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2022/02/04 20:53:18
Subject: Do they just completely make it up as they go along?
EviscerationPlague wrote: That rocket Launcher argument was literally the worst thing I've read in this thread and we just had someone here say PL was better for balance.
No, this post marks a lower point than auticus' example.
And his example isn't inaccurate. Let's go back to the halycon days where the Chimera was an amphibious vehicle, which had certain advantages when moving through water. How do you apply a universal cost to such an ability, when it can have absolutely no effect on many games (as many tables wouldn't have water features), yet had the potential to be important on others?
Nah, it was bad. Through that logic in an IGOUGO system we need to halve the value of everything since some armies can delete half your units before you do anything.
2022/02/04 20:54:58
Subject: Do they just completely make it up as they go along?
However in D&D I also consider rolling 4d6 and taking the lowest away and assigning the values to your stats fun, and others consider that the avenue of making worthless characters because they can't be optimized.
That sounds like the opposite of fun. I also hated random WL traits, psychic powers, etc. I hate randomness and it also doesn't make sense from a fluff perspective. When you want to learn a new skill or a new language, do you pick something that would be useful or just randomly choose it based on rolling dice?
Thats how a lot of people do stats in dnd to prevent min max munchkin building. You have to have a bit of randomness other wise you get super sweaty lists/characters that break the game.
I dont mind random psyker powers, or picking, if anything i think the best way to go about it would be the way to do it with knight free blades.
You get your psyker, you can either pick 1 of your powers, or randomly generate 2 powers.
To many unpainted models to count.
2022/02/04 20:57:21
Subject: Do they just completely make it up as they go along?
What uh, role play does a suboptimal character demand?
Or do you mean it demands a lot of game knowledge for them to compensate for your poor stats?
I cannot figure out what stats and role play have to do with one another and the mechanics by which one would influence the other beyond the most basic "character with 18 strength would do strong things" (which is mechanically enforced).
Comparing role playing games to war games is a completely silly endeavor.
The Soviet Union tried and failed to accurately model the cost of everything in the economy by crunching data, China has currency, supply and demand and seems to be doing a lot better. Shoes stop being important when you don't have enough to eat. Strength D stops being good against 1W T3 models. Crunch numbers to get an approximate, adjust approximate based playtesting, watch what people take and adjust. Shoes don't have to cost exactly what they are worth to every customer, as long as shoes are being sold and a profit is being made the store can stay in business.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/02/04 21:58:00
2022/02/04 23:41:58
Subject: Do they just completely make it up as they go along?
auticus wrote: I know that from 3rd to 8th edition, anytime a lot of terrain was on the table in any of my store campaign events, there was always a chorus of screaming about how unfair it was because the points were balanced around tournament standard tables that barely blocked LOS and now that balance was destroyed because there were a few LOS blocking pieces of terrain on the table.
Why do i have a feeling these people that complained mostly played guard, and tau who could shoot your army dead from across the table turn one.
It was said by the competitive players playing whatever meta was present at the time they said it. Some were guard during guard heyday, lot of marine meta builds. Really at some point it was a little of everyone. Lot of terrain in some editions also bogged down melee and the all-melee army guys would scream as loud too.
However in D&D I also consider rolling 4d6 and taking the lowest away and assigning the values to your stats fun, and others consider that the avenue of making worthless characters because they can't be optimized.
That sounds like the opposite of fun. I also hated random WL traits, psychic powers, etc. I hate randomness and it also doesn't make sense from a fluff perspective. When you want to learn a new skill or a new language, do you pick something that would be useful or just randomly choose it based on rolling dice?
You're just the type of gamer that doesn't enjoy anything I do and you and I wouldn't ever really play anything together and thats ok. Rolling random stats gives you a different character to try out that has actual flaws,as opposed to pre determining what you are going to run and optimizing for that and using a dump stat for something you feel you'll never use. I don't enjoy optimizers or that type of game play and optimizers usually don't enjoy my campaigns be it RPGs or tabletop wargames (and thats also ok).
No I don't randomly roll skill ups. But its nice not seeing every character be the same, which is what picking your stats has led to the vast majority of my D&D experience since the last 15 years or so. Generating a random stat array and assigning it where I want to (the 4d6 drop the lowest method) is nothing at all like randomly rolling skill ups.
Randomizing the numbers available to the stat array has zero to do with fluff or not fluff. It is neither more fluffy nor less fluffy to roll 4d6 and drop the lowest and choose which number goes into which stat, same as it is no more or less fluffy to get to pick exactly what numbers you want from an array. One method gives you total control and strongly appeals to deterministic players that want full control over everything, and one gives you less control and forces you to react and deal with flaws that you cannot control.
The 3d6 method gives you the least control and also gives you a lot more role playing opportunities IMO than the array because you are forced to work with what you rolled the best you can. It is also no more or less fluffy than the other ways. It is setting the parameters you have in which to run the character. You may not get to be running the full god character if you generate a bunch of 10s - 12s, but people like me enjoy that because no one really WINS D&D and the best characters I've ever run in my life were the ones that had some deep mechanical flaws.
In battletech we have something similar with randomized force charts where you roll on the charts to see what mechs are available to you in a mission and mechs can also have quirks which give them drawbacks. In warhammer we had random event charts or things like the 8th edition lustrian campaign for fantasy battles that would make the game windy, night fight, quick sand, etc, that you couldn't optimize and pre plan for and had to find a way to mitigate in-game... a series of skills that I love and are one of the reasons I got into wargaming in the first place all those years ago (and sadly for me have since been hammered out of tabletop wargaming for the most part as well today and for the past decade or so)
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2022/02/04 23:54:03
2022/02/04 23:47:20
Subject: Do they just completely make it up as they go along?
Thats fair, i always found more terrain generally resulted in better games. Simply because your chance of making it out of turn one with more then half your army was possible.
To many unpainted models to count.
2022/02/04 23:50:25
Subject: Do they just completely make it up as they go along?
auticus wrote: I know that from 3rd to 8th edition, anytime a lot of terrain was on the table in any of my store campaign events, there was always a chorus of screaming about how unfair it was because the points were balanced around tournament standard tables that barely blocked LOS and now that balance was destroyed because there were a few LOS blocking pieces of terrain on the table.
Then that chorus was made of very stupid people.
"The game is balanced for empty tournament tables!"
How do you even posit that conclusion?
Terrain is the third player. Terrain is the thing that makes you play the game, rather than work out the statistical probability of your army winning based upon what you took in your list. Terrain is what makes you use your army, what makes you have to think about where it goes, how it acts, what it fights, and when. Terrain shouldn't be favourable. Terrain isn't on your side.
This message was edited 4 times. Last update was at 2022/02/04 23:55:00
auticus wrote: I know that from 3rd to 8th edition, anytime a lot of terrain was on the table in any of my store campaign events, there was always a chorus of screaming about how unfair it was because the points were balanced around tournament standard tables that barely blocked LOS and now that balance was destroyed because there were a few LOS blocking pieces of terrain on the table.
Then that chorus was made of very stupid people.
"The game is balanced for empty tournament tables!"
How do you even posit that conclusion?
Terrain is the third player. Terrain is the thing that makes you play the game, rather than work out the statistical probability of your army winning based upon what you took in your list. Terrain is what makes you use your army, what makes you have to think about where it goes, how it acts, what it fights, and when.
I wouldn't call them stupid. At all.
What it is and what has been a thing for as long as I can remember now is that 40k (and AOS) are very expensive hobbies and people want to play but don't want to spend more money than they have to. So they find what the standard is. The standard being point size, scenario set, and terrain expectations. And then they build and buy a list around that and optimize for that. They are always the type of people that want full control over their environment, and tournament gaming gives them (usually) that avenue since its highly standardized.
The tables don't necessarily have to be empty. They just shouldn't have a lot of terrain that matters or impacts the game. Because terrain that impacts the game screws people over at random (to them) and should be avoided at all costs, and you should use at least no more or less than what their store tournaments use (which are often run by people emulating what LVO and Adepticon and NOVA and ITC are using). So they have bought a force to play in those parameters.
And then someone like me comes along that ran public store events and started doing jungle missions and city fight missions and other things with a lot more terrain than those standards, and they felt that that was "screwing them over" because the root of their argument was they want to optimize for every game, and that means they'd need specific forces optimized for my public store campaign and that means having to buy more models for just those campaigns - which they were very much against having to do.
(that leads down other rabbit holes such as "if you don't like it don't participate" but them being store campaigns you could win stuff from the store, they saw that as competition time and were offended that it didn't follow competition guidelines). They would also get very angry when you used scenarios not approved by the ITC for the same reason. Even when I used a warhammer world official halloween event scenario, that led to a lot of anger from a good chunk of that community because it wasn't an official ITC mission and they didn't have an army built and optimized for that.
So really its not "the game is balanced around an empty table" its "the game that i optimized for is balanced around a table that has mostly meaningless terrain like the ITC says".
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2022/02/05 00:05:52
2022/02/05 00:03:13
Subject: Do they just completely make it up as they go along?
What you just discribed Auticus, is actually one of the main reasons why i just cant get into 9th.
Modern 40k has become so sanitary now. Every game is like playing in a clean room "Here are your ITC rules and ITC standard terrain set up with LOS blocking here here and here"
Its so boring compared to older editions, and i have grown to hate it for the same reason i hate card games. Majority of the game is just about stacking your deck with the current meta and hoping you draw it before your opponent and you are just kinda there for the ride.
Since 40k has become so sterile, everyone just takes the meta armies, and is along for the ride. GW managed to take the part from MTG that i personally hate the most, and port it into 40k. Which honestly is amazing they managed to do that.
To many unpainted models to count.
2022/02/05 00:06:24
Subject: Do they just completely make it up as they go along?
Backspacehacker wrote: What you just discribed Auticus, is actually one of the main reasons why i just cant get into 9th.
Modern 40k has become so sanitary now. Every game is like playing in a clean room "Here are your ITC rules and ITC standard terrain set up with LOS blocking here here and here"
Its so boring compared to older editions, and i have grown to hate it for the same reason i hate card games. Majority of the game is just about stacking your deck with the current meta and hoping you draw it before your opponent and you are just kinda there for the ride.
Since 40k has become so sterile, everyone just takes the meta armies, and is along for the ride. GW managed to take the part from MTG that i personally hate the most, and port it into 40k. Which honestly is amazing they managed to do that.
You actually think they did that on purpose or rather thru a (grimdark)comedy of errors?
But I agree wholly.
2022/02/05 00:08:05
Subject: Do they just completely make it up as they go along?
auticus wrote: I agree, and it was heading down those tracks for the past decade.
Like a hobby i have invested thousands, an entire room to, is just not fun anymore, and it sucks. Thankfully a few of my friends feel the same way, and we just jumped ship to 30k, and or back to 7th.
Looking at making some hybrid rules to 7th to tone it down, or just use HH rules and port old 7th dexes to it.
What ever 40k is now, it sure as hell is not what it was pre 8th. Its just totally lifeless now.
Backspacehacker wrote: What you just discribed Auticus, is actually one of the main reasons why i just cant get into 9th.
Modern 40k has become so sanitary now. Every game is like playing in a clean room "Here are your ITC rules and ITC standard terrain set up with LOS blocking here here and here"
Its so boring compared to older editions, and i have grown to hate it for the same reason i hate card games. Majority of the game is just about stacking your deck with the current meta and hoping you draw it before your opponent and you are just kinda there for the ride.
Since 40k has become so sterile, everyone just takes the meta armies, and is along for the ride. GW managed to take the part from MTG that i personally hate the most, and port it into 40k. Which honestly is amazing they managed to do that.
You actually think they did that on purpose or rather thru a (grimdark)comedy of errors?
But I agree wholly.
Oh they totally did it on purpose, im more impressed they managed to dupe people into it.
Like the thing that MGT people always joked about with WH people was that WH was so expensive vs MGT, but MGT cost a lot more but spread out over a longer period of time because as they got new drops, new metas came into existance and old ones died.
40k you just spent it all up front and were good for basically the whole edition, now almost every drop the meta shifts and you gotta buy a crap ton of new stuff or your army is now the poop
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/02/05 00:09:54
To many unpainted models to count.
2022/02/05 00:25:04
Subject: Do they just completely make it up as they go along?
I didn't get duped because I prefer the best 40k edition to the worst one. If I didn't want to control the movement of my units I'd watch a movie.
What im saying people got duped into has nothing to do with the edition of the game. They could have done the same thing in any edition, im impressed they finally managed to do it.
To many unpainted models to count.
2022/02/05 00:36:40
Subject: Do they just completely make it up as they go along?
auticus wrote: What it is and what has been a thing for as long as I can remember now is that 40k (and AOS) are very expensive hobbies and people want to play but don't want to spend more money than they have to. So they find what the standard is. The standard being point size, scenario set, and terrain expectations. And then they build and buy a list around that and optimize for that. They are always the type of people that want full control over their environment, and tournament gaming gives them (usually) that avenue since its highly standardized.
You can't have a game where two people compete against one another, where one wins, and another loses, and give both players "full control". It's not feasible. The one area where people specifically don't have control is terrain. As I said, it's the part of the game that makes you play. It's the X factor. It's the thing you can only plan for to a point, but the terrain you are playing on might (and really should) disrupt your strategy, requiring a use of tactics to overcome the variables (rather than some rote by-the-numbers play that always goes the same way).
auticus wrote: They just shouldn't have a lot of terrain that matters or impacts the game.
Tables shouldn't have terrain that impacts the game. That's a real thing you just said. Should not impact the game.
I... I don't even know where to begin with that. My mind is struggling to form coherent sentences after reading that.
What you just said has to be the most bonkers, backwards, completely and utterly wrong take I have ever heard on terrain in my entire life.
auticus wrote: Because terrain that impacts the game screws people over at random (to them) and should be avoided at all costs, and you should use at least no more or less than what their store tournaments use (which are often run by people emulating what LVO and Adepticon and NOVA and ITC are using). So they have bought a force to play in those parameters.
You're not actually advocating for the empty symmetrical crap that tournaments are infesting everything else with, are you?
No, and feth that style of play forever.
I just... I just can't... for the first time in a long time, words fail me.
*walks away*
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/02/05 00:37:46
auticus wrote: What it is and what has been a thing for as long as I can remember now is that 40k (and AOS) are very expensive hobbies and people want to play but don't want to spend more money than they have to. So they find what the standard is. The standard being point size, scenario set, and terrain expectations. And then they build and buy a list around that and optimize for that. They are always the type of people that want full control over their environment, and tournament gaming gives them (usually) that avenue since its highly standardized.
You can't have a game where two people compete against one another, where one wins, and another loses, and give both players "full control". It's not feasible. The one area where people specifically don't have control is terrain. As I said, it's the part of the game that makes you play. It's the X factor. It's the thing you can only plan for to a point, but the terrain you are playing on might (and really should) disrupt your strategy, requiring a use of tactics to overcome the variables (rather than some rote by-the-numbers play that always goes the same way).
auticus wrote: They just shouldn't have a lot of terrain that matters or impacts the game.
Tables shouldn't have terrain that impacts the game. That's a real thing you just said. Should not impact the game.
I... I don't even know where to begin with that. My mind is struggling to form coherent sentences after reading that.
What you just said has to be the most bonkers, backwards, completely and utterly wrong take I have ever heard on terrain in my entire life.
auticus wrote: Because terrain that impacts the game screws people over at random (to them) and should be avoided at all costs, and you should use at least no more or less than what their store tournaments use (which are often run by people emulating what LVO and Adepticon and NOVA and ITC are using). So they have bought a force to play in those parameters.
You're not actually advocating for the empty symmetrical crap that tournaments are infesting everything else with, are you?
No, and feth that style of play forever.
I just... I just can't... for the first time in a long time, words fail me.
*walks away*
No no, I dont think he is saying thats what it should be, i think he is saying thats what a lot of people think right now, when it comes to random terrain setup or anything outside of ITC standard setups.
To many unpainted models to count.
2022/02/05 00:39:50
Subject: Do they just completely make it up as they go along?
Like a hobby i have invested thousands, an entire room to, is just not fun anymore, and it sucks.
Same. I sold off or donated... or int he case of things not optimal had to throw away in the dumpster... 18 fully painted armies before moving because it took up so much space.
Oh they totally did it on purpose, im more impressed they managed to dupe people into it.
I don't think they duped them. They did their marketing. When magic was being televised on espn that was when things started changing. Gaming started moving toward a more esports league format and I think thats just what sells now and will sell over here in the states because our culture is dominated by competitive sports.
People also don't want to play the same thing over and over again so the burn and churn is embraced by many many many gamers today as part of the collector's mindset.
I think they know exactly what they are doing because the fanbase throws truckloads of money at them indicating this is exactly what they want.
The older style games like Warlord games still exist today but are much more niche.
You're not actually advocating for the empty symmetrical crap that tournaments are infesting everything else with, are you?
No. I'm not at all. I got out of 40k because everything had to be symmetrical and tournament based, and when I ran narrative campaign events at our store (both GW and indy) it was through a lot of anger, people screaming at my face, blowing up our facebook, and the one guy threatening to fight me in the parking lot over it. I had a guy pick up his entire guard army and throw it piece by piece with force into a box and bust it up because I announced a jungle beachhead mission and he showed up and was horrified that he didn't have clear line of sight to anything he wanted and went into a 20 minute profanity laced tirade which continued onto our facebook page and was backed by a dozen or so of the tournament players as being a horrific way to have public events and was teaching people to play wrong and that I was spitefully screwing over everyone.
I'm the last one that wants every game to be symmetrical. I'm voicing the other side AS I UNDERSTAND IT and trying to keep my language neutral because my way of playing is both a minority and also my way of enjoying games is certainly not better than anyone elses.,
The ones that weren't red faced but still annoyed enough to talk about why they were so pissed off over the years have helped me understand that mindset, and additionally I spent 10 years as a tournament gamer IN that mindset. As my girlfriend likes to also say - there is nothing wrong with how other people like to play the game, thats how they have fun. You just have to have fun with like minded people.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2022/02/05 01:09:45
2022/02/05 00:49:23
Subject: Do they just completely make it up as they go along?
I think that burn and churn marketing is gonna bite them in the rear sooner rather then later.
MGT can get away with it because producing new cards is not nearly as difficult as making an entire new model. Their burn and churn is running off of back logs of models that have been out for years, some cases decades. But that backlog wont last them forever.
When it eventually burns out, i think they are going ot be really sorry they drove away a lot of their old guard players that would always be ready to buy stuff just because they liked the game rather then the comp scene.
To many unpainted models to count.
2022/02/05 00:54:59
Subject: Do they just completely make it up as they go along?
Time will tell! With GW the only constant that has been said over the many years (and I say this with all respect) is that their current model will eventually fail and they will get bitten by it.
That was a thread on portent.net / transformed to warseer started in like 2003 and carried on all the way over the years and years and years about how they would be dying from their practices and they still are doing wonderful today, so at this point I am doubtful. (hell I remember the first plastic land raider coming out in 2000 and people were up in arms over that costing $45 and how GW wouldn't last long like that - or their first skeleton box of 20 plastic dudes costing $20 which was considered price gouging back then)
For people like us, its more coming up with rules for your own groups to enjoy and then watching modern threads like this to see where things are.
I'm getting closer and closer to 50 now and the way I want to play is almost entirely dictated by my own game design lol.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/02/05 00:55:26
2022/02/05 00:59:30
Subject: Do they just completely make it up as they go along?
I mean if anything is true and consistent, what was once considered old and out of date, will eventually come back around to being in style.
Im sure all the rules people hated will eventually come back into the game, and be sold as the new hottness.
So just gotta play the waiting game i guess.
To many unpainted models to count.
2022/02/05 01:26:35
Subject: Do they just completely make it up as they go along?
However in D&D I also consider rolling 4d6 and taking the lowest away and assigning the values to your stats fun, and others consider that the avenue of making worthless characters because they can't be optimized.
That sounds like the opposite of fun. I also hated random WL traits, psychic powers, etc. I hate randomness and it also doesn't make sense from a fluff perspective. When you want to learn a new skill or a new language, do you pick something that would be useful or just randomly choose it based on rolling dice?
Funny thing: this isn't even the most restrictive D&D stat generation systems. At one point, you rolled 3d6 and took what you got; you also rolled in order so class selection tended to be random- it was wise to choose the class that best suited the characteristics the dice gave you.
And Toofast, if you think about it, that kind of IS fluffy. People born with perfect pitch often find themselves drawn to careers in music. We don't get to choose whether we're born with body builder genetics or type 1 diabetes.
Skill selection, sure- we can somewhat make choices about that, but skills get bonuses from stats, so the dude with autodidact genetics is just going to be better at academic skills than dude with the body builder genetics, but he's going to be better at athletic skills than the autodidact.
And yeah, it doesn't give players total control- like you I often play games that DO give the player total control. But there is value in this style of play- it's neither better nor worse, merely different. But quite frankly, it is fluffy as F*&%- attributes ARE mostly genetic and beyond our control (though we can improve them slightly through hard work, and the game provides mechanics for that too). Skill selection IS a choice, but it is impacted by your genetic attributes.
Sorry I fell into the D&D tangent part of the post rather than talking about 40k, but I didn't open the door.
2022/02/05 03:09:38
Subject: Do they just completely make it up as they go along?
You actually think they did that on purpose or rather thru a (grimdark)comedy of errors?
Go look up how much money MtG, LoL or Dota 2 make every year. They did it intentionally to make money, the same reason any army could summon demons without paying points for them and formations of certain models gave ridiculous benefits in 7th. That wasn't a grimdark comedy of errors, just blatantly obvious greed. They want to go the MtG/esports route because the constant churn of the meta makes them a lot more money than people who play fluffhammer in their garage and start a new army every few years.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/02/05 03:11:38
2022/02/05 06:49:06
Subject: Do they just completely make it up as they go along?
You actually think they did that on purpose or rather thru a (grimdark)comedy of errors?
Go look up how much money MtG, LoL or Dota 2 make every year. They did it intentionally to make money, the same reason any army could summon demons without paying points for them and formations of certain models gave ridiculous benefits in 7th. That wasn't a grimdark comedy of errors, just blatantly obvious greed. They want to go the MtG/esports route because the constant churn of the meta makes them a lot more money than people who play fluffhammer in their garage and start a new army every few years.
There's no doubt that GW IS trying to build the tournament scene, and that elements of this edition are specifically designed to do that. I think that is obvious.
But it is also true that customers who do not attend tournaments outnumber those who do by a factor of at least ten. At least. Because, and again, I can't stress this enough: tournaments do not exist in every city or town where 40k is played. And a handful of people who live in places without tournaments might cough up the money to travel to tournaments, but you're looking at a minority of a minority.
Now you can argue that there may be a higher proportion of big spenders in the tourney crowd than the garage hammer casuals. I won't even bother arguing against that. But the sheer weight of numbers from the garage hammer casual scene is still probably going to put us over the top. Furthermore, all these tourney folks are buying is meta-hotness. It's the garage hammer casuals and collectors that are buying literally everything else. You think a tourney head is selling out limited ed dexes? Who's feeding the Black Library?
And GW has released far more products geared toward Crusaders than Matched players. Literally the only resource that excludes Crusade players is GT mission packs and the open war deck. We've had six mission packs since the edition started. Nachmund is what, the third GT pack? And I think there are more casuals, crusaders and narrative players buying campaign books too- there may be a handful of tourney players that buy them, but those books offer far more to the Crusader than they do to the competitive player.
I'll end where I started: yes, you are absolutely correct that GW has designed parts of this edition to specifically target tournament players, and that they have made significant investments and partnerships to facilitate that. Only a fool would claim otherwise. But if you think that's ALL they are doing, you aren't watching very carefully. How many tourney players subscribed to Warhammer +?
2022/02/05 07:32:08
Subject: Do they just completely make it up as they go along?
You actually think they did that on purpose or rather thru a (grimdark)comedy of errors?
Go look up how much money MtG, LoL or Dota 2 make every year. They did it intentionally to make money, the same reason any army could summon demons without paying points for them and formations of certain models gave ridiculous benefits in 7th. That wasn't a grimdark comedy of errors, just blatantly obvious greed. They want to go the MtG/esports route because the constant churn of the meta makes them a lot more money than people who play fluffhammer in their garage and start a new army every few years.
The most popular MtG format has basically no rules, there are a handful of banned cards but otherwise, you can bring one of any card released in the last 30 years, you don't really need new cards from every set. The most expensive cards are not the most recently released ones, it's the collectors items that are 30 years old and they are often still extremely good in the game. LoL is mostly played by casuals and revenue is made by selling them fancy visual overhauls to champions so they can stand out. The most popular champions are sometimes the worst, even if champions generally become more popular as they get stronger and less popular when they get worse.
2022/02/05 11:17:57
Subject: Do they just completely make it up as they go along?
MtG has a tight set of rules for the cards to be designed
as long as the the capabilities of the cards are within the design space, they are fine and it does not matter how old they are, they still work
for 40k, the design space for units changes with each Codex
this is why points don't work in 40k because they need a in itself coherent set of rules and a closed design space to add balance
if every army only has access to 1 single tank, the Anti-Tank guns need to be different priced in points as if all armies consist only of tanks
but for 40k, armies start with limited amount of tanks, so AT is expensive, than a new army comes with all tanks and the army after that get cheap AT to compensate, so not only the points but also the special rules for the first armies are out of place
and adjust points don't help if the killing potential or the units that can have them are limited
Harry, bring this ring to Narnia or the Sith will take the Enterprise
2022/02/05 13:17:36
Subject: Do they just completely make it up as they go along?
nou wrote: Those examples above show why you have to have a functional FOC as a context, because you can only try to weight melee against shooting, against movement, against durability, against vehicles etc if you have well defined boundaries of what proportions of each type of units will be fielded in a game. The more restrictive FOC is, the more balance you can achieve, but at the same time all factions are effectively more and more homogenous. As you approach exactly a single list possible in a single scenario possible, on a single terrain possible, you also approach the best balance possible in a system, but you do so first and foremost by tools completely different than points.
Does it?
I'm afraid I'm sort of missing your point.
Balance to my mind isn't that I can run anything (400 Hormagaunts in this case) and then have equal games.
If I want to devolve the game down to rock-paper-scissors... its not really surprising that such is the result.
To go back to theory, if you bring nothing but tanks, and I bring nothing but anti-tank, its not imbalanced that I have a substantial statistical advantage - and if we were to play that game over and over, I'd therefore get a much higher win percentage. Because nothing is forcing you to take nothing but tanks. You've gambled and lost by running into me.
Imbalance is if, in all circumstances, regardless of my list - or any other lists out there, you should never have brought those tanks, or hormagaunts or wraithlords etc - because objectively you are making your list dramatically worse by doing so as compared with other options.
To discuss 7th, Tyranids were awful aside from flying hive tyrants - and as you identify, taking toxin sacs on hormagaunts was a joke. Rules changes can help. They may be desirable if you want a unit to be in a certain design space - rather than upping or lowering its relative damage output and toughness which is what happens with points increases or reductions.
But as you said, list building is about identifying efficiency for your points. I would argue that almost every unit (I'm sure there remain some that just don't work) has a value due to that efficiency being a real thing. If a unit's points is significantly below that value, you can fill your boots and this will improve your chances of winning. If its significant above this value then the more you take, the weaker your list is going to be and the lower the chances of winning. The nudge close enough method works - you are expanding the pool of "reasonable" choices that have a fair crack in games. We know it works because CA has meant that 8th and I think 9th are far less imbalanced than 7th was - where books were just abandoned to die.
If you want every discrete game to be balanced (i.e. for list building not to matter) then yes - you'd need to limit player's abilities to go "my list is all A," only for their opponent to say "my list is all anti-A". But I don't think that's 40k's balance problem. Just as its not a problem in League/Dota if you bring 5 heroes that completely hard counter another 5 heroes - or if in a card game one deck is skewed by design to stomp another. The issue is getting dramatically more bang for my buck in all circumstances. Which is a function of points and can be fixed to a reasonable degree by points.
2022/02/05 15:27:52
Subject: Do they just completely make it up as they go along?
Now you can argue that there may be a higher proportion of big spenders in the tourney crowd than the garage hammer casuals. I won't even bother arguing against that. But the sheer weight of numbers from the garage hammer casual scene is still probably going to put us over the top. Furthermore, all these tourney folks are buying is meta-hotness. It's the garage hammer casuals and collectors that are buying literally everything else. You think a tourney head is selling out limited ed dexes? Who's feeding the Black Library?
I wrote this already in another thread, but I'm a narrative player, who spends an equivalent of two tournament armies every year for the last six years - in GW models, FW models, GW terrain kits and a large proportion of Citadel Paint range, as I need more than three pots of paint to work with. Everybody in my group spends a similar amount - the most conservative guy spends about half of what I do, that equals a single tournament army a year.
I also wrote it already - tournament circuits are there not to make the biggest part of the money for GW, but to provide publicity, which then drives casual crowd to spend way, way more money on this hobby than tournament players do.
Tyel wrote:
Does it?
I'm afraid I'm sort of missing your point.
Balance to my mind isn't that I can run anything (400 Hormagaunts in this case) and then have equal games.
If I want to devolve the game down to rock-paper-scissors... its not really surprising that such is the result.
Yes, you indeed missed the point. Those examples show that points do not inform you anyhow of how the model will fare outside of a very rigid context, because you have to know how the opposing army looks like to be able to assign a meaningful point value to a unit or an ability. It can be either restrictive, universal FOC, or "the meta", but outside of context, point prices are meaningless, random numbers assigned to models.
A "real life" example of "meta" vs "outside of meta". At one point of 7th ed meta, Mawloc was considered the next best thing after Flyrant in Tyranid dex, because "the meta" were large blobs of Thunderwolf Cavalry superfriends sitting on a relic. Mawloc also ignored Invisibility targeting restrictions and had 50% chance of repeating it's attack in the next turn as well, so within "the meta" it usually returned a lot more than it's cost. In a casual meta though? Against low power MSU or cheap infantry blobs in TAC lists Mawloc nearly always severly underperformed, because the game played in tournament context was entirely different than the game played by casuals.
So what point cost do you assign to a Mawloc? The one dictated by the tournament meta, so at the same time condemning every casual player who likes the model or the concept of Mawloc to a severe handicap in his FLGS games? Or the one dictated by the casual meta, so making the Mawloc severly OP? Or somewhere in between, leaving it both OP in tournaments and UP in casual meta, so effectively removing it from the game entirely?
And what is the funniest in the context of our two posts - your conclusion that Toxin Sacs on Hormagaunts were a joke is in direct opposition to my own Eldar vs Tyranid games of 7th, because I was very often fielding Wraithseer and Toxic Hormagaunts were the most optimal response the Tyranid player could field in "my group's meta". So you see, context is everything.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/02/05 15:35:09
