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Racerguy180 wrote:

So what you're saying is, don't buy the books, keep playing with crap balance and buying the models, which tells GW that rules don't sell, but new models do. Drop the rules support further and just become a "miniatures company" again.

this would honestly be the best solution since GW has proved multiple times they don't know how to keep a system clean and balanced.

And we already have 3rd party rules being made (be it OnePageRules' or ProHammer).

ERJAK wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
You're right for the wrong reason.

Look at the people lining up to buy everything squats. I want to buy the CK army box. Neither scenario has nothing to do with rules. People will buy the gak out of awesome models regardless.

Being vocal is the only mode we really have unless GW decides to nosedive every lever they created to try and make the game better.

They're not separate issues. 40k operates quite a lot on its own inertia. That inertia exists as result of the hollistic interactions of models, rules, and lore. Each piece needs each other piece to survive. (Well, the lore could probably keep going on its own. It would just be operating on a very limited budget.)

We don't have to guess at how important rules are. We've seen it. 7th Edition and Launch AoS had terrible rules. The rules were so bad, in fact, that they finally went over the edge of what the majority of people will tolerate. Both games were bleeding players at absurd rates. Even early adopters of Sigmar weren't really buying anything. You couldn't GIVE AoS kits away in those times and it was much the same for any 40k army that wasn't Daemons, Space Marines, or Eldar. This is in spite of some of the best models GW had released up to that point coming out in both games (admech came out in this era).

Sales tanked, share prices tanked, community involvement tanked, event attendence was dipping year by year. GW was on a path that would have eventually run them out of business.

Then AoS dropped the general's handbook and 40k 8th edition came out and we've been in the golden age of GW share prices ever since. I still have VIVID memories of the first Friday night after the general's handbook came out for AoS. Our store hadn't sold a single model of AoS since the initial starter boxes. I go to check out the AoS learners night they'd set up, suddenly we have 14 people playing and buying kits.

Rules absolutely do matter.

Rules matter to a point, but case in point - 7th, which was the edition of the "pushed" Wraithknight did not pan out. It seems like tampering in favor of sales can be a detractor. Nobody really wanted to buy gakloads of rhinos.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
You're right for the wrong reason.

Look at the people lining up to buy everything squats. I want to buy the CK army box. Neither scenario has nothing to do with rules. People will buy the gak out of awesome models regardless.

They'll buy SOME models. But if the rules are good then players are incentivised to buy MORE models, because their experience with the army/game remains positive. Otherwise the models they did buy will sit on a shelf and just look nice.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
You're right for the wrong reason.

Look at the people lining up to buy everything squats. I want to buy the CK army box. Neither scenario has nothing to do with rules. People will buy the gak out of awesome models regardless.

They'll buy SOME models. But if the rules are good then players are incentivised to buy MORE models, because their experience with the army/game remains positive. Otherwise the models they did buy will sit on a shelf and just look nice.

This is very true.
When I have a fun game I'm literally on the bus home shopping for the next thing for that game.
When I have a gak game I'm googling for groups that play other games.

There's a certain extent to which rules churn sells models. Over the years I've bought effectively two 2000pt armies of Space Marines as bits of my first 2000pts army got replaced to "keep up" - all of this occurred despite never having the sort of amazing game that immediately sends me shopping.
So if you're not capable of writing amazing rules, only passable rules, churn is definitely a way to wring out a few sales.

But it's certainly not the most effective way.
I've spent more money after one great evening with one game than I've spent after years of mediocre evenings with another game.

 kirotheavenger wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
You're right for the wrong reason.

Look at the people lining up to buy everything squats. I want to buy the CK army box. Neither scenario has nothing to do with rules. People will buy the gak out of awesome models regardless.

They'll buy SOME models. But if the rules are good then players are incentivised to buy MORE models, because their experience with the army/game remains positive. Otherwise the models they did buy will sit on a shelf and just look nice.

This is very true.
When I have a fun game I'm literally on the bus home shopping for the next thing for that game.
When I have a gak game I'm googling for groups that play other games.

There's a certain extent to which rules churn sells models. Over the years I've bought effectively two 2000pt armies of Space Marines as bits of my first 2000pts army got replaced to "keep up" - all of this occurred despite never having the sort of amazing game that immediately sends me shopping.
So if you're not capable of writing amazing rules, only passable rules, churn is definitely a way to wring out a few sales.

But it's certainly not the most effective way.
I've spent more money after one great evening with one game than I've spent after years of mediocre evenings with another game.

That's nice anecdote, but for every player having fun stomping there's a player who isn't. There's also an upper limit to what you can buy and as Ork players saw there's a legitimate risk to owning too much of a model, which means the only people willing to drop that coin will be the tippy top tournament players.

I never said anything about having fun stomping.

I know my post might be bit hard to follow, owing to the interchangability of "game" to refer to a system such as 40k or Star Wars Legion or Blood Red Skies or Infinity or whatever, or to an individual evening.
I tried to make a distinction but I'll clarify further.

I don't recall the last time I left a 40k match glowing about how awesome it was and how much I want to buy more.

Every time that's happened it's been another system with more robust, balanced, and interesting rules.

40k's balance has normally left me going home luke warm at best, and ranting about how I'll never touch it again at worst.
Sometimes that's stuck for even up to two years, but 40k is so popular you can't escape.

The only time gameplay has encouraged me to buy more is when my existing units have been either so bad or so OP that I feel obligated to buy that unit I think is "kinda cool but not worth buying as 40k is a meh game anyway".
So in this way poor balance has encouraged me to buy something I wouldn't have done otherwise.

However, if 40k was a fun, interesting, and balanced game I'd be so enamoured with the system I'd have bought that unit plus it's friends months ago.
So imbalance is a net loss for 40k.

Sorry - my brain totally read Insectum's post backwards and then misinterpreted yours.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Sorry - my brain totally read Insectum's post backwards and then misinterpreted yours.

Lols

If a new game came out with these same rules without the IP backing, nobody would buy into it and would honestly be laughed at. Yes or no?

EviscerationPlague wrote:
If a new game came out with these same rules without the IP backing, nobody would buy into it and would honestly be laughed at. Yes or no?

Oh absolutely, it would be a trainwreck.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

ERJAK wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
You're right for the wrong reason.

Look at the people lining up to buy everything squats. I want to buy the CK army box. Neither scenario has nothing to do with rules. People will buy the gak out of awesome models regardless.

Being vocal is the only mode we really have unless GW decides to nosedive every lever they created to try and make the game better.

They're not separate issues. 40k operates quite a lot on its own inertia. That inertia exists as result of the hollistic interactions of models, rules, and lore. Each piece needs each other piece to survive. (Well, the lore could probably keep going on its own. It would just be operating on a very limited budget.)

We don't have to guess at how important rules are. We've seen it. 7th Edition and Launch AoS had terrible rules. The rules were so bad, in fact, that they finally went over the edge of what the majority of people will tolerate. Both games were bleeding players at absurd rates. Even early adopters of Sigmar weren't really buying anything. You couldn't GIVE AoS kits away in those times and it was much the same for any 40k army that wasn't Daemons, Space Marines, or Eldar. This is in spite of some of the best models GW had released up to that point coming out in both games (admech came out in this era).

Sales tanked, share prices tanked, community involvement tanked, event attendence was dipping year by year. GW was on a path that would have eventually run them out of business.

Then AoS dropped the general's handbook and 40k 8th edition came out and we've been in the golden age of GW share prices ever since. I still have VIVID memories of the first Friday night after the general's handbook came out for AoS. Our store hadn't sold a single model of AoS since the initial starter boxes. I go to check out the AoS learners night they'd set up, suddenly we have 14 people playing and buying kits.

Rules absolutely do matter.

Rules matter to a point, but case in point - 7th, which was the edition of the "pushed" Wraithknight did not pan out. It seems like tampering in favor of sales can be a detractor. Nobody really wanted to buy gakloads of rhinos.

Again, that's missing the forest for the trees. WraithKnights and Razorbacks sold like crazy in those times. The problem was that sales were so down across the board from people stepping away from the game/hobby that 'selling like crazy' still wasn't that much.

ALL of GWs sales were down. There were other factors, bad advertisement, 0 community outreach, etc, but the fact that people just...didn't want to deal with 7th edition being the single most powercrept edition 40k has ever had (Non-meta armies would frequently fail to kill a single model of meta armies) was the biggest problem.

There exists a certain maximum level of imbalance that the gaming part of the community can deal with before it starts bleeding out and impacting other areas. Casual Hobbyists and weekend beer and pretzels groups still talk about the game, still play to some extent, and aren't immune to being frustrated by "OP bullgak" just because there's no internet points on the line. Frustrated players both make less purchases AND are likely to be negative enough while speaking about the game/hobby, which can depress other people's purchases. Now, a LOT of that can go on before it has a meaningful impact on something like sales aggregates, but if it keeps progressing and there keeps being legitimate grievances, like there was in 7th, it can eventually hit a breaking point where it DOES start hurting the bottom line.

We're quickly approaching that breakpoint of that with 9th.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 kirotheavenger wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
You're right for the wrong reason.

Look at the people lining up to buy everything squats. I want to buy the CK army box. Neither scenario has nothing to do with rules. People will buy the gak out of awesome models regardless.

They'll buy SOME models. But if the rules are good then players are incentivised to buy MORE models, because their experience with the army/game remains positive. Otherwise the models they did buy will sit on a shelf and just look nice.

This is very true.
When I have a fun game I'm literally on the bus home shopping for the next thing for that game.
When I have a gak game I'm googling for groups that play other games.

There's a certain extent to which rules churn sells models. Over the years I've bought effectively two 2000pt armies of Space Marines as bits of my first 2000pts army got replaced to "keep up" - all of this occurred despite never having the sort of amazing game that immediately sends me shopping.
So if you're not capable of writing amazing rules, only passable rules, churn is definitely a way to wring out a few sales.

But it's certainly not the most effective way.
I've spent more money after one great evening with one game than I've spent after years of mediocre evenings with another game.

My own personal anecdote is with Marvel Crisis Protocol.

That game is AWESOME. The rules, while obviously not perfect, are very well balanced and you can play basically anything you want and still feel like you have a fighting chance.

As a result, I've spent almost 400$ in the past 2 months on models I wasn't originally even that interested in. The extremely good deals I've gotten contributed to that number, but not nearly as much as the experience.

I went to adepticon and played 8 games of MCP and came home wanting to try out a bunch of new squads. I went to adepticon and played 2 games of 40k, got sick of it (and was still dealing with leftover CA2022 rage.) and didn't bother finishing out the event I was in.

EviscerationPlague wrote:
If a new game came out with these same rules without the IP backing, nobody would buy into it and would honestly be laughed at. Yes or no?

Yes, GW lives and dies on market penetration. The fact you can find someplace where Warhammer is played within driving distance almost anywhere in the world is a major, if not the single biggest factor in GW's success.

I 'bad' game that you get to play is better then a 'great' game but no one to play it with.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:

ERJAK wrote:
Then AoS dropped the general's handbook and 40k 8th edition came out and we've been in the golden age of GW share prices ever since. I still have VIVID memories of the first Friday night after the general's handbook came out for AoS. Our store hadn't sold a single model of AoS since the initial starter boxes. I go to check out the AoS learners night they'd set up, suddenly we have 14 people playing and buying kits.

Rules absolutely do matter.

This, seriously. My group wants to start a 40k crusade campaign. We've been playing AoS PtG for several months, I go to read the 40k crusade rules and I'm stunned at how bad they are. It's like these design teams live on different planets.

Yes, the teams have absolutely no collaboration. 8th edition I think it was, both AoS and 40k released their mini rulebook. The AoS one was completely up to date with the latest general handbook. The 40k version was a strait copy of the original, out of date and not faqed, print.

Both teams were told to make a mini rulebook. Then they never talked to each other about what that entails.

ERJAK wrote:
My own personal anecdote is with Marvel Crisis Protocol.

Hmm, well, you just sold me on it.

Blaming the players for the state of GW's rules might be the last vestige of someone's desperate attempt to assuage their gambler's fallacy/rampant fanboyism. There's a distinct level of reality denying about such an act, like Homer pretending that his BBQ pork is going to be totally fine, when it so clearly isn't. A certain someone who posts here quite often does it all the time. It's quite telling. I'd wish he'd kan that kind of talk, for all our sake's, but he won't.

Anyway, rules are important. As much as sales for a lot of us might be driven by the miniatures themselves (I can't say I've ever bought a unit because of its rules), how the units operate in game is still a big factor in enjoyment.

Chaos Space Marines - specifically the 3.5 Codex - is what got me back into the game during university after an absence during high school (I had left before 3rd Ed hit). Since then Chaos has been gak upon from almost every angle, and the continued cutting/removal of what makes Chaos Chaos appears to continue even into the upcoming book (now they've come for our Cult Troops).

And it's demoralising. It makes past efforts feel wasted. It makes it feel is if they're taking away* My Dudes™ and replacing it with something else.

Beyond that, I agree with what ERJACK has been saying.

*Obviously they're not taking my minis away, so please no one try to make the useless "They're not ackshually stealing your minis, y'know?" argument.

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:
You helping your friend on a smurf account in League Of Legends to not steal the spotlight is absolutely the dumbest thing I've read, especially since you're not playing against your friend either.

It's not a smurf account, just playing normals with an iron friend on an account that is gold in ranked.

You missed the latter part of that, probably on purpose is my guess.

You misunderstood my earlier post so I explained what I meant. Your post is gak and your mom is iron, that's my response to the other half of your earlier post.

No I understood your post, it's just a garbage defense for GW'S shoddy rules writing and blaming the players.

You assumed I was talking about smurfing, now you think I am defending GW, you know nothing.

Wtf is smurfing with a Smurf account? Crap, I am old…

 jeff white wrote:
Wtf is smurfing with a Smurf account? Crap, I am old…

You're probably still pretty old if you DO know what it means and where it comes from without googling it. It dates back to Warcraft II, when a couple of top-level and widely recognized players made second accounts with a Smurf theme so people wouldn't automatically concede when seeing them.

Ahhh k. Thanks for that. Now their exchange makes complete sense…

ccs wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
So your argument is:
GW is right and good to produce an unbalanced game, because it makes them money, and it really IS the players' (collective) fault that unbalanced matches are played?

That's a take.

Outside the tourney environment there IS some degree of player fault/responsibility.
You don't HAVE to bring the most op, unfun, thing & play unfun scenarios with crap terrain setups.

But, rather than discussing what you both want from the game.....
And then when fun isn't had you blame the company.
Because you know, neither player could've had any input or influence on what just happened....

A big issue with this though, is you have a lot of armies that dont give you options. Its either feat or famine.

As mentioned with Harlaquins, either you take the OP units, and have a broken list, or your army sucks.

 Backspacehacker wrote:

ccs wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
So your argument is:
GW is right and good to produce an unbalanced game, because it makes them money, and it really IS the players' (collective) fault that unbalanced matches are played?

That's a take.

Outside the tourney environment there IS some degree of player fault/responsibility.
You don't HAVE to bring the most op, unfun, thing & play unfun scenarios with crap terrain setups.

But, rather than discussing what you both want from the game.....
And then when fun isn't had you blame the company.
Because you know, neither player could've had any input or influence on what just happened....

A big issue with this though, is you have a lot of armies that dont give you options. Its either feat or famine.

As mentioned with Harlaquins, either you take the OP units, and have a broken list, or your army sucks.

Harlequins without voidweaver spam aren't that oppressive. And only meta chasers can field voidweaver spam since it was illegal to field more than 3 until a few week ago and such models has always been garbage tier.

Any army with a 9th edition codex can manage against harlequins players that are not bandwagoners.

 Blackie wrote:
Harlequins without voidweaver spam aren't that oppressive.

I think this is a hostage to fortune that will be... clarified in a week or two.
Harlequins may not be 78% win rate faction without voidweaver spam. But I suspect they may still be up there for the best faction in the game (idk, 60-65% win rate). Depending on what (if anything) GW do about Custodes and Tau.

Honestly. I don't have high hopes for this emergency balance patch. Blame their most recent one for that.

All I can see is GW kneecapping Harlies. Then claiming that Tau and Custodes 60 - 65% winrate is well within their balance parameters. With the promises of another round of balances in June prior to the start of the next season.

 CEO Kasen wrote:

 jeff white wrote:
Wtf is smurfing with a Smurf account? Crap, I am old…

You're probably still pretty old if you DO know what it means and where it comes from without googling it. It dates back to Warcraft II, when a couple of top-level and widely recognized players made second accounts with a Smurf theme so people wouldn't automatically concede when seeing them.

*sigh* those were the days.

Back when RTSs were the kings of the gaming world. I should could use a competent SC3 unsullied by Activision.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 CEO Kasen wrote:

 jeff white wrote:
Wtf is smurfing with a Smurf account? Crap, I am old…

You're probably still pretty old if you DO know what it means and where it comes from without googling it. It dates back to Warcraft II, when a couple of top-level and widely recognized players made second accounts with a Smurf theme so people wouldn't automatically concede when seeing them.

*sigh* those were the days.

Back when RTSs were the kings of the gaming world. I should could use a competent SC3 unsullied by Activision.

^Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance Forever.

The absolute king of RTSs, imo. Still being played.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 CEO Kasen wrote:

 jeff white wrote:
Wtf is smurfing with a Smurf account? Crap, I am old…

You're probably still pretty old if you DO know what it means and where it comes from without googling it. It dates back to Warcraft II, when a couple of top-level and widely recognized players made second accounts with a Smurf theme so people wouldn't automatically concede when seeing them.

*sigh* those were the days.

Back when RTSs were the kings of the gaming world. I should could use a competent SC3 unsullied by Activision.

Totally off topic but Microsoft has said that they think there is still a very large untapped market in the RTS world. With buying blizzard there is a very very VERY good chance we will get a fixed warcraft reforged, and a new starcraft.
Just a side bar is all.

Tyel wrote:

Toofast wrote:
With a winner and a loser, so it's inherently competitive rather than cooperative, correct? So why should I handicap myself? When I go golfing, my buddies don't expect me to tee off with a 3 iron just because I'm a longer hitter. When I race someone, I don't have to unplug one of my spark plugs if my car has more power and weighs less. When I shoot a competition, I don't have to take the red dot off and use open sights just because someone else couldn't afford a red dot and a gunsmith. When I play basketball at the rec center, I don't have to leave 1 shoe untied if I'm bigger/faster/stronger than the guy guarding me. This isn't dungeons and dragons, it isn't rogue trader or 2E with an arbitrator. It's a game with a winner and loser just like chess, league of legends, motor racing, basketball, shooting competition, or literally any other hobby/sport/esport I've been involved in. I'm not intentionally buying and painting subpar models to fit someone else's arbitrary definition of fair.

Well that's fine until you've crushed everyone in the group a few times, and when next you go "lets have a game" they go "nah, I'm washing my hair". Because playing overwhelmingly one-sided 40k for 2-3 hours isn't a great way to spend an afternoon.

I mostly play in tournaments or practice games for tournaments. If someone doesn't want to play me, as I said before, I'll be happy to go grab a smoke and a cuban sandwich next door. I don't have much to gain by playing someone who refuses because of my list anyway. Even if it was a casual game, I'm not likely to learn very much or make myself a better player by playing in that type of game. I would rather go outside and watch the grass grow than push models around for a couple hours and make laser noises without really caring what happens or who wins.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

ccs wrote:


Outside the tourney environment there IS some degree of player fault/responsibility.
You don't HAVE to bring the most op, unfun, thing

Unless you're a new player and just thought crisis suits, voidweavers or vertus praetors looked cool. Then you can either play a small pt game with half your collection or not get a game. That's why "players should just balance it and not take OP stuff" is a stupid argument. Not everyone takes those units because they're broken or OP, they might not have even known that when they bought them. That's like buying a Porsche and saying "well you have to remap the ECU to get it to run because Porsche isn't perfect at tuning". When I'm paying top dollar for a car, I expect it to run when I take delivery, not have to spend 30 mins screwing with it prior to each use to get it to work properly. I extend that logic to any product I purchase.

Since the balance is terrible and has been forever and seems really unlikely to be solved even with more frequent balance patches, has there ever been any talk of a official handicap system based on worldwide tournament data? Like ok last weekend worldwide, faction X had a 75% win rate, so bam in the next weeks tournies that faction pays a handicap of X points (obviously some sort of scale would need to be developed) - like they would only get 1800 points to spend in a 2K game? These handicaps would be adjusted weekly based on near real time data coming out of events.

Would that not help balance the game overall when clearly it does not seem to be a priority of GW itself? Probably just crazy talk

 petrov27 wrote:
Since the balance is terrible and has been forever and seems really unlikely to be solved even with more frequent balance patches, has there ever been any talk of a official handicap system based on worldwide tournament data? Like ok last weekend worldwide, faction X had a 75% win rate, so bam in the next weeks tournies that faction pays a handicap of X points (obviously some sort of scale would need to be developed) - like they would only get 1800 points to spend in a 2K game? These handicaps would be adjusted weekly based on near real time data coming out of events.

Would that not help balance the game overall when clearly it does not seem to be a priority of GW itself? Probably just crazy talk

The problem with handicaps is that it essentially invalidates all data to determine future balance decisions.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 petrov27 wrote:
Since the balance is terrible and has been forever and seems really unlikely to be solved even with more frequent balance patches, has there ever been any talk of a official handicap system based on worldwide tournament data? Like ok last weekend worldwide, faction X had a 75% win rate, so bam in the next weeks tournies that faction pays a handicap of X points (obviously some sort of scale would need to be developed) - like they would only get 1800 points to spend in a 2K game? These handicaps would be adjusted weekly based on near real time data coming out of events.

Would that not help balance the game overall when clearly it does not seem to be a priority of GW itself? Probably just crazy talk

The problem with handicaps is that it essentially invalidates all data to determine future balance decisions.

Curious as to why? You would still know that to be balanced in tourneys, a given faction has been handicapped with X penalty/points based off their previous win rates - the data is not thrown out - it would be easy to review it and see oh yeah, after codex dropped faction was 75% win rate totally killing everything, got an immediate handicap the next weekend of X points which stabilzed them at 50% the following weekends. Balance decisions would start with those factions with massive handicaps....

It has the chance to change the list design and mission function. Like say Harlies are given a 1700 points and they do worse. Are they doing worse, because they can't hold objectives as they have fewer models? What list changes occur to accommodate that issue thereby changing the window as to what is strong and what is not?

And how will secondaries interact? Armies that take fewer models are worse targets for some kill secondaries.