Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Platuan4th wrote:

 kodos wrote:

 Platuan4th wrote:

 kodos wrote:

 Platuan4th wrote:
No, it wasn't. 5th Ed was when we learned GW's idea of playtesting was having everyone in the studio play a big game where the planetary governor could become possessed by a Greater Daemon.

might have been different in your country, but without the competitive scene pushing the game, no one would have played 40k at all in the local clubs or stores

I can guarantee you that was an issue with your country/area and not a RoW or GW issue in 5th.

so people actually liked the mess GW called a game for casual pick up games, no comp/restrictions, no scenarios, no community FAQ/Errata or house rules?

Despite what Warmachine players would like people to believe, 40K has always been THE game where you could find players nearly every where you went. I moved literally across the US TWICE during 5th ed and never had issues finding casual games or groups in all 3 states. And while I'm not across the pond, going by Ammobunker at the time, that was fairly common in the UK, too. They, Warhammer World, and other groups regularly ran narrative campaign weekends with massive rule/fluff packs back then.

I recently retired after 20 years in the military and getting in 40K games was never an issue no matter what state I lived in/visited (FL, CA, NC, SC, GA, VA, AZ ). This spanned 3rd through 9th Edition. I always found other players and tourneys for 40K. Now back in Florida and it was super easy to meet new folks and get games/tourneys in locally. 40K is/has been such an easy way to meet folks in a new area regardless of location in the U.S.

 Platuan4th wrote:

 kodos wrote:

 Platuan4th wrote:

 kodos wrote:

so people actually liked the mess GW called a game for casual pick up games, no comp/restrictions, no scenarios, no community FAQ/Errata or house rules?

Despite what Warmachine players would like people to believe, 40K has always been THE game where you could find players nearly every where you went. I moved literally across the US TWICE during 5th ed and never had issues finding casual games or groups in all 3 states.

my question was not if you found someone to play but if you used the original rules from GW without any modifications or house rules?

House Rules have ALWAYS been a part of the game, even more so for competitive than for casual. They still are. More often than not, the casual games I've played didn't have any issue playing by the rules without house rules because *gaspshock* most casual players don't care enough to waste time arguing about that when we could be playing.

again, the competitive scene kept the game running during the time GW did not care because they provided all the things the players needed
except in your region because no one used any house rules, FAQ/Errata, scenarios by that time (as there were non provided by GW, and everything else was spread by the competitive scene)

I would say this is a unique situation as I have seen way more people using the ETC/ITC rules for casual games than going with the original rulebook scenarios during 5th-7th


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sarigar wrote:
I recently retired after 20 years in the military and getting in 40K games was never an issue no matter what state I lived in/visited (FL, CA, NC, SC, GA, VA, AZ ). This spanned 3rd through 9th Edition. I always found other players and tourneys for 40K. Now back in Florida and it was super easy to meet new folks and get games/tourneys in locally. 40K is/has been such an easy way to meet folks in a new area regardless of location in the U.S.

but if you played tourney you are not the group of players he is referring too


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Platuan4th wrote:
Also, that's moving the goal posts. Your original point was "tournaments drove the survival of the game in 4th/5th", which was the whole patently false point I was disproving.

no, I said the competitive scene kept the game alive, as those were the people running the local communities, providing all the things for free GW is asking money now
the 2 week FAQ not coming from GW (as no FAQ ever came from them) but form the competitive players, same as scenarios or rules adjustments

if there would have been no competitive scene during that time, the game would have not been that popular

 kodos wrote:

again, the competitive scene kept the game running during the time GW did not care because they provided all the things the players needed

In your area. There was no ONE set of house rules or tournament rules back then, no agreed upon set of "balance adjustments". Most house rules were about flow or ease of play, not balance or things the game actually needed(hell, people couldn't even agree on what they "needed" out of the game). Saying the "competitive scene" drove that is patently false because the majority of players weren't competitive players and practically every group and store had their own set of house rules for all types of games, even those that didn't run events.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 kodos wrote:
no, I said the competitive scene kept the game alive, as those were the people running the local communities...

if there would have been no competitive scene during that time, the game would have not been that popular

Patently false. Again, the "competitive scene" is actually a fairly small fraction of the niche. YOUR AREA had the local communities run by "the competitive scene", that was far from a universal truth. I literally pointed you to at least one large "community" that was run by narrative casual players.

no, I said the competitive scene kept the game alive, as those were the people running the local communities, providing all the things for free GW is asking money now

What now?

Not sure what 'community' you were in, but no was providing anything, let alone for free, on this continent.

Competitive scene here was largely run by stores, and they wanted an entry fee for their events.

 Platuan4th wrote:
There was no ONE set of house rules or tournament rules back then, no agreed upon set of "balance adjustments".

Voss wrote:
on this continent.

yeah, I see that the US was/is different from Europe. So far what you had in 7th with ITC, this was already a thing during 5th in Europe

Voss wrote:
What now?

the "now" that the problem comes from that 40k is now a competitive game, which again blames the wrong people
being competitive is not the problem, its GWs idea of what a competitive game is and the execution of those ideas

everyone being able to access the changes for free, with the updates coming in time and digital, wich was already the case in the past and it worked

 kodos wrote:

 Platuan4th wrote:
There was no ONE set of house rules or tournament rules back then, no agreed upon set of "balance adjustments".

Voss wrote:
on this continent.

yeah, I see that the US was/is different from Europe. So far what you had in 7th with ITC, this was already a thing during 5th in Europe

I'm well aware of the ETC, even back then, some US WHFB tournaments used it.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
But guys, GW changed. They have a Facebook page and stuff...

Sorry - I might be critical of the business model here, but the book offers a lot of good changes.

Completely negated by the things it MASSIVELY fethed up. Or did you really thing that Blightlords and Deathshrouds were just as good as Vulkite Contemptors, so desevered basically the same nerf.

 kodos wrote:

 Platuan4th wrote:
There was no ONE set of house rules or tournament rules back then, no agreed upon set of "balance adjustments".

Voss wrote:
on this continent.

yeah, I see that the US was/is different from Europe. So far what you had in 7th with ITC, this was already a thing during 5th in Europe

Voss wrote:
What now?

the "now" that the problem comes from that 40k is now a competitive game, which again blames the wrong people
being competitive is not the problem, its GWs idea of what a competitive game is and the execution of those ideas

everyone being able to access the changes for free, with the updates coming in time and digital, wich was already the case in the past and it worked

Sorry, that 'What now?' was an expression of disbelief, not a question of time.

Like Plantuan4th, I was aware of the ETC and other 'we've fixed it (if you play OUR way)' groups. We didn't use them anywhere I played. Apart from some alternate scenarios (after one disastrous store tournament to try them out, we ignored and just played out of the book), they didn't really provide 'changes' or updates I can recall (apart from arbitrary unit caps based on which factions they loved or hated).

To me, competitive/casual is just the same as it was then (except GW wastes too much time and effort trying to pretend they're fundamentally different, rather than interlinked). Heck, the (not so) LGS to the west of me just opened back up last week to in-person games with a slow-grow narrative league. (The stores to the south and east still aren't open to games)

gungo wrote:
How did orks take a bigger hit in chapter approved then drukari? This just shows how out of touch both the Gw rules team is and how biased the playtesters are with orks. Orks been sitting at 55% win rates since the codex dropped and drukari has been anywhere from 60-65% for almost a year.

Gungo, this was my biggest WTF from the entire CA as well. Orkz have 1 really competitive build that relies on a host of buffs and shenanigans. We won 1 major event....1! and the entire game world freaked out and demanded nerfs across the board. Our buggies got beaten to death with a nerf hammer, our Kommandos went up 20%, Boss on Squig went up 20%+ Killrig etc. And then to make everyone feel like GW understands what they are doing they handed out miniscule (read as USELESS) buffs to other units that doesn't go anywhere close to addressing the problems.

And just to really put the cherry on top....some of those "Nerfs" aren't nerfs for Drukhari. The Incubi went up in points...but their transport they are basically required to take went down a corresponding amount. Um.... Yeah.

Someone tell GW it isn't 2001 anymore and releasing balance updates via printed books makes no sense.

artific3r wrote:
Someone tell GW it isn't 2001 anymore and releasing balance updates via printed books makes no sense.

This is the same company that only a few years bragged that they didn't do any market research or asked their customers what they actually want (see my signature quote? its taken verbatim from a GW investor meeting like in 2013 or so). They probably still think most people use dial-up...

Effectively there's now a £50 annual sub to play competitive 40k, which sucks.

I think that's it for me as a competitive 40k player. I don't have huge amounts of time on my hands so spending a weekend at an event playing what I now think is simply a bad game just isn't worth it.

The issue as I see it is that the process that happens at GW for 40k design is just terrible. I don't claim to know what mixture of rules designers, "suits" and the idiotic system of printing rules updates 6 months late on dead trees in 2022 is to blame. Regardless of the cause, the effect is a bad product that isn't worth my time.

Something I find really weird is that there seems to be a crazy imbalance of intelligence between the players and GW's system. "Intelligence" is a pretty controversial word to use here but I think can't think of a better one. You have all these super clever people on Goonhammer, TTT and so on poring over GW's latest offering, trying to understand what on earth they were thinking. But there's nothing to really analyse at GW's end - they just do stupid stuff, which is why it's so hard for all these intelligent people to understand.

For the very small amount it's worth, my analysis is that the points changes they've made are about internal balance within codexes, rather than fixing the overall meta. People aren't buying paragon warsuits or gladiators, so they get a price cut. Sales win because players bought something else instead previously, and now (in theory) we need to buy paragons and gladiators. Except actually we don't do that because they are still bad, and now decent units like Redemptors are worse.

There are lots of good games out there. I'm really enjoying Titanicus, Kill team looks interesting, blood bowl is always fun and I've had some fun games of bolt action lately. Maybe I'll even try AoS.

Bring on 10th edition and down with IGOUGO.

artific3r wrote:
Someone tell GW it isn't 2001 anymore and releasing balance updates via printed books makes no sense.

Exactly. Literally every table top game has a rules, stats, army builder and game manager app now and most of them are even free.

Maybe im just old and have never like GW "rules" or practices but the fact that so many people put up with this and lap it up baffles me.

ERJAK wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
But guys, GW changed. They have a Facebook page and stuff...

Sorry - I might be critical of the business model here, but the book offers a lot of good changes.

Completely negated by the things it MASSIVELY fethed up. Or did you really thing that Blightlords and Deathshrouds were just as good as Vulkite Contemptors, so desevered basically the same nerf.

I'm talking more about the missions stuff.

Deathguard is like they're still thinking DG are strong and the internal balance is wonky so they punched the common stuff. I don't necessarily thing PM should go down as I don't want to start the race to the bottom again so I think it's good that there aren't large drops on primary units.

Ultimately it's going to come down to missions and secondaries and the February Dataslate.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote:

artific3r wrote:
Someone tell GW it isn't 2001 anymore and releasing balance updates via printed books makes no sense.

This is the same company that only a few years bragged that they didn't do any market research or asked their customers what they actually want (see my signature quote? its taken verbatim from a GW investor meeting like in 2013 or so). They probably still think most people use dial-up...

A few years != almost a decade...which is like next year from your quote. You're not even under the same CEO anymore.

There's more yet to change, but a lot has changed even if people want to play coy.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

Mandragola wrote:
People aren't buying paragon warsuits or gladiators, so they get a price cut. Sales win because players bought something else instead previously, and now (in theory) we need to buy paragons and gladiators. Except actually we don't do that because they are still bad, and now decent units like Redemptors are worse.

Should Paragon Warsuits not get a points cut? How exactly are sales winning out if you're still not going to use those models?

 Daedalus81 wrote:

ERJAK wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
But guys, GW changed. They have a Facebook page and stuff...

Sorry - I might be critical of the business model here, but the book offers a lot of good changes.

Completely negated by the things it MASSIVELY fethed up. Or did you really thing that Blightlords and Deathshrouds were just as good as Vulkite Contemptors, so desevered basically the same nerf.

I'm talking more about the missions stuff.

Deathguard is like they're still thinking DG are strong and the internal balance is wonky so they punched the common stuff. I don't necessarily thing PM should go down as I don't want to start the race to the bottom again so I think it's good that there aren't large drops on primary units.

Ultimately it's going to come down to missions and secondaries and the February Dataslate.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote:

artific3r wrote:
Someone tell GW it isn't 2001 anymore and releasing balance updates via printed books makes no sense.

This is the same company that only a few years bragged that they didn't do any market research or asked their customers what they actually want (see my signature quote? its taken verbatim from a GW investor meeting like in 2013 or so). They probably still think most people use dial-up...

A few years != almost a decade...which is like next year from your quote. You're not even under the same CEO anymore.

There's more yet to change, but a lot has changed even if people want to play coy.

The changes made to the points were clearly intended to be almost entirely internally focused (except for Necrons) but were obviously done with ZERO consideration as to how they effect the factions relative to each other.

I keep using Sisters for these examples but that's the army I'm most familiar with AND one that was hit exceptionally hard by this asinine mindset. They are NOT the only army, however, and Guard, Deathguard, and Chaos Daemons all faced exactly the same problem.

The most commonly used units in the SoB book are Sacresanct, Dominions, Morvenn, and Retributors. All of these units received substantial hits.

The most unusable units in the SoB book are Paragons, Castigators, Exorcists, and Immolators. These saw paltry buffs.

In a purely numerical sense, these units have been brought closer to each other in terms effectiveness. In real life play the drops to the vehicles are irrelevant and the increases on common units causes basically every single build of the army to increase by a flat 100ish points. Some of these changes can be mitigated but none are mitigated by OTHER changes in this book. This is terrible design, ESPECIALLY considering this impact is felt hardest by midtier armies.

The mission changes are largely irrelevant. Making ROD harder to score and having two primaries isn't going to suddenly justify an out of left field 100pt hike on an army that just lost subfaction souping.

So CA has already done considerable DAMAGE to the factional balance of the game, especially in the middle tiers. We're now fully reliant on the February update to not only reign in the already overbuffed Custodes, Crusher Stampede, Drukhari, and possibly Tau, we need it to fix the 5 or 6 factions this book broke.

We were 100% better off in terms of the health of the game before this book came out.

In regards to Paragons, this is an example of pure incompetence. Between this and the Strats we've already seen from the BR supplement, it's clear they want to push Paragons to some degree. HOWEVER, they've failed to realize how bad they were to start. 30pts is nowhere near enough to get them on the table anyway.

ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU NERF EVERYTHING PARAGONS SYNGERIZE WITH BY MORE THAN THE DROP TO PARAGONS! If you're going to use these books to exploit your consumers AT LEAST do a good job with it!

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 CKO wrote:

 Platuan4th wrote:

 CKO wrote:
I think making the game competitive has proven to be profitable. That is why we see the type of changes GW is making.

They became their most profitable during a time in which tournaments couldn't be run. I don't think your hypothesis bears out.

LVO has 1000 players majority of them flying in to play 40k, I know what I am talking about.

I think you missed what they said.

GW had a banner year when countries were locked down and hardly any tournaments were played.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:
Watch the 40$ book that'll be outdated in six months require a massive FAQ two weeks after relase.

$40 is pretty outrageous at this point. I really hope people don't buy this, but the pre-orders for my store were already locked in a week ago.

That's some damn expensive toilet paper right there.

I don't consider Sisters middle, but that's beside the point.

There's so much new info flowing in with what seems like T'au landing in two weeks on top of new mechanics from GSC that I think the points are basically toss up. Necrons are big winners, but it all comes down to how everything interacts with missions and new armies.

What an awful book. Points changes that should have been free, rules updates that should have been free, and missions that are just more of the same with slightly different maps for the deployment and objective.

It's actually pretty insulting that they then followed this up with more custodes points updates that are free and take precedent over this publication. Like, there's all the proof you need that these points updates could have been free.

I can only pray that people don't buy this, and that those that do feel burned by it and don't buy the next one.

SemperMortis wrote:

gungo wrote:
How did orks take a bigger hit in chapter approved then drukari? This just shows how out of touch both the Gw rules team is and how biased the playtesters are with orks. Orks been sitting at 55% win rates since the codex dropped and drukari has been anywhere from 60-65% for almost a year.

Gungo, this was my biggest WTF from the entire CA as well. Orkz have 1 really competitive build that relies on a host of buffs and shenanigans. We won 1 major event....1! and the entire game world freaked out and demanded nerfs across the board. Our buggies got beaten to death with a nerf hammer, our Kommandos went up 20%, Boss on Squig went up 20%+ Killrig etc. And then to make everyone feel like GW understands what they are doing they handed out miniscule (read as USELESS) buffs to other units that doesn't go anywhere close to addressing the problems.

And just to really put the cherry on top....some of those "Nerfs" aren't nerfs for Drukhari. The Incubi went up in points...but their transport they are basically required to take went down a corresponding amount. Um.... Yeah.

People are blaming the fact this is because the print book is already outdated from 4-6 months ago… the fact is 4-6 months ago this was still complete crap point adjustments… this is obviously a rules team that’s out of touch with thier own game and a bunch of biased playtesters who mostly play certain armies and don’t play/understand other armies making blatantly piss poor balance suggestions. Drukari point changes even 6 months ago was bad. The beastboss on squig point adjustment is just bad (every other warlord choice even better choices like warboss on bike are 60pts cheaper) .. the limit to 1 unit of buggies is just bad (completely negates kustom jobs on buggies). Just complete and utter lack of understanding of codexs from both the rules team and playtesters… I can’t see how anyone can look at what they did to drukari and say it’s a point balance fix or death guard or myriad of just bad internal and external balance updates with these points… fortunately GW is going to try to play whack a mole with thier quarterly balance updates to fix this bad game balance. But if they don’t butcher drukari in the February update I will lose all faith in Gw rules team having any clue what they are doing anymore.

drbored wrote:
What an awful book. Points changes that should have been free, rules updates that should have been free, and missions that are just more of the same with slightly different maps for the deployment and objective.

And now they're going to release them twice a year!

Deathguard point changes…LOL. Thanks for the out of season April’s fools joke.

A whole team of people that make a living determining how to make products as profitable as possible determined that pushing these books was a good idea... as a customer that really hasn’t been buying much, I’ve been spending my time on my grey pile of shame waiting for the rules to feel like a solid investment. I’ve started to lose interest in 40k because of the constant churn of rules and obvious shameless cash grabs like this one...

If points balance changes were going to be free and just meant to shake the meta up (while leaving every army a viable build),, the rules better edited and audited and play tested, then I I would feel like the game is worth investing time and money into. The only thing keeping me interested in 40k at this point is pretty much the lore and to a lesser degree the models. And that is wearing thin. At least I can take this time to work through my pile of shame while I ponder on whether or not I want to remain with GW or move on to a different system and manufacturer...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Basically I really don’t understand what anyone involved in the decision to sell these books is thinking. Digital updates have the wonderful advantage of making the game more accessible, not needing the logistics to distribute books nor the resources to manufacture them and no warehouse space to store the books. And customers can spend their money on models instead. And it can flood the hobby world with exposure of their wonderful “good will” of doing what they probably should have been doing for some time,

Done with 9th edition. We are playing 5th. Main rulebook and codex is all we need. Not a perfect game by any means, but for us it's the best version of 40k.

 Daedalus81 wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Mandragola wrote:
People aren't buying paragon warsuits or gladiators, so they get a price cut. Sales win because players bought something else instead previously, and now (in theory) we need to buy paragons and gladiators. Except actually we don't do that because they are still bad, and now decent units like Redemptors are worse.

Should Paragon Warsuits not get a points cut? How exactly are sales winning out if you're still not going to use those models?

Yes of course they should have got a price cut. But the actually good units in the codex shouldn’t have got a price rise at the same time. The overall effect is to make an average army worse by taking away its efficient tools, while turning something useless into something still pretty bad.

GW has attempted to fix internal balance within codexes by levelling out those costs. They haven’t attempted to correct balance between codexes. The effect is to make the game’s balance worse. DE haven’t suffered because everything was already good but average books have lost their few good options.

My theory is that this approach is driven by sales, or lack of sales. People aren’t buying bad stuff so make it cheaper, and make the stuff they are buying worse. But the outcome is likely to be that people give up on sisters altogether rather than trying to compete with DE.

Mandragola wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Mandragola wrote:
People aren't buying paragon warsuits or gladiators, so they get a price cut. Sales win because players bought something else instead previously, and now (in theory) we need to buy paragons and gladiators. Except actually we don't do that because they are still bad, and now decent units like Redemptors are worse.

Should Paragon Warsuits not get a points cut? How exactly are sales winning out if you're still not going to use those models?

Yes of course they should have got a price cut. But the actually good units in the codex shouldn’t have got a price rise at the same time. The overall effect is to make an average army worse by taking away its efficient tools, while turning something useless into something still pretty bad.

GW has attempted to fix internal balance within codexes by levelling out those costs. They haven’t attempted to correct balance between codexes. The effect is to make the game’s balance worse. DE haven’t suffered because everything was already good but average books have lost their few good options.

My theory is that this approach is driven by sales, or lack of sales. People aren’t buying bad stuff so make it cheaper, and make the stuff they are buying worse. But the outcome is likely to be that competitive hyper focused waac people give up on sisters altogether rather than trying to compete with DE.

Fixed that for you, gotta remember you're talking about the minority, most players play the army the like and collect regardless of the points changes, rather than chasing a meta.

Dudeface wrote:

Mandragola wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Mandragola wrote:
People aren't buying paragon warsuits or gladiators, so they get a price cut. Sales win because players bought something else instead previously, and now (in theory) we need to buy paragons and gladiators. Except actually we don't do that because they are still bad, and now decent units like Redemptors are worse.

Should Paragon Warsuits not get a points cut? How exactly are sales winning out if you're still not going to use those models?

Yes of course they should have got a price cut. But the actually good units in the codex shouldn’t have got a price rise at the same time. The overall effect is to make an average army worse by taking away its efficient tools, while turning something useless into something still pretty bad.

GW has attempted to fix internal balance within codexes by levelling out those costs. They haven’t attempted to correct balance between codexes. The effect is to make the game’s balance worse. DE haven’t suffered because everything was already good but average books have lost their few good options.

My theory is that this approach is driven by sales, or lack of sales. People aren’t buying bad stuff so make it cheaper, and make the stuff they are buying worse. But the outcome is likely to be that competitive hyper focused waac people give up on sisters altogether rather than trying to compete with DE.

Fixed that for you, gotta remember you're talking about the minority, most players play the army the like and collect regardless of the points changes, rather than chasing a meta.

Whatever. You can pretend that balance only affects tournaments if you want but that’s obviously not true. It affects everyone - and arguably “competitive hyper focused waac“ least. They can read a book and know not to buy the dross that GW has failed to make work. Kids go out and waste their limited funds on it, then lose every game.

I’ve got a couple of younger cousins. When they were teenagers their parents bought them some 40K orks and marines. The one with orks lost every game so they decided it wasn’t worth the money or hassle, and stopped. I think about that quite a lot (often when GW releases a hopelessly unbalanced battle box or starter) because it must happen all the time. And maybe my cousins were right to quit all those years ago.

drbored wrote:
It's actually pretty insulting that they then followed this up with more custodes points updates that are free and take precedent over this publication. Like, there's all the proof you need that these points updates could have been free.

Unless I've missed something - like people comparing preview copies of the new MFM to the Custodes PDF - all they've done is release the Codex: Custodes page of the MFM as a PDF given how close the two releases are, when there should've been more of a gap. The article around the PDF didn't read like "this replaces the page of the MFM", as far as I could see.

Dudeface wrote:

Mandragola wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Mandragola wrote:
People aren't buying paragon warsuits or gladiators, so they get a price cut. Sales win because players bought something else instead previously, and now (in theory) we need to buy paragons and gladiators. Except actually we don't do that because they are still bad, and now decent units like Redemptors are worse.

Should Paragon Warsuits not get a points cut? How exactly are sales winning out if you're still not going to use those models?

Yes of course they should have got a price cut. But the actually good units in the codex shouldn’t have got a price rise at the same time. The overall effect is to make an average army worse by taking away its efficient tools, while turning something useless into something still pretty bad.

GW has attempted to fix internal balance within codexes by levelling out those costs. They haven’t attempted to correct balance between codexes. The effect is to make the game’s balance worse. DE haven’t suffered because everything was already good but average books have lost their few good options.

My theory is that this approach is driven by sales, or lack of sales. People aren’t buying bad stuff so make it cheaper, and make the stuff they are buying worse. But the outcome is likely to be that competitive hyper focused waac people give up on sisters altogether rather than trying to compete with DE.

Fixed that for you, gotta remember you're talking about the minority, most players play the army the like and collect regardless of the points changes, rather than chasing a meta.

Ah yes, the two types of people in the world. Competitive hyper focused waac and rest. So binary and easy to remember. Probably also wrong as it reduces complexity of people to simplistic tropes.

People don't need to chase a meta to feel like their army is doing nothing on the table, and that will drive people away from factions. I know a lot of people want to believe in the mindless consumer, but the fanatics are the exceptions, not the norm.

 Eldarsif wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

Mandragola wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Mandragola wrote:
People aren't buying paragon warsuits or gladiators, so they get a price cut. Sales win because players bought something else instead previously, and now (in theory) we need to buy paragons and gladiators. Except actually we don't do that because they are still bad, and now decent units like Redemptors are worse.

Should Paragon Warsuits not get a points cut? How exactly are sales winning out if you're still not going to use those models?

Yes of course they should have got a price cut. But the actually good units in the codex shouldn’t have got a price rise at the same time. The overall effect is to make an average army worse by taking away its efficient tools, while turning something useless into something still pretty bad.

GW has attempted to fix internal balance within codexes by levelling out those costs. They haven’t attempted to correct balance between codexes. The effect is to make the game’s balance worse. DE haven’t suffered because everything was already good but average books have lost their few good options.

My theory is that this approach is driven by sales, or lack of sales. People aren’t buying bad stuff so make it cheaper, and make the stuff they are buying worse. But the outcome is likely to be that competitive hyper focused waac people give up on sisters altogether rather than trying to compete with DE.

Fixed that for you, gotta remember you're talking about the minority, most players play the army the like and collect regardless of the points changes, rather than chasing a meta.

Ah yes, the two types of people in the world. Competitive hyper focused waac and rest. So binary and easy to remember. Probably also wrong as it reduces complexity of people to simplistic tropes.

People don't need to chase a meta to feel like their army is doing nothing on the table, and that will drive people away from factions. I know a lot of people want to believe in the mindless consumer, but the fanatics are the exceptions, not the norm.

Beyond that guy in general, I've never head of anyone ditching their entire army over minor point tweaks. The vast majority of players are not in tournaments, the vast majority play what rhey like to play. Contrary to the above the vast majority of the game will not be going "gak my Exorcist only dropped 15 points, durkhari are top of the tables, better go buy them!".

So yes, if someone is trashing a collection over a points rebalance because their army isn't the "best", they're conforming with that trope. Lots of people just play casual balanced lists that can play reasonably nicely with most lists from most factions outside of the tournament window.

Mandragola wrote:

I’ve got a couple of younger cousins. When they were teenagers their parents bought them some 40K orks and marines. The one with orks lost every game so they decided it wasn’t worth the money or hassle, and stopped. I think about that quite a lot (often when GW releases a hopelessly unbalanced battle box or starter) because it must happen all the time. And maybe my cousins were right to quit all those years ago.

This situation is equally likely to happen even under a 'perfectly' balanced game though. A new player picking up something like Drukhari right now doesn't automatically get to win their first games just because that faction currently posts 60%+ win rates in a competitive environment. If they're up against more experienced players they're going to make the usual new player mistakes and may still lose. Then if GW manage to balance Drukhari in a future update and bring them in line with other faction winrates, new Drukhari players are even less likely to win initial games.

Further more, competitive rankings and faction balance comparisons are a result of an environment where all game rules are used to their fullest extent. How many brand new 40k players understand how to "play the mission" rather than just trying to kill enemy units? Even two equally skilled new players will get disjointed results if they're using factions where one has been successfully balanced around objective play or special rules over raw killing power. Think GSC versus Space Marines as an obvious example; the latter is far more forgiving of mistakes than the former.

That isn't an argument against improving game balance, just pointing out that the process doesn't help new players to the same extent people assume it would.