With say Guardsmen - you can argue (by degree) that you are limited to 10 in a squad, and so if you want to bring more than 120, you are paying a CP tax.

But tbh. I have to wonder whether anyone seriously tested "what if I bring all the grots/cultists/conscripts etc and just hope they can't kill me in time so my obsec is forever". It seems doubtful.

And look at Scotsman over here, thinking the Lictor has the character keyword! He was so good, they had to take it away from him so he wouldn't be OP. Right GW? RigHt? RIGHT!?!?!1/1!?1?

Just assume that he said Deathleaper

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Karol wrote:
What is the difference between a tester and a designer?
Besides the salary, maybe. they both have to follow what ever GW tells them the game should be.

Designers actually make the game, testers are third party folks who test the game. In this case Tony tests the game for competetive/matched play.

And the dev team has more free reign than you seem to think.

But wasn't there an interview with a design studio guy not that long ago, that worked on past edition eldar, and said that after they finished doing the rules, someone higher up decided to cut the cost of the eldar unit by hundrads of points and making it OP as hell. Doesn't seem to me like there is much difference between someone working in the design departament and someone only hired by GW. Specialy as the same guy said that he had to test stuff on his own, with no pay for overtime and actualy test the games with other people, because GW design team was so small and crunching hard.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Slipspace 790201 10875451 wrote:

Testers aren't salaried. They don't get paid by GW, except in access to rules and getting free stuff a bit earlier than the rest of us. They don't have to follow anything GW tells them. In fact, a lot of their feedback is likely pushing back against what GW tells them the game should be. The thing to remember about the testers is all they can really do is provide feedback. Ultimately they have no real power to change anything other than making suggestions that can be actioned or ignored for a whole variety of reasons including no reason at all.

Knowing what is going to be good months in advance, what to sell and what to get before everyone knows seems like pay to me. Plus it seems like GW treates feedback from people that work in its design departament, the same way they would playtesters.

 Kanluwen wrote:
Can you source a poll the disproves what he's saying?

That's not how debates work Kan. Burden of proof is on the one making the claim.

Cursory search function brings this one up right away

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/782761.page

This shows that rules / tight balance are most important in that poll to 27% of respondants. Which falls in line with everything I have seen over the past few years in any GW dominated group or forum.

Which is what I've been saying in this thread.

There are a lot of examples in that thread where balance is not important to the poster.

This same type of poll has been done a few times on dakka with similar results. This same type of poll has been done many times on the various facebook groups with similar results. This poll was done on twitter many times over the past five years. This poll has been done by GW a couple of times in their global poll and the end result of their own output is poor balance, indicating that balance is not a big thing in their marketing polls either for them to put more energy into it. We know from this very thread that GW is basically saying points don't matter for balance, they are used for them to mould what they want to see out of your armies.

This same type of poll was done on other game systems face book groups with different results (game balance is universally more important to non-gw game players than it is in a 40k or aos forum).

So when I see the same basic poll answered almost identically many times over many years, and someone in here tries to gaslight me and tell me it isn't the case, I lost the will to engage with that long ago.

There is one link for you. To which someone is going to swoop in and say "yeah but that doesn't count thats just one link you said LOTS." or "yeah but that says whats most important, that doesn't say balance isn't important", which isn't what I am saying either. But those are the two traditional responses and why I don't feel like playing along because its really a trap statement setting up for the "yeah but..." (because I've played some of your debate games before where I have posted a series of links before and told that still wasn't enough so I know its not going to be enough here as well lol)

The proof is in the proverbial pudding. Balance is important to about a quarter of people that hang out in 40k forums and aos forums. For 75% of you, it may be somewhat important, but you'll hand waive it for one reason or the other. For 25% of that 75%, balance is not important at all as is the aesthetic, the narrative, or the social experience.

In all cases, balance won't matter enough to stop you forking cash over to the company to keep playing.

You’ve literally said people complained that your Azyr comp was “too balanced”.

People aren’t arguing with you that balance isn’t number one for everyone. They’re arguing that people do want balance, even if it ain’t their top priority.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Can you source a poll the disproves what he's saying?

That's not how debates work Kan. Burden of proof is on the one making the claim.

Most of the time. There are instances in legal situations where the law assigns burden regardless of who is claiming what.

Karol wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Karol wrote:
What is the difference between a tester and a designer?
Besides the salary, maybe. they both have to follow what ever GW tells them the game should be.

Designers actually make the game, testers are third party folks who test the game. In this case Tony tests the game for competetive/matched play.

And the dev team has more free reign than you seem to think.

But wasn't there an interview with a design studio guy not that long ago, that worked on past edition eldar, and said that after they finished doing the rules, someone higher up decided to cut the cost of the eldar unit by hundrads of points and making it OP as hell. Doesn't seem to me like there is much difference between someone working in the design departament and someone only hired by GW. Specialy as the same guy said that he had to test stuff on his own, with no pay for overtime and actualy test the games with other people, because GW design team was so small and crunching hard.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Slipspace 790201 10875451 wrote:

Testers aren't salaried. They don't get paid by GW, except in access to rules and getting free stuff a bit earlier than the rest of us. They don't have to follow anything GW tells them. In fact, a lot of their feedback is likely pushing back against what GW tells them the game should be. The thing to remember about the testers is all they can really do is provide feedback. Ultimately they have no real power to change anything other than making suggestions that can be actioned or ignored for a whole variety of reasons including no reason at all.

Knowing what is going to be good months in advance, what to sell and what to get before everyone knows seems like pay to me. Plus it seems like GW treates feedback from people that work in its design departament, the same way they would playtesters.

There was -one- instance of that occuring that we know of and that was during the height of Kirby's nonsense. Under Roundtree the dev team seems to have their hands being held less to push sales and the game has become healthier leading to an explosion of growth in the community.

 JNAProductions wrote:
You’ve literally said people complained that your Azyr comp was “too balanced”.

People aren’t arguing with you that balance isn’t number one for everyone. They’re arguing that people do want balance, even if it ain’t their top priority.

Just ignore Auticus, he's the steven crowder of dakkadakka.

Martel732 wrote:
There are instances in legal situations where the law assigns burden regardless of who is claiming what.

Last I checked this wasn't a "legal situation".

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
There are instances in legal situations where the law assigns burden regardless of who is claiming what.

Last I checked this wasn't a "legal situation".

People act like it is.

 JNAProductions wrote:
You’ve literally said people complained that your Azyr comp was “too balanced”.

People aren’t arguing with you that balance isn’t number one for everyone. They’re arguing that people do want balance, even if it ain’t their top priority.

Correct. I literally said people said that very thing because ... they said that very thing. About 10% of the people using it complained about it being boring and bland because it made listbuilding not matter and that it was too much like chess.

I'm not arguing that people dont' want balance. I'm saying its not high enough priority for most people (I said it comes out to be about 50% of an entire poll almost always) to stop shelling out a ton of cash to keep playing. There is another significant portion (roughly 25%) that will say they don't care about balance at all and/or will direct one to go play chess if they want balance.

Thats what I've been saying.

 auticus wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
You’ve literally said people complained that your Azyr comp was “too balanced”.

People aren’t arguing with you that balance isn’t number one for everyone. They’re arguing that people do want balance, even if it ain’t their top priority.

Correct. I literally said people said that very thing because ... they said that very thing. About 10% of the people using it complained about it being boring and bland because it made listbuilding not matter and that it was too much like chess.

I'm not arguing that people dont' want balance. I'm saying its not high enough priority for most people (I said it comes out to be about 50% of an entire poll almost always) to stop shelling out a ton of cash to keep playing. There is another significant portion (roughly 25%) that will say they don't care about balance at all and/or will direct one to go play chess if they want balance.

Thats what I've been saying.

See, that's a claim you need to back up. Another poster here googled around (the sites you told us to) and found absolutely nothing about it being "too balanced".

You aren't going to find azyr comp complaints via general google because I have posted a few times now, they are in a facebook group that existed from 2015-2016 (the azyr comp official facebook group where the playtesters and people using it were posting their findings and feedback...that I can't get to now because it was archived years ago and is now gone... because azyr comp stopped being useful in 2016 and its a fairly reasonable thing to archive and close down a group that is no longer useful) or via my personal email.

Now I can post my personal email, to which the natural reply is going to be "yeah you photoshopped / doctored those they don't count".

I've ridden this merry go round before.

So as I posted a few pages back - not worried about "backing it up" because:

* backing it up via the facebook can't happen because its archived
* backing it up by showing personal emails isn't valid because it'll just get the old "photoshopped fake news" treatment (as it has in the past)
* it is a nebulous moving goalpost that ultimately means nothing.

I show you some emails from some people using azyr that complained about it being too balanced (the same comments you can find on twitter or facebook pretty much daily about balance == chess go play chess) and then JNAProductions tell me.. .. tell me what your response would be?

Or I writ efacebook, get access to the deleted group that was deleted in 2016 that I can't get to now, I screenshot some posts saying its too balanced and boring... and then what? What is your response?

"Oh you're right auticus, i see some people emailed you and said that my bad"

Or

"Thats just a couple emails that doesn't count".

Or

"Yeah thats just a couple random scrubs lol that doesn't count"

So then whats the number that will count?

100?

1000?

What number of messages saying that must be shown to show that a large number of people feel too much balance is bad?

How many marketing game design meetings and conferences must be disregarded where that same topic was gone over? Doesn't count because they weren't live streamed to dakka?

A serious heavy fight to the bitter end over my claim that 25% of people polled don't care at all about balance? Based off of several polls that show that? Based off of me as a game designer fielding those type of complaints in various games? To which the serious reply here was "oh i see what your problem was, it was your point system and it wasn't chosen so you're angry har har har lol lol lol".

Seriously whats the end game with that? Do you seriously feel that most people want a lot of balance in their game? Because then why is the most imbalanced game in the world also the most popular and richest and has the largest group of people throwing money at the company every release? Because balance means that much to them? Seriously what part of anything I am saying is that outlandish to you where the proof literally stares at everyone on this board every day with the amount of cash being thrown at the company to produce a medicore if not flat out bad set of rules every single edition release? Because balance means that much to those people that they just ignore it?

Or its hand waived as kind of important, like religion is kind of important to a lot of people right before they go out and violate all of their bible's commandments regularly? That kind of important? Is that our problem? That my definition of important and your definition of important are just simply two different things?

That when I say 25% of people think too much balance is bad that that is just such an outlandish statement even though its said pretty much daily on a tweet or in a facebook reply or sometimes in dakka... and no one replies to it or says a word. But mention that it is said a lot and suddenly its a big big deal to disprove.

Tyel wrote:

I think its a fair observation - but character protection (or not in some cases) and LOS aside - killing these is not that difficult.

I'm not sure what points say grots should be - 4 points, 3 points - but I can see the argument that if you could just blob down 360 of them, get them onto enough objectives turn 2 and just deny your opponent the primary... it potentially breaks the game. At 3 points you'd have near half your army to mess around with too.

With say Guardsmen - you can argue (by degree) that you are limited to 10 in a squad, and so if you want to bring more than 120, you are paying a CP tax.

But tbh. I have to wonder whether anyone seriously tested "what if I bring all the grots/cultists/conscripts etc and just hope they can't kill me in time so my obsec is forever". It seems doubtful.

As i wasn't on the playtest team for 9th i can't say for certain if they did or didn't playtest this theory.
However, throughout 8th it proved to be a recurringly strong tactic, that people found unfun to play against.
Index 40k saw Brimstone or Razorwing spam.
Later on Gant carpet, green tide or plaguebearer spam.

Its a tactic I've seen in other games too. For a while when i played Warmachine there were armies that just ran hordes of cheap infantry and relied on the idea that you literally couldn't roll dice fast enough to kill them in a timed turns format.

If anything, these examples kind of demonstrate my theory - for certain tasks, simply existing on the board is useful enough to justify a small points expenditure.

Thought experiment: if GW made a T1, W1 slotless character with no save, weapons, attacks or abilities, how much should it cost? Its obviously worse than a Mek or a Shaper... but in the scheme of things its approximately as difficult to kill, and does approximately the same job.

"Thought experiment: if GW made a T1, W1 slotless character with no save, weapons, attacks or abilities, how much should it cost? Its obviously worse than a Mek or a Shaper... but in the scheme of things its approximately as difficult to kill, and does approximately the same job."

I've thrown this out before. I was largely mocked or ignored.

@Auticus, you are the one that made the claim that "Many players don't really want balance". All you've done is back it up with hearsay. You offers of forms of evidence are those trivially tampered with. You've claimed all sorts of evidence, but fail to produce anything that directly and verifiable backs up your statement that "Many players don't really want balance" (up to 10% if we are to believe you).

The poll you produced earlier doesn't back up your statement. What it does show is that 25% of people have balance as the *most* important factor, but that doesn't say that the other 75% don't want balance, just that they consider other factors more important to them (surprise, people can want more than one thing at a time)

It's pretty damning that GW is still in business after 8 editions of failure. That alone says to me players care more about the setting and less about balance. Also, there is a subset that just wants to exploit the imbalance.

Martel732 wrote:
It's pretty damning that GW is still in business after 8 editions of failure. That alone says to me players care more about the setting and less about balance. Also, there is a subset that just wants to exploit the imbalance.

"Failure" to Dakka isn't exactly failure to the wider community. This site is a vocal minority -at best-.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
It's pretty damning that GW is still in business after 8 editions of failure. That alone says to me players care more about the setting and less about balance. Also, there is a subset that just wants to exploit the imbalance.

"Failure" to Dakka isn't exactly failure to the wider community. This site is a vocal minority -at best-.

That's kind of my point.

Martel732 wrote:
It's pretty damning that GW is still in business after 8 editions of failure. That alone says to me players care more about the setting and less about balance. Also, there is a subset that just wants to exploit the imbalance.

I think most, including GW, will agree that the setting is of the utmost importance. GW sees its average customer and target market as someone who pops in for a year because they like the IP and the models are cool and needs something to do with them so GW provides game rules, but they've always been of tertiary importance to the setting and models. Nobody gets into 40k because of the rules and gameplay in and of itself.

Martel732 wrote:
"Thought experiment: if GW made a T1, W1 slotless character with no save, weapons, attacks or abilities, how much should it cost? Its obviously worse than a Mek or a Shaper... but in the scheme of things its approximately as difficult to kill, and does approximately the same job."

I've thrown this out before. I was largely mocked or ignored.

Depends on what you measure it against and what your philosophy of killiness is. I personally aim to bring units that balance a ratio of taking 4 times their points to be killed, and can kill 1/4 of their points a turn.

Let's take an Intercessor as our baseline. 20 points for rapid fire 1 long range attacks (bolt rifles), and 2 close combat attacks. Assume T1, the Intercessor is at long range (1 attack), T2 it's within rapid fire (2 attacks), and T3 it gets to rapid fire and attack in close combat (4 attacks). T4 it gets 4 more attacks in close combat, plus it's pistol, so 5. That's 12 attacks over 4 turns to kill 20 points of T1 W1 models.

So, 12 attacks hitting on 3+, 8 hits. ~7 wounded and killed. So I consider around 20/7 points, or 3 points as an upper limit on how much they cost. Once you start adding in offense the value of the model goes up.

 Vaktathi wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
It's pretty damning that GW is still in business after 8 editions of failure. That alone says to me players care more about the setting and less about balance. Also, there is a subset that just wants to exploit the imbalance.

I think most, including GW, will agree that the setting is of the utmost importance. GW sees its average customer and target market as someone who pops in for a year because they like the IP and the models are cool and needs something to do with them so GW provides game rules, but they've always been of tertiary importance to the setting and models. Nobody gets into 40k because of the rules and gameplay in and of itself.

I think that was more true under Kirby than Roundtree. For one, at least in the past, Roundtree actually had a personal investment in the game itself, which puts the game being good at a higher priority than it was under Kirby who clearly wanted to pump customers for money. I don't know if that still holds true, but I don't think GW would look at how improving the game has lead to growing the customer base and go "well, the game isn't really important". The models are cool don't get me wrong, I've snagged a couple Underworld sets just for the models, but the game is what keeps people engaged in the setting, engaged in the community, engaged in actually buying things.

And now that they've seemed to gotten that figured out they're putting more emphasis on making the game easier to access, more fun to play and trying to balance the size of the game around smaller model counts that lower the bar for people to jump into a new army, or just jump into the game itself.

I was getting curious about the Splintermind podcast since it's come up on here a few times, and they pointed something out about Crusade I think they got very right: it makes escalation of a new army easier and directly rewards you for playing the game (especially since you have to play the game to grow your army) and if GW really is trying to lower the bar for entry and make it easier to build stuff over time so they can make a sustainable customer base over one that churns armies every quarter, then we're going to be in a pretty good place in the future.

JakeSiren wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
"Thought experiment: if GW made a T1, W1 slotless character with no save, weapons, attacks or abilities, how much should it cost? Its obviously worse than a Mek or a Shaper... but in the scheme of things its approximately as difficult to kill, and does approximately the same job."

I've thrown this out before. I was largely mocked or ignored.

Depends on what you measure it against and what your philosophy of killiness is. I personally aim to bring units that balance a ratio of taking 4 times their points to be killed, and can kill 1/4 of their points a turn.

Let's take an Intercessor as our baseline. 20 points for rapid fire 1 long range attacks (bolt rifles), and 2 close combat attacks. Assume T1, the Intercessor is at long range (1 attack), T2 it's within rapid fire (2 attacks), and T3 it gets to rapid fire and attack in close combat (4 attacks). T4 it gets 4 more attacks in close combat, plus it's pistol, so 5. That's 12 attacks over 4 turns to kill 20 points of T1 W1 models.

So, 12 attacks hitting on 3+, 8 hits. ~7 wounded and killed. So I consider around 20/7 points, or 3 points as an upper limit on how much they cost. Once you start adding in offense the value of the model goes up.

I think the point we are getting at is that a model with no stats of value at all still has value as a space filler and objective holder. The T1 S1 W1 model that costs 1 pt would be very powerful despite its lack of offense or defense.