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The complaint of Ward codices being overpowered is simply not that true compared to the garbage Kelly does and gets defended for.

It's about consistency. For every Craftworld Eldar Kelly wrote, he also had a 6th ed CSM. So many flops and misses. Ward was far more consistent in his output than Kelly probably ever will be (my guess is the new Cron dex is a Kelly special and I bet money it turns out to be TERRIBLE before it's all said and done).

Ward established a poor rep for balance in WFB with the Daemon book that pretty much broke that edition of the game. Played against a bunch of daemon armies back then and every game was like a tragic last stand.

That's exactly my point. If ALL the codexes are turned UP to that level, you have fewer problems. The issue is, one author wants everything pushed as far as they can go, one would rather drag everyone DOWN to their level, and another (mostly Kelly) can't be bothered to do anything at all but phone it in unless it's one of their pet projects. If they all arrive at the same philosophy at the start and STICK TO IT, it fixes a lot of our problems.

Yeah, I totally agree. The studio lads are probably nice, but they just don't seem to have much discipline in how they approach the job.

To be fair, I think they just see it as playing toy soldiers and probably think taking it seriously at all is silly, and everything should be worked out between gentlemen.

The problem is, that is not what 40K is. It is built on the premise of the PUG or of at least being able to find a group wherever you go, so it isn't really a garage wargame where you can always come to a gentleman's agreement with your opponent in that way.

I mean, it is definitely arguable that the PUG culture is the real problem. Historicals are basically all run on the gentleman's agreement model and they work fine as far as I can see.

 Da Boss wrote:
Yeah, I totally agree. The studio lads are probably nice, but they just don't seem to have much discipline in how they approach the job.

To be fair, I think they just see it as playing toy soldiers and probably think taking it seriously at all is silly, and everything should be worked out between gentlemen.

The problem is, that is not what 40K is. It is built on the premise of the PUG or of at least being able to find a group wherever you go, so it isn't really a garage wargame where you can always come to a gentleman's agreement with your opponent in that way.

I mean, it is definitely arguable that the PUG culture is the real problem. Historicals are basically all run on the gentleman's agreement model and they work fine as far as I can see.

Part of the issue is that 40k doesn't actually run on the "gentleman's agreement" model. It uses that to deflect criticism, but it's clear that they make imbalanced things with the goal of them breaking the game.

Historicals may work on gentleman's agreements, but there always very niche.

I can't have a gentleman's agreement with all the 40k players in my city, there's at least 4 separate clubs each with at least a dozen different players.

If 40k was required to be played in the way historicals are, the game would wither to nothing compared to what it is now.

I would expect them to rotate the winners and losers a bit more thoroughly in that case to maximise profits. I dunno, sometimes it feels like you are right but then other times they just make really baffling decisions that to me imply they just aren't thinking very hard about stuff.

Yeah, I totally agree. The studio lads are probably nice, but they just don't seem to have much discipline in how they approach the job.

To be fair, I think they just see it as playing toy soldiers and probably think taking it seriously at all is silly, and everything should be worked out between gentlemen.

The problem is, that is not what 40K is. It is built on the premise of the PUG or of at least being able to find a group wherever you go, so it isn't really a garage wargame where you can always come to a gentleman's agreement with your opponent in that way.

I mean, it is definitely arguable that the PUG culture is the real problem. Historicals are basically all run on the gentleman's agreement model and they work fine as far as I can see.

Eh - it's easy to blame current "gamer culture", but this problem has always generally existed to some degree when it comes to 40k and I'd say you're right in that there has, for the longest time just been a genuine disconnect between how the writers view the game and how the customers view it. I'm not even a "power gamer", but the amount of times I've read a rule for the first time and immediately thought of a use for it that one of the writer's would later say "We never imagined it would be used like that" is nothing short of astounding.

I DO think they're getting better at it, but the biggest thing I always come back to is the Horus Heresy series. Like it, hate it, or somewhere in between, the one thing it is is consistent. Super consistent. Which is incredible given the number of authors working across the number of books they had. When you hear ANY author from that series talk about it, they all universally talk about how connected they are. How often they talk, how hard they all work to cooperatively make sure one author doesn't inadvertently ruin something for another, etc, etc. And keep in mind, that's a group of people spread across the entire globe.

Now contrast that with any interviews with the rules team. Especially any of the codex authors. It is always "I though this", "I selected that", you do not get the impression they speak at all, and this feeling is backed up by the end result.

 Da Boss wrote:
Yeah, I totally agree. The studio lads are probably nice, but they just don't seem to have much discipline in how they approach the job.

To be fair, I think they just see it as playing toy soldiers and probably think taking it seriously at all is silly, and everything should be worked out between gentlemen.

The problem is, that is not what 40K is. It is built on the premise of the PUG or of at least being able to find a group wherever you go, so it isn't really a garage wargame where you can always come to a gentleman's agreement with your opponent in that way.

I mean, it is definitely arguable that the PUG culture is the real problem. Historicals are basically all run on the gentleman's agreement model and they work fine as far as I can see.

40k is not a historical game to recreate battles though.

Slayer-Fan123 795143 11024829 wrote:
40k is not a historical game to recreate battles though.

Historical games aren't about recreating battles either .

Hecaton wrote:

ah, this is pretty blatantly untrue. From an entirely uneducated analysis, you're right, but the variation between, say, a Keisotsu Butai and a Jotum rules-wise is pretty immense. Let's not forget that 40k moved over to modeling its vehicles with wounds and toughness now, too, so its scope is cramped in that way. The difference in survivability between those two models is immense; let's not forget about abilities like Nanoscreens, Mimetism, and Symbio-Mates which add durability in different ways.

To be fair, You grabbed 2 units at the opposite end of the scale in a game that has pretty high granularity. If any two units would have vaeuation ita these. What about kazaks and fusiliers and celestial guard? I have ariadna, yu-jing and pan-o factions at home, I found at the end of the day there was limited 'real' differences between them that I was interested in exploring.
all those extra abilities bogged down the game for me to the point I found it tedious and unplayable, as much as I wanted to enjoy it.

Hecaton wrote:


The limitations and cost *aren't* a lack of variety of units, rules-wise. And visuals-wise... you don't get a situation where 50% of the players are playing the same faction. That's not healthy for the game.

I said scale and scope. Two different things. Please note, this is not necessarily a criticism- I've made my positive opinion of infinity pretty clear repeatedly.

And arguably, in terms of 'the same faction', that's precisely the criticism I see infinity get. they're all human with very similar equipment for the most part.it works, and while I like the look, infinity is the game that in my experience has drawn most criticism from people for its 'samey clean across thr board sci-fi looks'. Weird, and I disagree, but I think it's fair to acknowledge it.

Hecaton wrote:


I've met a lot of Astartes players and GW fanboys who say "balance isn't worth achieving" and do things like insist that GW makes a better game because they clear more profit than Corvus Belli. There's a certain personality type that loves sucking up to whom they consider the most powerful actor in a space, and in the context of consumer relations go all <removed - none of that gak here please> on someone who they should regard more critically.

They'd be foolish to suggest that. Cb make a great game. It's not for me, but I can't and won't fault its technical sophistication.

And fantastic models.

And there is also a personality that is hyper-critical and hyper entitled who will never be havby with anything and just wants to watch the world burn. It's very easy to get suxked into that mindspace and it's not necessarily a positive place.

Hecaton wrote:

Nope. People who cheer on GW lying to them and other players can be described pretty well by that term. And when you look at the balance that GW is failing to implement and look at other companies doing it better (CMON, Corvus Belli, etc) GW doesn't look like an industry leader in that regard. You're using circular logic; "it can't be more balanced because if it was GW would do it." That's just idiocy or subservient disingenuity.

Here's the thing in case you are obliquely referring to me. I don't rate gw for balance. Lets be clear about that. I've played gw games for 15 years. They've always been terrible. They don't and won't change. Do gw fail there? Absolutely. Theirs is a clunky flawed limited system. Only way to get value our of it is to front end and game build with the other guy. I think this is a good approach anyway so I can live with gw's rubbish in this regard.

I'm not arguing 'it can't be more balanced because if it was GW would do it." Never said that and I never will. Please retract that if you are implying that that is something I've said. I've played wargames for 15 years. Not just 40k. Privateer press- 3 armies, infinity - 3 armies. Various historicals. Some I've played competitively to a fairly high level in some(Idis reasonably OK in 40k years ago and i can claim one scalp of a UK masters winner in wmh and a bunch of seconds and thirds in local tourneys... back in wmh mk2). What I am saying is balance is a unicorn. Better isn't necessarily 'good enough'. I'm saying it will never be 'balanced enough' to make people happy or to provide the game that people think they're entitled to. And folks always seem oblivious or uninterested in the costs and consequences of any approach to balance a game. The workload to even do some of that on the part of the developers quickly becomes a game of vanishingly diminishing returns and I genuinely don't regard that dragon as worth chasing at the end of the day. Even the best balanced games I've played had go-to builds, trap units and winning strategies. There's other approaches in this hobby and for what it's worth, since I've embraced this instead of being critical about problems all of the time, I've never been happier.

I am saying that I have had multiple periods of playing GW games where I was satisfied with the balance. A lot of 3e, most of 5e for 40K. And most of 6e and the first part of 7e for WFB. Even when WFB got unbalanced, it was still fun to play and player skill still mattered enough that you could make the difference if you knew what you were doing.

So I dunno that all of us who think the balance is generally poor would never be satisfied. You'll never satisfy EVERYONE, but where has anyone been making that argument?

I agree about there being other approaches in the hobby btw. But those approaches are not right for everyone, you know?

Deadnight wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

Pretty much every game that qualifies as e-sport. 40k is trivial in complexity compared the invisible rules a game engine handles for your in the background. That's not a bad thing, because a low complexity is necessary for humans to play it without the help of a computer.

So... not for any other table top games? Right...

And what qualifies an e-sport? I'm not being pedantic here.

I mean, I know there are games like Starcraft and other computer games that have leagues etc. Same with mtg.

Thing is - firstly are they actually balanced (I know mtg isn't, despite what people say) and secondly, is the approach used for e-sports compatible with ttg's? They seem to be incompatible approaches to me.

Ttgs might be mechanically simpler, but they're also extremely modular and customisable and in the context of the current design philosophy (points, mission type, army rosters, variable terrain and dice vagaries) and it may be my approach to computer games, or maybe just my interest in ttgs but I do find the building blocks of a ttg are quite open ended and accounting for these variables is... tricky...

1. 40k can, without doubt, be transformed into a PC game. At that point it would be 100% comparable to any other game. Note that there are other adaptation of TTGs, even wargames.
2. As a game itself 40k is a turn-based game with just 5 turns and a comparable small amount of moving pieces, with no ability to loop or trigger things and a finite number of game states. Most mobile games are more complex than that.

What qualifies as an e-sport can be googled. At the very least all games where price money/salary for top players is high enough for them to live of it.

It would be a very interesting (though likely unfeasable) scenario if a computer could be designed with an algorithm that could calculate a units 'value' based on the ever changing other elements that define the 'context' (size, roster, opposing roster, mission, terrain type, quantity and layout, player skill and familiarity etc) and if this could be done for all the elements in a games economy system.

The creation of such an algorithm would require an amount and detail of data that doesn't even exist for most other games. Some games (like MtG) can't be solved at all, because they are infinitely complex.

They tend to be self contained eco-systems for example (a game is generally bought whole) how does that compare to the 'wave' nature of ttg development where the game is never 'whole.

This is also true for a vast number of other games, including some of the top e-sports which keep introducing new game pieces.

You also have to factor a lit more people play computer games and a lot more data is generated a lot quicker than games like 40k.

This only changes iteration speed. Those games also iterate twice a month, 40k is currently iterating twice a year.

But essentially 'take it slow, and refine' and 'don't throw the baby out with the bathwater' philosophical approach to game design didnt really answer my question, and doesn't really tell you anything as to the physical nitty gritty. Also, I would argue ithis approach works better for closed eco systems like computer games and board games ather than our ever expanding war games like 40k. And I'm.not sure how compatible it is with the business approach that seems to be the requirement for companies developing ttgs. And you still.didnt talk about the tools or approaches used in game development. Points costs are the tiniest, tiniest lever to pull (but they get the biggest amount of attention).

You aren't asking for methods, you are asking for solutions. Which brings me back to the silver bullet part - another person's solution might or might not work for your problem.
The thing is, there is no way to tell what solutions are going to work, because the problem is just way to complex. Many smaller steps will eventually improve the game, even though not every single step will.
Your pile of solutions is definitely just flinging silver bullets at the problem, but you are suggesting too many, too big changes to the game. You will end up with a different game, but it will be just as flawed as 8th, 7th and all the editions before were on the day of their release.

 Stormonu wrote:


I think the closest GW had recently come to a balanced game was the 8E indexes. It had its issues, but it was a start. They then went in the other direction and off the deep end with the codexes* and never looked back.

It depends on the army you played. For me, with orks and drukhari, it was the worst gaming experience ever. Orks in particular only worked with 180+ boyz and 6+ characters, eventually backed up by the cheapest (and ancient model wise) artillery. Litterally everything else couldn't possibly be fielded even at the most friendly levels. I had to wait 18 months to get rid of that mess and for the first time I entirely gave up playing orks until the codex dropped.

That xeno index made me even mourn the end of 7th edition, when orks were absolute trash and some awful game mechanics like armor facings, templates, formations and the older AP system still existed.

Deadnight wrote:
You grabbed 2 units at the opposite end of the scale in a game that has pretty high granularity. If any two units would have vaeuation ita these. What about kazaks and fusiliers and celestial guard? I have ariadna, yu-jing and pan-o factions at home, I found at the end of the day there was limited 'real' differences between them that I was interested in exploring.
all those extra abilities bogged down the game for me to the point I found it tedious and unplayable, as much as I wanted to enjoy it.

Well, people in 40k talk about "GEQs" or "MEQs", and all these troops you describe are 1 armor 1 wound... but their defensive capabilities actually differ. The Fusilier has higher Ballistic Skill, and in Infinity, what weapons a trooper is armed with changes its defensive capabilities. So there can actually be a significant variation here.

Deadnight wrote:
I said scale and scope. Two different things. Please note, this is not necessarily a criticism- I've made my positive opinion of infinity pretty clear repeatedly.

Well, there's scale and scope in terms of the game, and that's one thing. Infinity is meant to model smaller-scale conflicts than 40k, with less troops on the board. But in terms of rules scale and scope, Infinity blows 40k out of the water. There's so much more you can do, you can interact with the terrain, attack your opponent in a number of different ways... so I fundamentally disagree with what you're saying because it's incorrect.

Deadnight wrote:
And arguably, in terms of 'the same faction', that's precisely the criticism I see infinity get. they're all human with very similar equipment for the most part.it works, and while I like the look, infinity is the game that in my experience has drawn most criticism from people for its 'samey clean across thr board sci-fi looks'. Weird, and I disagree, but I think it's fair to acknowledge it.

I've seen those same people claim that there is more variation between Astartes chapters than entire factions in Infinity. That's just entirely untrue, so that gets back to my point about how bootlickers will lie for the benefit of the company they feel subservient or allegiant to.

Deadnight wrote:
And there is also a personality that is hyper-critical and hyper entitled and just wants to watch the world burn.

Maybe. But smiling and taking your licks when GW serves up a plate of dogshit is a bigger problem.

Deadnight wrote:


Here's the thing in case you are obliquely referring to me. I don't rate gw for balance. Lets be clear about that. I've played gw games for 15 years. They've always been terrible. They don't and won't change. Do gw fail there? Absolutely. Theirs is a clunky flawed limited system. Only way to get value our of it is to front end and game build with the other guy. I think this is a good approach anyway so I can live with gw's rubbish in this regard.

I'm not arguing 'it can't be more balanced because if it was GW would do it." Never said that and I never will. Please retract that if you are implying that that is something I've said. I've played wargames for 15 years. Not just 40k. Privateer press- 3 armies, infinity - 3 armies. Various historicals. Some I've played competitively to a fairly high level in some(Idis reasonably OK in 40k years ago and i can claim one scalp of a UK masters winner in wmh and a bunch of seconds and thirds in local tourneys... back in wmh mk2). What I am saying is balance is a unicorn. Better isn't necessarily 'good enough'. I'm saying it will never be 'balanced enough' to make people happy or to provide the game that people think they're entitled to. And folks always seem oblivious or uninterested in the costs and consequences of any approach to balance a game. The workload to even do some of that on the part of the developers quickly becomes a game of vanishingly diminishing returns and I genuinely don't regard that dragon as worth chasing at the end of the day. Even the best balanced games I've played had go-to builds, trap units and winning strategies. There's other approaches in this hobby and for what it's worth, since I've embraced this instead of being critical about problems all of the time, I've never been happier.

By saying "balance is a unicorn" you're just reinforcing my point about your circular logic. If GW fails to balance something, it's not because they judiciously spent their resources elsewhere or are preserving some ineffable "soul." They're just making a worse game, and they can get away with that because they have such a huge chunk of the market share.

Hecaton, I'm starting to think you *might* have a slightly negative opinion of GW in general?

And *maybe* you are demonizing people that don't agree with your opinion? Because that's simpler than acknowledging that there is some good and some bad in this regard?

*Maybe?*

I have fun when I play 40k. I have yet to have a game in 9th where I felt I *could not* win. I think GW could do better, but I could do better too. So could you, so could the guy on the other computer, so could the guy on the other end of the internet. We all could do better.

I think it's good enough. I've played versions of 40k with much, MUCH worse balance than the current edition. Do I have ideas about how to achieve better balance? Yes. Would everyone agree with them? No. So that's part of the problem with the "unicorn" of perfect balance, is that we are all looking for a different unicorn. I like goats with just one horn. I have a buddy that looks for deer with just one horn. Another seeks a gazelle-like creature, while another searches for a one-horned rhino.

Balance is always a subjective experience. A sense of a game's balance is an emotional reaction, not an empirical one. So there's not a logical argument that can overcome, "I like it, so it's fine by me." And there doesn't need to be a malicious motive behind that. I have fun when I play 40k, I'm content with the state of the game, and I find it balanced well enough that I don't feel I'm screwed before I deploy models, nor do I think my opponents are screwed before they deploy models.

In the end, a more open minded and altogether less aggressive approach might give you a more satisfying experience with 40k and life in general.

It is definitely better than darker moments but far before we get anywhere near talking about perfect balance we should be expecting far better than the status quo.

As long as there are instantly obvious must takes and never takes within factions (and most egregiously factions themselves) there is plenty of room for improvement.

As long as "tactics" threads are full of "take more of these and less of those" as the vast majority of the discussion the outliers obviously still need work.

*All of this being said they have shown a massive improvement to how things were.

I agree that the balance can be better, and I’ve been impressed by GW’s willingness to create faq’s and address this... even if it had been paid content previously.

Release of this year’s points adjustments at no cost has been a tremendously positive move, in my opinion.

I guess what I’m getting at, is that I’m happy with the current state, and pleased that some effort is being directed at improving balance further. I’m a reasonably satisfied customer at the moment... and I couldn’t say that for the last few years. I just hope other people are having a similar positive experience, and aren’t just buying into the complaint of the month club.

I definitely have had to step back and realize despite some annoyances it is in a better state than almost any other time.

 greatbigtree wrote:

Balance is always a subjective experience. A sense of a game's balance is an emotional reaction, not an empirical one. So there's not a logical argument that can overcome, "I like it, so it's fine by me." And there doesn't need to be a malicious motive behind that. I have fun when I play 40k, I'm content with the state of the game, and I find it balanced well enough that I don't feel I'm screwed before I deploy models, nor do I think my opponents are screwed before they deploy models.

In the end, a more open minded and altogether less aggressive approach might give you a more satisfying experience with 40k and life in general.

Am not sure what his views are suppose to have with being aggresive. You ain't telling me that it is a subjective feeling that tau do not work in 9th or that other armies didn't work in 8th, and I am sure there were even mroe of those in other GW games or other editions of w40k. It is not an emotional reaction. If someone has a legion of the damned army and can't play it right now, or had a bretonian army, it is not a question of emotions or feeling, but very much empirical data.

Also have you ever played with or against an army which is generaly considered to be of the unbalanced type, and if yes and you still have fun. Was maybe the fun based on the fact that you spent time with friends and less on the actual game expiriance.

 greatbigtree wrote:
Hecaton, I'm starting to think you *might* have a slightly negative opinion of GW in general?

Sure, but it's because of things they did.

 greatbigtree wrote:
And *maybe* you are demonizing people that don't agree with your opinion? Because that's simpler than acknowledging that there is some good and some bad in this regard?

No. I got no problems with someone who says "Yes I acknowledge that GW has problems X Y and Z but I enjoy the games for whatever reason."

It's pretending problems X Y and Z don't exist that's the problem.

 greatbigtree wrote:
I have fun when I play 40k. I have yet to have a game in 9th where I felt I *could not* win. I think GW could do better, but I could do better too. So could you, so could the guy on the other computer, so could the guy on the other end of the internet. We all could do better.

Not the same thing at all. You're under no responsibility to cover for GW's mistakes. Do you play Tau? Do you just tell Tau players to "do better"?

That's an entirely separate issue from how you treat someone in a conversation.

 greatbigtree wrote:
I think it's good enough. I've played versions of 40k with much, MUCH worse balance than the current edition. Do I have ideas about how to achieve better balance? Yes. Would everyone agree with them? No. So that's part of the problem with the "unicorn" of perfect balance, is that we are all looking for a different unicorn. I like goats with just one horn. I have a buddy that looks for deer with just one horn. Another seeks a gazelle-like creature, while another searches for a one-horned rhino.

Balance is always a subjective experience. A sense of a game's balance is an emotional reaction, not an empirical one. So there's not a logical argument that can overcome, "I like it, so it's fine by me." And there doesn't need to be a malicious motive behind that. I have fun when I play 40k, I'm content with the state of the game, and I find it balanced well enough that I don't feel I'm screwed before I deploy models, nor do I think my opponents are screwed before they deploy models.

That's entirely incorrect. Balance is definitely determined empirically. Sure, there are gakky people (like seemingly a wide amount of Astartes players, strangely) who only feel it's balanced when they have an unfair advantage. But you can use math to show those people are wrong, and they shouldn't be indulged. I've definitely encountered 40k players who whine constantly when they're losing, even if their faction was massively overpowered. I remember back when I played WHF in 8e, there was a guy running the full Blood Knight deathstar in our league who got wrecked by an Orcs & Goblin player who was a contractor, and could guess ranges across a table to within 1/4". His stone throwers basically "sniped" his commander off the board. Afterwards, the guy just would not shut up about it, and wanted artillery banned or restricted in our league. He needed to have an overpowered faction to be happy in the game. Those people feel that, subjectively, but they're objectively wrong, and they make the community worse.

 greatbigtree wrote:
In the end, a more open minded and altogether less aggressive approach might give you a more satisfying experience with 40k and life in general.

Life is aight. But the great thing about other games is that the balance is far greater, and so you can enjoy the social aspect, the painting, the cool armies, *and* have a fun game.

@ Karol:

It is an emotional state. Contentment vs frustration. A sense of justice or sense of unfairness. And, empirically speaking, Tau can win 40k. I’ve just started them in 9th, and I’d say I’ve won 40% of my games. And I’m just learning. I’ve only played against them fewer times than I’ve played as them. I acknowledge they aren’t able to acquire objectives like other armies, but I like the play style. I enjoy a slightly uphill battle. Makes the victory sweeter.

@ Hecaton: I do play Tau. I picked up a bunch of 2nd hand models with the start of 9th, and have been enjoying playing them immensely.

Your final statement is a logical fallacy. You can not assert that I am entirely incorrect when I’m stating my internal state of mind. I know my mind, I exist within it. When I state that balance in regards to 40k is an emotional experience for me, that is absolutely accurate. Regardless of the data collected by many people and examined by many others, I am still content with the degree of balance. It could be improved, sure. But I’m happy with it.

Further, your claim that I feel a need to defend GW is also absurd. I do not. You assert authority over a subject you have utterly no knowledge of. Thereby you choose to display your lack of credible understanding of this subject. I can, and do express my contentment with the product GW has produced, with no concern to an “attack” on a corporate entity that has nothing to do with me. The absurdity of your statement is making me smile.

PS: you don’t need to quote my responses point by point. I can follow your statements without needing to see mine first.

So basically GW could make Cultists 15 points per model and if it "felt" balanced because they're cheaper than a Marine it's fine because subjective?

Why balance can be subjective, there are also clear indicators that can be signs it is off.

Even if you ignore simple, vs stats 40k has some problems that let it down and prevent it from finding a good balance.

This also a thought on how other games just don’t compare, with warmachine/hordes.

If you look at the two games.
Warmachine for all factions and sub factions will be often supported well to lesser extent to fit there themes.

Things like leadership is fully supported across the board.
You have both leader supported and leader seperate units.
Heavy and medium units that fit into heavy support role for both anti armor and anti infantry.

Light and medium infantry, with cavalry being a sub class of medium used for some factions.

Solo units with fits in as Sub leadership on the battlefield.

Flying and pathfinder filling in silmilar roles why being different mechanically.
Ranged and close combat is well supported where fitting themes and often even close combat themes will have access to shooting and shooting defence.
The big thing is that every faction has the units and design support to play on the same battlefields despite how different they are.
Often looking very different in how they play as well as how you build up your army.

With 40k they are often far less structured despite what they say.
With things like sisters of silence being put out to kind of die, and even now sort of just tacked on. With even a small effort to the rules could expand them to at least be an enjoyable force to play. Taking units from other imperial army’s and giving them fitting rules, like the rhino.
Now GW is probably holding that back so they can sell a whole army at some point and not dilute there customers. But that only works if you have a working plan for them before players get frustrated and just leave.

Flyers have a similar issue, there was little to no design thought put into them.
So when they got dedicated rules you ended up with support for several types, supersonic fighters, Drop/transport ships and hover/support vehicles.
This ended up with it all just being converted to rules more fitting to a game where half the factions effectively even now cannot really fight on a battlefield with flight as a major part of the game.

Imperial knights are another issue, when they come out they where basically a faction of Nope.
My own meta just fell apart as players choose rather than buy a bunch of units to just not play.
Again I think this lead to the game needing to dumb down the rules to fit them in after they threaten to break things.

GW cannot find a good balance between there desire for grimdark sci fi warfare and it’s Super cool power fantasy.
They want big massive guns and military forces with strategy as well as full army’s of close combat units that due to the low bar of design have little in the way to get there without tilting the rules far towards there favour.
They simply want the fantasy of a marine charge into a tau line, but rarely put the thought into design to make that play out well.

Even little things like transports get left out of a lot of design, and with the game being well suited for combined warfare they often prefer the easy options.

Terrain is getting better, but they cannot ever make them really good since they now have factions that could not ever use infantry based terrain for combined arms.
And it would require the team making the miniatures to take part in the game design process as well.
Which from interviews seems they are often left to there own and the rules have to fit them in at some point.

These are all ballance issues that are mostly seperate to a direct comparison, issue of support. Things could simply be better if they put in the effort and they really don’t have much to say they couldn’t as every other game could.

Infinity can use vehicles with relative ease as every faction is playing the same game to begin with. It’s a great system that we mess a lot with to do all kinds of wild things. Simply since it has that balance in design already.

Warmachine is the same, RPG, narrative and campaigns all work without any issue.
Castle sieges and building destruction all easy to toss into it with little issues at breaking things.
And at the end can play it Full hard mode as well.

GW just needs to plan more ahead, so many factions would have been great if they had got 1 miniature they needed a year and some thoughtful design to them as well.

This was a bit of rant, and more at basic design. Sorry

 greatbigtree wrote:
It is an emotional state. Contentment vs frustration. A sense of justice or sense of unfairness. And, empirically speaking, Tau can win 40k. I’ve just started them in 9th, and I’d say I’ve won 40% of my games. And I’m just learning. I’ve only played against them fewer times than I’ve played as them. I acknowledge they aren’t able to acquire objectives like other armies, but I like the play style. I enjoy a slightly uphill battle. Makes the victory sweeter.

Aight, how do they do against players who know what they're doing? What scenarios are you playing?

 greatbigtree wrote:
I do play Tau. I picked up a bunch of 2nd hand models with the start of 9th, and have been enjoying playing them immensely.

Your final statement is a logical fallacy. You can not assert that I am entirely incorrect when I’m stating my internal state of mind. I know my mind, I exist within it. When I state that balance in regards to 40k is an emotional experience for me, that is absolutely accurate. Regardless of the data collected by many people and examined by many others, I am still content with the degree of balance. It could be improved, sure. But I’m happy with it.

Further, your claim that I feel a need to defend GW is also absurd. I do not. You assert authority over a subject you have utterly no knowledge of. Thereby you choose to display your lack of credible understanding of this subject. I can, and do express my contentment with the product GW has produced, with no concern to an “attack” on a corporate entity that has nothing to do with me. The absurdity of your statement is making me smile.

PS: you don’t need to quote my responses point by point. I can follow your statements without needing to see mine first.

I clearly know more about it than you. Balance is not an entirely subjective thing; the implication is that if two factions are balanced in this game, they have an equal chance of winning when piloted by players of similar skill. Your feelings are irrelevant to that idea. And if you're content with the balance, and the balance is bad, it might indicate a failure of judgment on your part. You might be in Dunning-Kruger territory for how bad the balance is, you might have just invested into your first wargame and not be able to handle criticism of its balance because then all the money you spent on your Tau would feel like a waste, whatever.

Hecaton wrote:

 greatbigtree wrote:
It is an emotional state. Contentment vs frustration. A sense of justice or sense of unfairness. And, empirically speaking, Tau can win 40k. I’ve just started them in 9th, and I’d say I’ve won 40% of my games. And I’m just learning. I’ve only played against them fewer times than I’ve played as them. I acknowledge they aren’t able to acquire objectives like other armies, but I like the play style. I enjoy a slightly uphill battle. Makes the victory sweeter.

Aight, how do they do against players who know what they're doing?

I'd suspect that's his 60% losses....

Alright, no need to be rude to GreatBigTree. Rule #1.

But, GBT, at what point balance is good enough is subjective. If you're happy with 40k's balance, great! But... There are objective ways to gauge balance, though. And quite simply put, 40k doesn't really achieve significant balance.

That's not to say you can't have fun with 40k. I've enjoyed 40k for years, despite its awful balance. But that's because I play with friendly folk, who I could have a good time with regardless of what we're doing.

Despite balance being a subjective feeling for any given player, multiple other games have shown that actual data usually matches the subjective feeling of the people playing the game.

Of course, this can be muddied if there are issues in the game that frustrate people that have nothing to do with balance (for example, unintuitive/unclear rules or armies feeling like a chore to play).

I feel like I have to repeat this every time there is talk about balance and win rates. For pickup games 40% winrate isn't that bad when it is random matchups. In tournament settings it is an abysmal win rate. 55% winrate is massively overpowered in the same setting.

After the first round of a tournament more and more of the top games will be good armies vs good armies and the bottom games will be bad armies vs other bad armies. Which means that in the later rounds the field is mostly separated and play in different tiers and that makes the conclusion you can draw different from random pick up games.

Marines(best subfaction) and Harlequins might have a 55% win rate when facing mostly other good armies but it they were to pair up against one of worse ones they might have a 70-90% winrate.

The bad armies usually fight it out more to the bottom of the rankings and since both players can't lose one of them will win and introduce kind of a floor around 40%.

45% winrate armies against 55% armies usually have a 10-30/70-90 split when actually facing each other. Way worse balance than overall winrates might show.

At one point my faction on paper had a 45% winrate and people said they were fine. Against IH we had 10% and most other top tier factions we didn't have more than 30%. Good luck winning a tournament if you have a 1/10 to win against the meta army that is making up a third of the field. Winning 5 rounds would not be 0,45*0,45*0,45*0,45*0,45 but rather 0,45*0,30*0,20*0,1*0,1 as the likelihood of meeting IH or other top armies increased each round.

 Jidmah wrote:
Despite balance being a subjective feeling for any given player, multiple other games have shown that actual data usually matches the subjective feeling of the people playing the game.

Of course, this can be muddied if there are issues in the game that frustrate people that have nothing to do with balance (for example, unintuitive/unclear rules or armies feeling like a chore to play).

There is some argument that many other games have a smaller player base and/or smaller pool of factions/subfactions/options. I am not saying that my subjective feeling of 40k's balance is equal or better than most other miniatures war games I played. It's not. I am just saying that all the other mini war games I have played did have less people playing and therefor less discussed online about balance and a smaller pool to find any imbalances. Not to mention have far less 'spinning plates' in options so to speak.

Probably the miniatures war game I played the most and would have been the most skilled at was Dust Battlefield. The Battlefront Miniatures tabletop version of Dust Tactics. There were only 3 factions when I played with each have a fairly wide selection of unit options better than some 40k factions. I would say the factions were generally balanced though I personally felt SSU was best and the Allies were the worst. Though some areas around the world said the opposite. Speaking of the SSU, while I felt they had the best units in Dust. They most certainly had the largest range of stinkers with the faction basically consisting of either very good or very bad units. Often whole categories of units (such as super heavy infantry and flyers) being wholly worthless to field. With the flyer rules extending to all factions.

A popular tournament game during the 7th edition 40k days in my region was Bolt Action. Which is very balanced. Mostly because everyone has access to the same core unit archetypes and a focused spectrum of unit types. Often having exactly the same rules with only the model being different. I could literally make a U.S., German, British and Soviet army to have exactly the same units in them. The only real difference being the "National Traits". Even then, it was often argued that U.S. traits were considered too powerful and Germany traits were too weak. And again, there were categories of units that just weren't generally worth taking such as machine gun teams (so sad in a WWII game).

That's just the platoon/company 28mm games that most closely match 40k's scope I played a lot of. Yes, I think they were much better balanced. Or at very least want a player did with their army mattered more making what their list had matter less than how 40k plays. However, even those games had whole areas of bad balance that often did take but a single game fielding a bad unit (there were much few auto-take units) to know they just were a liability. So I do think GW games, and 40k specifically, is poorly balanced in comparison to a few other miniatures war games on the market. Or at very least, 40k is less balanced than those games to a generally noticeable level. Especially if any of those games I played at the most optimized level of power.

At the same time, I don't know if I have seen a miniatures war game with enough balanced to satisfy a whole of posters on Dakka. Especially the ones that seem to have an axe to grind toward 40k and Games Workshop. For me, 40k is good enough. Especially if you just play the models you have and like, not ensuring you keep up with the latest optimized hotness. Which has the added bonus that when the rules inevitably change in 6-months to a year the power of your army really doesn't. I could see 40k being extremely frustrating to play in groups seeking maximum optimization of army lists. I think 40k breaks down so fundamentally as to wonder why even bother playing that way.

Why do people keep believing that GW makes “oopsies” in their rules?

Because it makes the players feel smart?

What would you rather want to hear, that your grandma forgot something this year, or that she likes your sisters better then you, and that is why you didn't get any presents this year and they did?

Same here. It is much better to keep on playing and buying, thinking that next time the rules are going to be fun. Specially as sometimes they actualy are. Then sit down and think that you spend thousands of , waited for 10+ years and then GW just removed your faction and deleted the game you liked. IMO a much less healthier way of dealing with stuff.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 greatbigtree wrote:
@ Karol:

It is an emotional state. Contentment vs frustration. A sense of justice or sense of unfairness. And, empirically speaking, Tau can win 40k. I’ve just started them in 9th, and I’d say I’ve won 40% of my games. And I’m just learning. I’ve only played against them fewer times than I’ve played as them. I acknowledge they aren’t able to acquire objectives like other armies, but I like the play style. I enjoy a slightly uphill battle. Makes the victory sweeter.

Nah. when I see the goon post data based on data from a few thousand games, and there is no * saying, that tau games were so few that it is hard to judge their win ratios, and the data shows that tau are bad, and get really bad when they go second. This is not a question of emotions of feelings. I do not care about the tau, further then me playing against them from time to time. I am also not good player, nor do I play a good faction, and even out of that I don't play the optimised list. I do like 9th incomperably better then 8th, even with all the bad it has. But non of the judgments have anything to do with emotions.
I take medicin to not run on emotions, and I really wouldn't want to start to run on them, because of w40k. Which actualy did happen in 8th, mostly due to me being new and a slow learner.

 Saturmorn Carvilli wrote:
There is some argument that many other games have a smaller player base and/or smaller pool of factions/subfactions/options. I am not saying that my subjective feeling of 40k's balance is equal or better than most other miniatures war games I played. It's not. I am just saying that all the other mini war games I have played did have less people playing and therefor less discussed online about balance and a smaller pool to find any imbalances. Not to mention have far less 'spinning plates' in options so to speak.

40k is not a special snowflake that and it's player base is not particularly large either. It's fairly safe to assume that 40k does not have vastly more than 1 million players, if they have that many at all. That still is a lot (DotA2 has similar numbers), but not exceptional: WoW still has five times as many, MtG has at least 40 times as many players, League Of Legends more than 100 times as many.

<miniature games>

You need to accept that miniature games are not special in any way in regards of game development. The main aspect which distinguishes them from regular table top games, TCG, P&P and video games is the hobby part, which has zero impact on the game itself or its balance.