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Deadnight wrote:

Toofast wrote:

TangoTwoBravo wrote:

I am not sure why non-tourney players feel the need to impose their desires on something that other people do?

That's my favorite part about the argument. They don't even see the irony of "competitive play sucks and you're all having fun wrong...so here's how should change competitive play (that I never participate in)"

** All of his post **

I fully agree and exalt.

I don't read anyone here saying competitive play sucks or is bad wrong fun. Someone mentioned an alternative version of competitive play involving set lists. Id actually be all for that, but just as a format, not to force everyone to do it.

Fun trivia fact: I ran such a tournament series back in 4th edition as a rogue trader regional. The feedback was about 50% thought it was fun as hell and were happy that the table skill meant for, and the other 50% boycotted me and sent me all caps hate mail for about a month after the event saying people like me ruin tournaments and that they hoped I got butt cancer and died. (the butt cancer wish would crop up again when we published azyr for age of sigmar when people cried out that we killed listbuilding by making the point system too balanced - I don't know what it is about butt cancer and people wishing it on others in the tabletop gaming space but it seems to be a common wish )

I don't ever advocate for a format to be the only one, I am and have always been more about options and multiple formats.

I don't hate competitive play, I did it for a full decade and had a blast. I played in 14 different grand tournaments, a little over 50 regional rogue traders and god knows how many local tournaments for both 40k and fantasy, traveled all over the united states, and had a great time doing so.

What I've advocated in this thread is that GW make the distinction between pick up matched games, and tournament games. Thats important because house rules are seen as satan and it would be nice for GW to explicitly lay out boundaries because like it or not those boundaries are "official" and bear more weight than someone like me trying to get a matched campaign game where I make the table not symetrical and put a special rule for the scenario that makes it night fighting for this one time and has a unit restriction where you can't take the same units more than once (highlander format) because of the narrative without having people screaming in my face or telling me to go outside so we can fight in the parking lot (also true story though that was age of sigmar and that happened when I dared run a warhammer world scenario for halloween for our GW store since that was houseruled nonsense that punished all competitive players)

That its just as "official' to play a game of 40k (or sigmar) without tournament rules in effect and that not all matched games are tournament games. And in my opinion narrative games could use a more restrictive list building structure, because you don't always get to cherry pick the absolute best and sometimes the army should be composed of mostly your troop choices which you have more access to. The tournament players who hate that are free to stay in their more open ended building game and neither side can scream at the other for playing "houseruled nonsense".

It's easy enough to make the difference, if you say you are looking for a 100 PL casual Matched Play game with <insert homebrew mission> you've said all you need to say. If I say 2k casual GT22 or 2k competitive GT22 I've said all I need to say. If someone would like to bring a competitive list to a casual game or a casual list to a competitive game they can ask if that's okay.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Why not just go back to how it was.
Ge makes their rules that are geared toward a less tournament style game play.
Then have indipendent originization make their tournament rules, and have GW sponsor said organization.

That gives the people who just wanna have a fun, non sweaty game, get their rules for GW.
Tournament and competative play still exists with officially recognized 3rd party tournament rules, and because GW would sponsor them, it would would give them validity to be recognized by the tournament community and offer separate data sheets for them

For example narrative / casual play could bring back the things that were a lot more thematic like templates facings, armor vulues things like that, but then official tournament data sheets that just operate as if it was now. No facings, no av, ECT ECT.

This way GW could balance one aspect of the game without effecting the other.

Garbage balance, templates and 25% obscured helps bring out the sweatiness in people. Nobody will recognize a single 3rd party for tournament rules so you end up with splinter factions that each believe their version of competitive 40k is the right and balanced way to do things. A splintered game would take away from one of 40k's main selling points, being the most played miniature game in the world. GW is already producing as many rules as ever for narrative 40k, vehicle facings are not something every casual or narrative player wants.

Narrative play is inherently already more splintered, whether the people next town over think your campaign is silly shouldn't matter to you, you're not going to play narrative with them and GW doesn't have to care as long as they are keeping you as happy customers. You have the freedom to introduce vehicle facings and templates, you could even make it unique to just one faction if you wanted. Homebrewing is much harder for competitive play, even if it's just missions.

 auticus wrote:

Deadnight wrote:

Toofast wrote:

TangoTwoBravo wrote:

I am not sure why non-tourney players feel the need to impose their desires on something that other people do?

That's my favorite part about the argument. They don't even see the irony of "competitive play sucks and you're all having fun wrong...so here's how should change competitive play (that I never participate in)"

** All of his post **

I fully agree and exalt.

I don't read anyone here saying competitive play sucks or is bad wrong fun. Someone mentioned an alternative version of competitive play involving set lists. Id actually be all for that, but just as a format, not to force everyone to do it.

Fun trivia fact: I ran such a tournament series back in 4th edition as a rogue trader regional. The feedback was about 50% thought it was fun as hell and were happy that the table skill meant for, and the other 50% boycotted me and sent me all caps hate mail for about a month after the event saying people like me ruin tournaments and that they hoped I got butt cancer and died. (the butt cancer wish would crop up again when we published azyr for age of sigmar when people cried out that we killed listbuilding by making the point system too balanced - I don't know what it is about butt cancer and people wishing it on others in the tabletop gaming space but it seems to be a common wish )

I don't ever advocate for a format to be the only one, I am and have always been more about options and multiple formats.

I don't hate competitive play, I did it for a full decade and had a blast. I played in 14 different grand tournaments, a little over 50 regional rogue traders and god knows how many local tournaments for both 40k and fantasy, traveled all over the united states, and had a great time doing so.

What I've advocated in this thread is that GW make the distinction between pick up matched games, and tournament games. Thats important because house rules are seen as satan and it would be nice for GW to explicitly lay out boundaries because like it or not those boundaries are "official" and bear more weight than someone like me trying to get a matched campaign game where I make the table not symetrical and put a special rule for the scenario that makes it night fighting for this one time and has a unit restriction where you can't take the same units more than once (highlander format) because of the narrative without having people screaming in my face or telling me to go outside so we can fight in the parking lot (also true story though that was age of sigmar and that happened when I dared run a warhammer world scenario for halloween for our GW store since that was houseruled nonsense that punished all competitive players)

That its just as "official' to play a game of 40k (or sigmar) without tournament rules in effect and that not all matched games are tournament games. And in my opinion narrative games could use a more restrictive list building structure, because you don't always get to cherry pick the absolute best and sometimes the army should be composed of mostly your troop choices which you have more access to. The tournament players who hate that are free to stay in their more open ended building game and neither side can scream at the other for playing "houseruled nonsense".

How is such hate mail not grounds for being banned from the gaming group?? So glad i have never really played out in the wild so to speak.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Why not just go back to how it was.
Ge makes their rules that are geared toward a less tournament style game play.
Then have indipendent originization make their tournament rules, and have GW sponsor said organization.

That gives the people who just wanna have a fun, non sweaty game, get their rules for GW.
Tournament and competative play still exists with officially recognized 3rd party tournament rules, and because GW would sponsor them, it would would give them validity to be recognized by the tournament community and offer separate data sheets for them

For example narrative / casual play could bring back the things that were a lot more thematic like templates facings, armor vulues things like that, but then official tournament data sheets that just operate as if it was now. No facings, no av, ECT ECT.

This way GW could balance one aspect of the game without effecting the other.

Not all casual/narrative players want facings, templates, AV, and such back. To be clear those aspects things have nothing to do with casual and narrative gaming and more a desire/preference by a subset of the playerbase; whether it be tournament players or casual players.

I know as a narrative player I want cool campaign rules, with a metagame above the battlefield where you fight for area control and whatnot. Crusade scratched that itch just slightly for me, but I think it can go so much further. Even the current PtG system in AoS is slightly more fleshed out than the 40k one. Also, I do not want a campaign system that is divided piecemeal among several campaign books. I want one book that goes a whole campaign with relics, traits, RQ, missions and whatnot. That is narrative gaming for me, not AV, facings, and templates.

 Ordana wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:
Making a bunch of rando lists and playing them against each other isn't a good way to test lists. When Privateer Press hired Will Pagini, one of the best Warmahordes players in the world, he started spamming units during playtest games and quickly found units that cause issues whereas prior the playtesters had never played that way before so they never caught spam lists as a problem.

Its easy when you make something to test if it works the way you envisioned it, what is much more important is to test when it breaks. And GW obviously doesn't do that.

An armies testing should be 'that guy' writing the most bs degenerate lists he can think of with the codex. Not a beer and pretzel game with 10 random units off the shelf.

That's the sole reason GW was so bad at balance for so long. It's like they couldn't fathom people making spam lists with the strongest possible units, despite tournaments being held every week around the world where people were playing that way. It was also pretty common in shops even back in 1999 when I got into the game. I'm really hopeful that the ITC partnership will allow them to finally understand how the game is played and rein in some of the OP stuff. I understand imperfect balance is the goal due to sales targets but we aren't even close to that.

Dai wrote:

 auticus wrote:

Deadnight wrote:

Toofast wrote:

TangoTwoBravo wrote:

I am not sure why non-tourney players feel the need to impose their desires on something that other people do?

That's my favorite part about the argument. They don't even see the irony of "competitive play sucks and you're all having fun wrong...so here's how should change competitive play (that I never participate in)"

** All of his post **

I fully agree and exalt.

I don't read anyone here saying competitive play sucks or is bad wrong fun. Someone mentioned an alternative version of competitive play involving set lists. Id actually be all for that, but just as a format, not to force everyone to do it.

Fun trivia fact: I ran such a tournament series back in 4th edition as a rogue trader regional. The feedback was about 50% thought it was fun as hell and were happy that the table skill meant for, and the other 50% boycotted me and sent me all caps hate mail for about a month after the event saying people like me ruin tournaments and that they hoped I got butt cancer and died. (the butt cancer wish would crop up again when we published azyr for age of sigmar when people cried out that we killed listbuilding by making the point system too balanced - I don't know what it is about butt cancer and people wishing it on others in the tabletop gaming space but it seems to be a common wish )

I don't ever advocate for a format to be the only one, I am and have always been more about options and multiple formats.

I don't hate competitive play, I did it for a full decade and had a blast. I played in 14 different grand tournaments, a little over 50 regional rogue traders and god knows how many local tournaments for both 40k and fantasy, traveled all over the united states, and had a great time doing so.

What I've advocated in this thread is that GW make the distinction between pick up matched games, and tournament games. Thats important because house rules are seen as satan and it would be nice for GW to explicitly lay out boundaries because like it or not those boundaries are "official" and bear more weight than someone like me trying to get a matched campaign game where I make the table not symetrical and put a special rule for the scenario that makes it night fighting for this one time and has a unit restriction where you can't take the same units more than once (highlander format) because of the narrative without having people screaming in my face or telling me to go outside so we can fight in the parking lot (also true story though that was age of sigmar and that happened when I dared run a warhammer world scenario for halloween for our GW store since that was houseruled nonsense that punished all competitive players)

That its just as "official' to play a game of 40k (or sigmar) without tournament rules in effect and that not all matched games are tournament games. And in my opinion narrative games could use a more restrictive list building structure, because you don't always get to cherry pick the absolute best and sometimes the army should be composed of mostly your troop choices which you have more access to. The tournament players who hate that are free to stay in their more open ended building game and neither side can scream at the other for playing "houseruled nonsense".

How is such hate mail not grounds for being banned from the gaming group?? So glad i have never really played out in the wild so to speak.

They formed their own competitive discord and facebook, but the thing was whenever we would try and do campaigns they would show up to play as well since they were store events and would do so with the intent of making sure we weren't "teaching people how to play wrong". For Sigmar, the Azyr ruleset was one of the point systems released before official points so that hate mail came from players around the globe lol.

 Eldarsif wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Why not just go back to how it was.
Ge makes their rules that are geared toward a less tournament style game play.
Then have indipendent originization make their tournament rules, and have GW sponsor said organization.

That gives the people who just wanna have a fun, non sweaty game, get their rules for GW.
Tournament and competative play still exists with officially recognized 3rd party tournament rules, and because GW would sponsor them, it would would give them validity to be recognized by the tournament community and offer separate data sheets for them

For example narrative / casual play could bring back the things that were a lot more thematic like templates facings, armor vulues things like that, but then official tournament data sheets that just operate as if it was now. No facings, no av, ECT ECT.

This way GW could balance one aspect of the game without effecting the other.

Not all casual/narrative players want facings, templates, AV, and such back. To be clear those aspects things have nothing to do with casual and narrative gaming and more a desire/preference by a subset of the playerbase; whether it be tournament players or casual players.

I know as a narrative player I want cool campaign rules, with a metagame above the battlefield where you fight for area control and whatnot. Crusade scratched that itch just slightly for me, but I think it can go so much further. Even the current PtG system in AoS is slightly more fleshed out than the 40k one. Also, I do not want a campaign system that is divided piecemeal among several campaign books. I want one book that goes a whole campaign with relics, traits, RQ, missions and whatnot. That is narrative gaming for me, not AV, facings, and templates.

I'm just giving facings and av as an extream example of varying degrees of the rules between the idea of a more fluffy vs tournament style

Meh, facings are no more or less appropriate for narrative than degrading stats.

Universal shooting/damage system, but have infantry, mcs and vehicles take damage differently.

Like the Warjack grid in wmh. That was brilliant.

auticus, the competitive group in your area sounds almost comedically hostile. I've moved around the country a few times and have played with a quite a few groups across several major US cities, and I've never heard stories as bad as yours. Even the most hardcore competitive players I met would be totally down to dial back their lists to have a casual pickup game or a wacky round of highlander.

It's interesting how much these things can vary. The group I'm in right now is probably the most casual group I've ever played with, and as a result I would say the competitive players are actually more or less on the defensive in this group. They tend to keep their heads down, and have to spend more time defending their style of play than vice versa, because the default is casual, and there is always an underlying suspicion that competitive players are mean-spirited, WAAC jerks (which they're not, they're actually some of the nicest people in the group!).

I moved from there last spring. Where I am now (west side of the country) things are a lot more laid back.

The competitive guys here also play campaigns and also don't bring their min max lists from what I can gather to those games and know when not to do that, so its entirely a regional culture thing.

Granted I have only dipped my toes in conquest and battletech here so far, but in paying attention to the store people around me and their conversations its

A) less political
B) people seem to be a lot more open to their opponent's enjoyment of the game.

I'm still not willing to make a $600 - $800 investment into a game where I have to politic to get narrative games though. My opinion may change in a year or two of being here if I can see a reliable and steady stream of data showing me that that investment wouldn't be me wiping my butt with my money and time and having to sell out right away.

vict0988 wrote:It's easy enough to make the difference, if you say you are looking for a 100 PL casual Matched Play game with <insert homebrew mission> you've said all you need to say. If I say 2k casual GT22 or 2k competitive GT22 I've said all I need to say. If someone would like to bring a competitive list to a casual game or a casual list to a competitive game they can ask if that's okay.

If I had a nickel for every time someone's idea of a casual game was bringing their favorite netlist...

In any case, the pre-game-negotiation approach still doesn't suffice if Matched Play incorporates tournament-oriented rules. Things like Ro3, flyer limits, or an outright ban on mixing subfactions might be needed for LVO, but are less critical for casual games. We're definitely seeing a trend towards Matched Play being designed for tournament balance, and that has knock-on effects on casual play.

And while you can always houserule, as Auticus has pointed out many times getting a local group (let alone random pick-up opponents) to accept houserules can be like pulling teeth.

I agree with the idea behind splitting Matched Play into a ruleset intended for casual games while still using points, versus one intended to be suitable for cutthroat tournament play. It would be much easier to balance the game competitively if GW could put heavier restrictions in place for competitive play without invalidating people's collections altogether. And it would draw a clear line between styles of play.

Or, really, just put some more structure into Narrative so that it's suitable for pick-up games- no free summoning and use points, but no tournament comp restrictions either, and you always have Open for the 'anything goes' ruleset. The problem, fundamentally, is that Narrative and Open don't provide enough structure for a lot of casual players, so they have to default to Matched Play instead.

Honestly, they just need to make a big ol' statement to the effect of:

Power is meant for pick-up games where people might need to make changes to their lists on the fly to ensure both parties can have an enjoyable game without requiring swapping units out wholesale.

Points are made for a more structured and granular play experience where both players have agreed to a more cutthroat experience, such as a tournament.

I'm sick and tired of people assuming points = balance.

Deadnight wrote:
Meh, facings are no more or less appropriate for narrative than degrading stats.

Universal shooting/damage system, but have infantry, mcs and vehicles take damage differently.

Like the Warjack grid in wmh. That was brilliant.

This is a bit of a separate discussion, but I disagree.

Narrative play is inherently more concerned with the process than matched play (which is more concerned with outcomes).

Whether or not a shell penetrated the armor of the tank (or did superficial external damage or detonated against the armor and didn't harm the tank but killed a bunch of infantry around it etc) is much more useful to narrative players than the current abstraction of "well, this Lascannon bounced off of the armor save, but this one failed to wound, but this one wounded and only did one damage which is the same as this Bolter over here, etc".

At least for people that like to write narratives of how the battle went (rather than just before or after).

 vict0988 wrote:

nou wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

I think you need at least 10 lists to test a faction, with Space Marines and a few others ballooning in the number of datasheets available I'd say the average is 20 lists. So it'd take 10 years to test the game this way. In the current format people will organically try a variety of lists in tournaments and people will copy those that do well making it relatively easy to spot where the problems are in the case of an OP faction or where the problems aren't in the case of an UP faction.

You missed the part, where those lists are designed by the best players committee in the first place. According to the wisdom of this very thread, they should be able to spot the glaringly OP/UP elements when they work on a set of balanced lists for the season, just as they currently do, but instead of exploiting those for advantage, they can use those to construct well balanced lists. And what is more - you are not working from scratch to begin with - you take the current state of the meta and arrange the lists for the first season based on current data.

I still don't see how you get a smidgen of data from this. If my best players committee thinks that a list with 2 Land Raiders, 6 Eradicators, 20 Assault Marines is balanced against a list with 1 Wraithknight, 2 Warwalkers, 20 Dark Reapers and 10 Dire Avengers what do I learn from that? I don't learn whether any of the units are strong or weak like I would from studying current tournament results, all I learn is which of the 16 lists are stronger and weaker relative to each other and which player that plays this game mode is the best at this game mode. If all lists where from the same faction you could get some good data, but internal balance is still only half the game.

You still think within the current system. Under my proposed system the imbalance problem as we know it today ceases to exist even without fully repairing the balance of the game. Consider such an exaggerated example:

GW launches an UberPrimarisMarines 3.0 and to sell them, the core troop choice now has once per game ability to point and remove a single enemy unit from the game amd you can fit 10 of those in a legal 2000pts list, enabling you to alpha strike an entire symmetrical list so the game devolves into initiative roll. This is obviously busted ability that should not make it past playtesting, but it did.

In a current reality, narrative and casual players will organically restrain from using this build, as it removes all fun from the game. Tournament players however, will use this list as it is the winning list, so the game is obviously meant to be played this way, so git gud or find another hobby and don’t tell me how to have my fun and all that. Cross games between casuals and tournament guys is straight up impossible, seal clubbing is the new norm and the community is as hostile as it gets.

Now what happens under my proposed reality: narrative players do as they always did, use this unit only if it fits a particular narrative and only in ways that are not destroying enjoyment. Now what do tournament guys do? They also don’t spam this unit, because only a single tournament list features only a single copy of this unit. What is more - if the rest of this list is UP enough, it is a perfectly valid, balanced list for tournament play. Tournament and casuals can play together and tournament guys get their tournament prep games even when facing a typical casual list and everybody is happy, except those guys who wished Auticus to get butt cancer, without whom the community would arguably be ways more welcoming to new players and thus stronger and healthier.

Now on the other topic - you seem to think that statistical data is the only information that can be used to balance things and that you need to test every iteration to find bad apples. It is not how it is in reality, because a) there are internal relationships between units, weapons, wargear and special rules (heck, “tailored” rules are just copypastes with different names most of the time) so you can adjust many units/weapons proportionately to the statistical findings about a single unit/weapon/wargear etc. And b) you don’t need to test every iteration - there is a whole class of mathematical problems, the most famous one being The Counterfeit Coin Problem. You need way, way less tests that the total iterations within the system to find an outlier.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Just for my 0.02 as a narrative player...

I would rather have balance first and then be able to riff custom rules for my narrative off a balanced base.

A game that is imbalanced to start with means you have to do more work to balance it before you can begin to understand the impact of rules changes made by the organizer.

Of course. Even among narrative players, I would say the majority still highly prioritize balance, and that is a totally valid point of view- I don't think I've ever said otherwise (though I might have once upon a time before I found the need for nuance in these types of discussions).

Even I like balance. But I don't like it coming it at the expense of options that enable players to express the character of their armies on the battlefield. Not every suggestion in the name of balance harms the ability to do that, but some of the suggestions do. I don't want to lose datasheets; I don't want to lose sub faction traits and I'm not particularly keen on losing strats either...

Although, making some of the more common strats more universal isn't a bad idea, and as mentioned previously, I'm not too keen on equipment strats myself. I also don't mind the restriction of any of these things in Matched play settings. Some the other systems that have been floated- buy a finite number of strats from the list before the game using points/ PL, or restrict some of them to once per game- all of those are fairly reasonable suggestions- especially if rul

I didn't mean to imply that we shared many views- I know your perspective is different than mine. But we have both talked about how a big book of all things Crusade would have been advantageous. And both of us would like to see more support for campaign systems and game linkages.

 auticus wrote:

Spoiler:

Dai wrote:

 auticus wrote:

Deadnight wrote:

Toofast wrote:

TangoTwoBravo wrote:

I am not sure why non-tourney players feel the need to impose their desires on something that other people do?

That's my favorite part about the argument. They don't even see the irony of "competitive play sucks and you're all having fun wrong...so here's how should change competitive play (that I never participate in)"

** All of his post **

I fully agree and exalt.

I don't read anyone here saying competitive play sucks or is bad wrong fun. Someone mentioned an alternative version of competitive play involving set lists. Id actually be all for that, but just as a format, not to force everyone to do it.

Fun trivia fact: I ran such a tournament series back in 4th edition as a rogue trader regional. The feedback was about 50% thought it was fun as hell and were happy that the table skill meant for, and the other 50% boycotted me and sent me all caps hate mail for about a month after the event saying people like me ruin tournaments and that they hoped I got butt cancer and died. (the butt cancer wish would crop up again when we published azyr for age of sigmar when people cried out that we killed listbuilding by making the point system too balanced - I don't know what it is about butt cancer and people wishing it on others in the tabletop gaming space but it seems to be a common wish )

I don't ever advocate for a format to be the only one, I am and have always been more about options and multiple formats.

I don't hate competitive play, I did it for a full decade and had a blast. I played in 14 different grand tournaments, a little over 50 regional rogue traders and god knows how many local tournaments for both 40k and fantasy, traveled all over the united states, and had a great time doing so.

What I've advocated in this thread is that GW make the distinction between pick up matched games, and tournament games. Thats important because house rules are seen as satan and it would be nice for GW to explicitly lay out boundaries because like it or not those boundaries are "official" and bear more weight than someone like me trying to get a matched campaign game where I make the table not symetrical and put a special rule for the scenario that makes it night fighting for this one time and has a unit restriction where you can't take the same units more than once (highlander format) because of the narrative without having people screaming in my face or telling me to go outside so we can fight in the parking lot (also true story though that was age of sigmar and that happened when I dared run a warhammer world scenario for halloween for our GW store since that was houseruled nonsense that punished all competitive players)

That its just as "official' to play a game of 40k (or sigmar) without tournament rules in effect and that not all matched games are tournament games. And in my opinion narrative games could use a more restrictive list building structure, because you don't always get to cherry pick the absolute best and sometimes the army should be composed of mostly your troop choices which you have more access to. The tournament players who hate that are free to stay in their more open ended building game and neither side can scream at the other for playing "houseruled nonsense".

How is such hate mail not grounds for being banned from the gaming group?? So glad i have never really played out in the wild so to speak.

They formed their own competitive discord and facebook, but the thing was whenever we would try and do campaigns they would show up to play as well since they were store events and would do so with the intent of making sure we weren't "teaching people how to play wrong".

And if they're going to be playtesters, they should be able to handwrite a list that spells out their upgrades.

Maybe the solution is to force competitive players to play casually by making casual play better/more interesting and widening the casual/competitive divide?

Rework Power Level to be a bit more, err... workable (big complaint locally from all the tournament gremlins and even semi-competitive asuals is that its "not balanced" as two units could be priced identically even though one is coming stock standard and the other one has 4 plasmaguns/meltaguns, etc. and then streamline all the unit datasheets by cutting various special rules and abilities, eliminate warlord traits, artifacts/relics, etc. (for balance reasons, of course) from competitive play and "paywall" all of it behind a narrative power-level based paywall with better listbuilding and mission design, etc.

Give the competitive players the highly balanced and heavily streamlined but otherwise totally bland competitive game of their dreams and basically put all the cool and fun stuff on the "narrative" side of the fence that plays the way the game is "meant" to be played. I would imagine that would encourage the competitive crew to pretend like they aren't playing every game like its the top table at the biggest tournament ever. It seems like the big issue currently is that theres basically no reason to play a true "narrative play" game for a lot of players, because narrative play doesn't necessarily offer anything "more" than matched play does - and actually the perception seems to be that it offers them "less" as a result of power levels "robbing" them of what they perceive to be a properly balanced experience. So flip the script a bit and rework power level so that the perception issue changes a bit (which means it won't be as simple as it is today, but it doesn't need to be complex - instead of buying a unit for 5PL regardless of upgrades, maybe its 5PL including 1-2 upgrades from this menu of options, and for an additional PL you get an additional 1-2 upgrades from this menu of options, etc.) and then put all the fun and cool but potentially balance-breaking stuff behind the narrative wall. In terms of datasheets

And truth is that a lot more could be done with power level in terms of making rules that interact directly with a units PL rating (i.e. "+1 to hit in melee when fighting a unit with PL 5 or less") or even rules that allow you to spend excess/unused PL on mid-game strategems/abilities. In terms of datasheets, I would imagine that there would be a number of basic rules which are common to both matched and narrative games, plus several more which are tagged "[NARRATIVE PLAY]" or something to indicate their non-availability in Matched. GW could go a lot farther to making a more interesting game experience on the narrative end of the pool while also appeasing competitive players with a better balanced game by differentiating the rules/gameplay a bit more.

EDIT - It seems to me, basically, that as it currently stands the problem is that casual players are showing up to gamenight looking for casual games using matched play points and rules. This simply enables competitively minded players to field more aggressive lists in a casual environment, rather than allowing the casual players to play casually. So it seems like we can fix at least some of the perceived issues by simply giving casual players more of a reason to want/demand to play narratively and further differentiating what that means from competitive play, so that a competitive player will be forced to "dial down" in order to play in a casual environment.

PenitentJake wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Just for my 0.02 as a narrative player...

I would rather have balance first and then be able to riff custom rules for my narrative off a balanced base.

A game that is imbalanced to start with means you have to do more work to balance it before you can begin to understand the impact of rules changes made by the organizer.

Of course. Even among narrative players, I would say the majority still highly prioritize balance, and that is a totally valid point of view- I don't think I've ever said otherwise (though I might have once upon a time before I found the need for nuance in these types of discussions).

Even I like balance. But I don't like it coming it at the expense of options that enable players to express the character of their armies on the battlefield. Not every suggestion in the name of balance harms the ability to do that, but some of the suggestions do. I don't want to lose datasheets; I don't want to lose sub faction traits and I'm not particularly keen on losing strats either...

Although, making some of the more common strats more universal isn't a bad idea, and as mentioned previously, I'm not too keen on equipment strats myself. I also don't mind the restriction of any of these things in Matched play settings. Some the other systems that have been floated- buy a finite number of strats from the list before the game using points/ PL, or restrict some of them to once per game- all of those are fairly reasonable suggestions- especially if rul

I didn't mean to imply that we shared many views- I know your perspective is different than mine. But we have both talked about how a big book of all things Crusade would have been advantageous. And both of us would like to see more support for campaign systems and game linkages.

I think the issue is "expressing the character of armies on the battlefield". We both want that, but IME 9th doesn't deliver.

To me:
1) stratagems don't do this. They don't make narrative sense.
2) army rules only do this awkwardly (here are two options, pick them). There are also severe balance issues that affect this (and I give examples). Balanced subfaction and custom subfaction rules would be very important here. VERY IMPORTANT.
3) wargear options do not do this either. An army's flavor is more than just "they prefer missile Launchers to autocannons" or whatever.

For all my armies, I have found that 4th edition allows me to express their character far better than 9th. Even though ninth has 1e10 more options.

To what unit said I find that no army has this issue of identity more then tsons

Like there is an army that should have lots of good flavor but none of the stats or weapons really bring that out.

Honestly anything centered around psyker abilities seems to suffer but that's my opion on that

 catbarf wrote:
The problem, fundamentally, is that Narrative and Open don't provide enough structure for a lot of casual players, so they have to default to Matched Play instead.

Yes, there it is. Nice and succinct

FWIW, all of the balance updated and tweaks intended for matched-competitive should apply to matched-casual too. Better balance helps both.

Regarding the lists themselves, my feeling is that strong tournament list generally doubles down on the most effect units in the codex, stacking multiples of that. From a casual perspective, I like the idea of the Highlander rules, since it forces people to into taking sub-optimal units.

 Kanluwen wrote:
I'm sick and tired of people assuming points = balance.

Then remain sick and tired dude. I don't know what to say.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
To what unit said I find that no army has this issue of identity more then tsons

Like there is an army that should have lots of good flavor but none of the stats or weapons really bring that out.

Honestly anything centered around psyker abilities seems to suffer but that's my opion on that

Agreed. The Thousand Sons should have a lot of room for flavor, but they are B-L-A-N-D bland. The Crusade section is boring and phoned-in. The army special rules are boring and phoned-in. The abilities, units, weapons, etc. are boring and phoned-in. To be frank, I don't think they currently warrant having a full codex of their own. Unlike Death Guard who have an army list that overwhelmingly contains units and weapons unique to the faction, the Thousand Sons are the reverse, being mostly generic CSM options (or spins on them, putting "Thousand Sons" or "Exalted" in front of the word "Sorceror" or "Daemon Prince", etc.) with a literal handful of unique options (Rubric Marines, SOT, Ahriman, Magnus, Infernal Pactman), plus a handful of non-Thousand Sons units ported over from AoS/Fantasy (Mutalith Vortex Beast - which should be a daemon, but isn't, and then a few Tzaangor units) as filler. DG at least have two distinct terminator units, their regular troops unit (disregarding poxwalkers), about a dozen distinct character models/solos across the HQ and Elites slot (+ Lord of War), a terrain piece, and 3 distinct vehicles (PBC, Bloat Drone, MBH). That at least makes them feel like something more cohesive of an army - maybe I'm being harsh on the TS in discounting the contributions made by MVB and Tzaangors, but I would have liked more options that allude to the idea of this being a unique legion of heretic ASTARTES rather than a hodgepodge of tzeentch-worshipping mortals and near-mortals.

 Mezmorki wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
The problem, fundamentally, is that Narrative and Open don't provide enough structure for a lot of casual players, so they have to default to Matched Play instead.

Yes, there it is. Nice and succinct

FWIW, all of the balance updated and tweaks intended for matched-competitive should apply to matched-casual too. Better balance helps both.

And there it is, tourney seeping out of its environment. Again.

What is it with you people not understanding that:
A) not all matched play is competitive play (beyond the basics of "Yes, there will be a winner & a loser"), B) not all casual play is narrative.

If we casual players WANTED to play tourney style? We'd enter a tourney.
Just like if you wanted to play Crusade you'd seek out a Crusade league or such.
But you don't advocate for Crusade material to be used in your tournaments. So why do you want to pollute our casual Thursdays etc with Competitive changes?

nou wrote:
GW launches an UberPrimarisMarines 3.0 and to sell them, the core troop choice now has once per game ability to point and remove a single enemy unit from the game amd you can fit 10 of those in a legal 2000pts list, enabling you to alpha strike an entire symmetrical list so the game devolves into initiative roll. This is obviously busted ability that should not make it past playtesting, but it did.

In a current reality, narrative and casual players will organically restrain from using this build, as it removes all fun from the game. Tournament players however, will use this list as it is the winning list, so the game is obviously meant to be played this way, so git gud or find another hobby and don’t tell me how to have my fun and all that. Cross games between casuals and tournament guys is straight up impossible, seal clubbing is the new norm and the community is as hostile as it gets.

Now what happens under my proposed reality: narrative players do as they always did, use this unit only if it fits a particular narrative and only in ways that are not destroying enjoyment. Now what do tournament guys do? They also don’t spam this unit, because only a single tournament list features only a single copy of this unit. What is more - if the rest of this list is UP enough, it is a perfectly valid, balanced list for tournament play. Tournament and casuals can play together and tournament guys get their tournament prep games even when facing a typical casual list and everybody is happy, except those guys who wished Auticus to get butt cancer, without whom the community would arguably be ways more welcoming to new players and thus stronger and healthier.

I'm not interested in playing one of 16 premade lists every game and for that to be the only thing I can play against, almost nobody is. I want to build a list of units that I like and that I think work together and I want my opponent to do the same more or less. I don't want to have to be concerned with whether my list will be too competitive if I put x, y or z unit into my list or whether my list will be absolute garbage because I feel like including a, b or c unit into my list. I want GW to balance the game instead of foisting the job on me and I don't think that's too much to ask. They could start by buffing Deathmarks instead of Skorpekh Destroyers by looking at competitive Necron list trends.

Now on the other topic - you seem to think that statistical data is the only information that can be used to balance things and that you need to test every iteration to find bad apples...

 vict0988 wrote:
...#1 math will have made the issue of internal datasheet balance small in the first place...

...step 1 which is estimating pts values based on pts-efficiency math done the Indian you hired on Fiverr...

 Kanluwen wrote:
Honestly, they just need to make a big ol' statement to the effect of:

Power is meant for pick-up games where people might need to make changes to their lists on the fly to ensure both parties can have an enjoyable game without requiring swapping units out wholesale.

Points are made for a more structured and granular play experience where both players have agreed to a more cutthroat experience, such as a tournament.

I'm sick and tired of people assuming points = balance.

How is a new casual player supposed to know when he is allowed to upgrade his units with plasma guns? It is true that when PL concepts like "every weapon should cost the same or at least an increment of 5" then points =/= balance.

why do you want to pollute our casual Thursdays etc with Competitive changes?

Because I want to use my Canoptek Reanimator and have it pull its weight somewhat and I don't think the flamer Wracks were fair.

I've long stated that in gw-land points don't equal balance and never have. They provide structure to optimize within.

You can't have strong listbuilding impact along with strong balance. You can have one or the other (or a mix of the two - a little balance and a little listbuilding).

Right now its all about the structure provided to min/max within. Listbuilding is all about finding the combos that make your 2000 point list fight at a higher weight class / act like its 4000 or 5000 points.

If Points == Balance then 2000 points would be 2000 points at its most extreme end, and any 2000 point list would have a good game against any other 2000 point list.

Thats how a lot of people infer points, and how I myself would like points to be (and how I design games to be) but the listbuilding folks do not like that because it removes listbuilding from mattering as much so I see this as a perpetual struggle between those two styles clashing.

No it's because points make you pay a more appropriate cost for a weapon compared to the "take whatever you want" approach of PL.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Honestly, they just need to make a big ol' statement to the effect of:

Power is meant for pick-up games where people might need to make changes to their lists on the fly to ensure both parties can have an enjoyable game without requiring swapping units out wholesale.

Points are made for a more structured and granular play experience where both players have agreed to a more cutthroat experience, such as a tournament.

I'm sick and tired of people assuming points = balance.

Points aren't perfectly balanced right now, but they're certainly more balanced than PL. To pretend otherwise is pure denial in the land of "GW perfect!!!1!"

 auticus wrote:
I've long stated that in gw-land points don't equal horse and never have. They provide structure to optimize within.

You can't have strong horn impact along with strong horse. You can have one or the other (or a mix of the two - a little horse and a little horn).

Right now its all about the structure provided to min/max within. Horn is all about finding the combos that make your 2000 point list fight at a higher weight class / act like its 4000 or 5000 points.

If horn + horse = unicorn then 2000 points would be 2000 points at its most extreme end, and any 2000 point horse would have a good game against any other 2000 point horse.

Thats how a lot of people infer horns, and how I myself would like horns to be (and how I design horses to be) but the unicorns do not like that because it removes horses from mattering as much.

The best 2k list got nerfed by 200 pts and had some errata and went from 70% to 45% win rate. There are no 2k lists that act like 1k lists or 3k lists.

I think we need a clear definition on what is casual play and how it differs from competitive play.

I know it kinda sounds obvious, but obvious isn't the same as clear.

 vict0988 wrote:

 auticus wrote:
I've long stated that in gw-land points don't equal horse and never have. They provide structure to optimize within.

You can't have strong horn impact along with strong horse. You can have one or the other (or a mix of the two - a little horse and a little horn).

Right now its all about the structure provided to min/max within. Horn is all about finding the combos that make your 2000 point list fight at a higher weight class / act like its 4000 or 5000 points.

If horn + horse = unicorn then 2000 points would be 2000 points at its most extreme end, and any 2000 point horse would have a good game against any other 2000 point horse.

Thats how a lot of people infer horns, and how I myself would like horns to be (and how I design horses to be) but the unicorns do not like that because it removes horses from mattering as much.

The best 2k list got nerfed by 200 pts and had some errata and went from 70% to 45% win rate. There are no 2k lists that act like 1k lists or 3k lists.

Well except when we had free wargear/units during 7th formations but nobody counts 7th for anything so