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 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.

Cuz they're doing such a bang up job currently???

Who knows, it might be the catalyst for actual balance....

I couldn't say that with a straight face.

 petrov27 wrote:

 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....

There's a couple of problems with this idea. One is that points don't have a linear relationship with efficacy. Example, a 55pt handicap gets me another squad of sisters of battle or a buff character. Mediocre benefit. 70pts gets me a squad of Repentia, significant benefit. 80 gets me a squad of Sacresancts, ENORMOUS benefit.

Two: It muddies data for when rules changes actually ARE made. Not that GW uses data for rules changes, but if they did, it would be unhelpful to have such a system in place.

Three: It does nothing for internal balance. Right now, external balance of factions is the most obvious massive issue, but long term INTERNAL balance of units has been a much more consistent bugaboo. For all that people complain about GW releasing OP books and models, it's actually far more common for a units rules to be total garbage.

There are plenty of units in the game that are so terrible they can't even be fixed by points. Far more so than units that super OP.

 Blackie wrote:

 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.

You know that things a duel kit, right? You don't really have to be a meta-chaser to have the option for plenty of Voidweavers.
How many Harlie players out there have 1 or 2 Voidweavers + 3-4 (or more) Starweavers - and the leftover bitz needed to convert some/all of those starweavers to voids?
At my local shops that answer is "all of them". And some have magnetized the guns. The one local guy said something to the effect of "Eh, I'll just run some of my elves on foot for awhile."

 Daedalus81 wrote:
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.

Fair enough, but do we feel the GW balance patches so far have really been based on that level of analysis and have they been really effective? It feels like rather not. The handicap proposal would also help those factions that get absolutely killed by overzealous balance patches too....

 petrov27 wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
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.

Fair enough, but do we feel the GW balance patches so far have really been based on that level of analysis and have they been really effective? It feels like rather not. The handicap proposal would also help those factions that get absolutely killed by overzealous balance patches too....

Handicap system doesn't fix the broken units. If Voidweavers are that oppressive, it doesn't matter if Harlequins are given a 200 point handicap and have to bring 2 less troops.

Then if they maintained their win rate the handicap gets larger each week until it drops - at some point it has to balance out right? Maybe 200 points they are still bad but 500?

Again just being devil's advocate here - its probably an impractical and unworkable idea to do a handicap system but waiting for good balance from GW seems like is not something that is ever gonna happen so maybe alternatives are needed....

edit; to note I am not saying that GW stops doing balance fixes and adjustments to the crazy broken stuff - that is needed definitely, but again it seems like when "patching" things they tend to either go too far or too little and handcapping in between patches may help with both of those things?

I think the biggest thing that would help GW get under this is far fewer codex releases, which is now a double edged sword and they need to rush out the rest of the books to get people to the same design.

Small incremental changes are good when you can focus on one problem book. When you have 3 or 4? It's going to be really hard.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
I think the biggest thing that would help GW get under this is far fewer codex releases, which is now a double edged sword and they need to rush out the rest of the books to get people to the same design.

Small incremental changes are good when you can focus on one problem book. When you have 3 or 4? It's going to be really hard.

They could like. . . Hire more designers and model their workflows to ensure a more holistic approach.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
I think the biggest thing that would help GW get under this is far fewer codex releases, which is now a double edged sword and they need to rush out the rest of the books to get people to the same design.

Small incremental changes are good when you can focus on one problem book. When you have 3 or 4? It's going to be really hard.

They could like. . . Hire more designers and model their workflows to ensure a more holistic approach.

Don't staff to the peak, as it were, but none of that really matters if they would upend everything in 10th anyway. They could certainly use a good project manager though.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
I think the biggest thing that would help GW get under this is far fewer codex releases, which is now a double edged sword and they need to rush out the rest of the books to get people to the same design.

Small incremental changes are good when you can focus on one problem book. When you have 3 or 4? It's going to be really hard.

They could like. . . Hire more designers and model their workflows to ensure a more holistic approach.

Don't staff to the peak, as it were, but none of that really matters if they would upend everything in 10th anyway. They could certainly use a good project manager though.

Why "upend everything" though, either? The game needs stability, and stability will get you better data along the way, as well as a better understanding of balance by both designers and players too. If you assume everything will be "upended" for 10th, then everyone has to wait for their damn codex again.

Tune things slowly, bring everything together, stabilize. More designers (who play different styles - competetive/casual) for more playtesting, etc.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
I think the biggest thing that would help GW get under this is far fewer codex releases, which is now a double edged sword and they need to rush out the rest of the books to get people to the same design.

So you wouldn't mind if they skipped releasing your armies Codex? Or just took years & years to do it? Or squatted your army outright?

ccs wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
I think the biggest thing that would help GW get under this is far fewer codex releases, which is now a double edged sword and they need to rush out the rest of the books to get people to the same design.

So you wouldn't mind if they skipped releasing your armies Codex? Or just took years & years to do it? Or squatted your army outright?

I'm not saying that, but -- if they had a more deliberate pace the gap might not be so severe. That would have required them to have started dataslates from the beginning of 9th. The horse is out of the barn now and we have to sprint to the finish.

There is, of course, digital rules, which is probably the most unlikely outcome for GW.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Insectum7 wrote:
Why "upend everything" though, either? The game needs stability, and stability will get you better data along the way, as well as a better understanding of balance by both designers and players too. If you assume everything will be "upended" for 10th, then everyone has to wait for their damn codex again.

Tune things slowly, bring everything together, stabilize. More designers (who play different styles - competetive/casual) for more playtesting, etc.

I'm hoping they don't.

If anything we might see some sweep for vehicles and some other tweaks and the ( much slower ) codex cycle begins anew except that other armies catch some updates in the dataslate. That's the most plausible ideal version in my head.

I'm not really seeing why the pace of codex releases matters. This is just classic GW creep which has been a thing for... 20+ years?

At the outset of any edition. X is 100 points.
About 3-6 months in. X+1 is... 100 points.
12 months in. X+2 is 100 points.
About 2 years. "Well we are really thinking about how things will look in the next edition...." X+5 is 100 points.

And then you try playing X into X+5 and find its a one-sided massacre.

I mean it happened in 8th. Happened in 7th. 6th was so bad it imploded ahead of schedule. Happened in 5th.

I don't think this is some grand conspiracy to sell this grey plastic over that grey plastic. But I do think someone at GW knows what they are doing.

Someone could go through all the books and upgrade all the points. Basically what I think people were hoping the most recent CA would be. But clearly GW don't think its worth bothering with.

Points doesn't deal with this issue succinctly.

The seesaw of the past isn't really the same as it is now. IG has what? Four books in it's entire 23 year history ( two in 3rd, one in 6th, one in 8th ). They were able to go three editions with the same book, because the underlying game didn't change all the much. Imbalances stemmed from sloppy base rules, inability to FAQ, and adding models with mechanics that if you possessed no response to placed you at a disadvantage ( among other things ).

Now we're facing layering of rules. You can't precisely point things when people might not use that particular rule. It wouldn't exactly be fair to point Battlesuits as if they have extra AP and full rerolls. You need appropriate restrictions within those items. CORE has been somewhat half baked at times, but that is one lever they at least had the forethought to create at the onset.

Harlequins are the army where points AND layering are out of whack. Stuff like Battlesuits are not wildly cheap - they just stack so much gak they become nuts in addition to being efficient ( and often using a poorly regulated rule - ooLOS shooting ).

^Just kill the rules layering. That was exactly the issue the out-of-whack Formation created as well. Just simplify things.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
...IG has what? Four books in it's entire 23 year history ( two in 3rd, one in 6th, one in 8th )...

Six. 2e, 3e, 3.5e, 5e, 6e, 8e. Possibly more if you count side stuff like Codex:Catachans or Imperial Armor or the campaign Codices, but that's even less relevant to your point.

I loved the 2nd Ed Guard Codex. Had it memorised. Could make lists on a piece of paper without even needing the book in front of me.

 Insectum7 wrote:
^Just kill the rules layering. That was exactly the issue the out-of-whack Formation created as well. Just simplify things.

I'd be careful about just throwing all the bathwater out, as you're liable to lose the baby.

Most of GW's problems come from their ability to generate fantastic ideas and their inability to execute them effectively.

There's solid gold in every set of overly layered rules. There just needs to be a less complicated way of expressing it, and doing so in a way that doesn't feel oppressive or overwhelming. To put it another way, I'm not convinced that what GW has is bad, more that they've implemented it in a bad manner.

Toofast wrote:

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.

If Porsche sells you a car and you find out the breaking system is faulty you cannot keep driving it, you have to get it to a mechanic or have it returned otherwise you'll end up rear-ending someone or hitting a pedestrian. If you find out Voidweavers are too OP for your casual meta you have to talk to your opponents about how you can have more fun games in the future, maybe you could bring a melee army, maybe fewer points, maybe proxy as haywire. You can also ask on forums how people use Harlequins casually to help inspire something that'll work for you and your community.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
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.

How would this be different from increasing points costs on all Harlequins? I am also questioning when we can say GW has had their chance to make 40k balanced, they are clearly unwilling, it is about time the fans start picking it up. The Ogryn nerf should have been the end of Chapter Approved being bought, why pay for this garbage? The moment GW has something good like the post Knight-nerf meta in 8th they immediately muck it up with SM 2.0.

 petrov27 wrote:
...but do we feel the GW balance patches so far have really been based on that level of analysis and have they been really effective?

GW wasn't balancing the game before the community agreed to stop using homebrew mission formats, to me it would be reasonable to assume GW would make more mistakes if they had to deal with more complexity instead of less.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I'd be careful about just throwing all the bathwater out, as you're liable to lose the baby.

Throw Chapter Tactics, Combat Doctrines, Super Doctrines and Angels of Death into the garbage where they belong. Let them inspire new missions and relics.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I loved the 2nd Ed Guard Codex. Had it memorised. Could make lists on a piece of paper without even needing the book in front of me.

 Insectum7 wrote:
^Just kill the rules layering. That was exactly the issue the out-of-whack Formation created as well. Just simplify things.

I'd be careful about just throwing all the bathwater out, as you're liable to lose the baby.

Most of GW's problems come from their ability to generate fantastic ideas and their inability to execute them effectively.

There's solid gold in every set of overly layered rules. There just needs to be a less complicated way of expressing it, and doing so in a way that doesn't feel oppressive or overwhelming. To put it another way, I'm not convinced that what GW has is bad, more that they've implemented it in a bad manner.

I see this talking point alot. What does "executed poorly" or "implemented bad" truley mean? All I see is bad rules design or good rules design, it seems very binary. I cant fathom how you could have a good rule but then implement it poorly, thats just bad rule. Likewise a bad rule cannot be executed correctly.

This just feels like a word salad bad faith discussion point to obfuscate GWs shoetcomings.

this comes down to putting a simple and good idea into a complex system without considering the effects it will have to the game

like "all units with keyword X are 0-1" might sound good for 1 specific question, but because the rule is not limited to that faction it is executed poorly

Stratagems and Universal Special Rules are the prime example of good rules and bad implementation
Stratagems being a problem in 40k is a specific problem of how those work in 40k and that there are too many around
so the solution is not to remove them or replace them by something else that is executed the same way

Tittliewinks22 wrote:
What does "executed poorly" or "implemented bad" truley mean?

Everything GW does. All the time. Forever and ever. Amen.

But in all seriousness...

Tittliewinks22 wrote:
I cant fathom how you could have a good rule but then implement it poorly, thats just bad rule. Likewise a bad rule cannot be executed correctly.

Because that's not what's being said.

This isn't about a good rule being implimented poorly. We're talking about concepts vs actualisation. They have good concepts, but they cannot make that leap to rules.

Finally, you think that I would make a bad faith argument to help protect GW? Seriously buddy, look who you're talking to!!!

 vict0988 wrote:
If Porsche sells you a car and you find out the breaking system is faulty you cannot keep driving it, you have to get it to a mechanic or have it returned otherwise you'll end up rear-ending someone or hitting a pedestrian. If you find out Voidweavers are too OP for your casual meta you have to talk to your opponents about how you can have more fun games in the future, maybe you could bring a melee army, maybe fewer points, maybe proxy as haywire. You can also ask on forums how people use Harlequins casually to help inspire something that'll work for you and your community.

That analogy doesn't really hold up.

If there's a faulty breaking system it's the fault of the manufacture and they should fix it. It's not your job to ensure it gets repaired. It's theirs. That's why recalls happen.

 vict0988 wrote:
Throw Chapter Tactics, Combat Doctrines, Super Doctrines and Angels of Death into the garbage where they belong.

Why? You want to remove any and all difference from Marine Chapters?

Would not a better solution be to find a way to add flavour to different armies without the inherent complexity that GW has included.

ccs wrote:


You know that things a duel kit, right? You don't really have to be a meta-chaser to have the option for plenty of Voidweavers.
How many Harlie players out there have 1 or 2 Voidweavers + 3-4 (or more) Starweavers - and the leftover bitz needed to convert some/all of those starweavers to voids?
At my local shops that answer is "all of them". And some have magnetized the guns. The one local guy said something to the effect of "Eh, I'll just run some of my elves on foot for awhile."

I'm aware that they're the same kit but an harlie player needs the transports, he can't just turn all his starweavers into voidweavers. The list posted on Warhammer Community had 13 between star and voidweavers, maxing out the latter. If you magnetize your 6 vehicles into voidweavers you're forced to play the clown on foot then, which isn't optimal. Effective voidweaver spam requires owning more than 10 of those dual kits, which isn't very common.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Daedalus81 wrote:


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

The problem with handicaps at tournaments is that not players or factions should get the handicap but lists. A player might be top ranked and decides to bring a non optimized list or even a bottom tier army. Should he get an handicap based on his ranking? An army might be top tier but a player might choose to bring a non optimized list. Should that bad or mid tier list be affected by an handicap just because that faction has the highest WR?

But putting handicaps on lists means that TOs arbitrary decide who's getting the handicap before starting the tournament. IMHO it's the only way to make it work at competitive levels but it requires fair TOs and lots of players would not accept arbitrary decisions.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I loved the 2nd Ed Guard Codex. Had it memorised. Could make lists on a piece of paper without even needing the book in front of me.

 Insectum7 wrote:
^Just kill the rules layering. That was exactly the issue the out-of-whack Formation created as well. Just simplify things.

I'd be careful about just throwing all the bathwater out, as you're liable to lose the baby.

Throwing out all rules is probably a bad idea, but I think you could probably get rid of 90% no problem. SM used to be fine with just a single special army rule (more or less analogous to Chapter Tactics now) and some small differences in units. I don't see why going back to that would be so problematic. The current Harlequin problem, for example, is directly related to the layering of so many rules all on top of one another. It's not really a songle rule that's the problem, it's all of them combined.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Why? You want to remove any and all difference from Marine Chapters?

Would that really be a problem?
Is the difference between various personalities of super soldier really that significant in a game where regular human Guardsmen, super soldier Astartes, and super-duper soldier Custodes are all 1 stat apart respectively, does it really matter?
In fact, I'd like to not to have doctrines. Sure it's nice to get a little buff for playing your faction the "intended" way, but it's really grating when GW's idea of how your faction plays doesn't align with how you want to play it. It feels like you're getting punished by being denied buffs you should get because GW has arbitrarily pigeon-holed you somewhere you don't agree with.
If we got rid of these traits we would be able to play our armies in way we believe they're meant to be played - not how GW says they're meant to be played.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Would that really be a problem?

Is that even a serious question? Do you remember what happend to CSM when they had all their Legions ripped away for several editions?

You really want to see what happens when you make it so a Blood Angel and a Space Wolf are the same?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Would that really be a problem?

Is that even a serious question? Do you remember what happend to CSM when they had all their Legions ripped away for several editions?

You really want to see what happens when you make it so a Blood Angel and a Space Wolf are the same?

We've had situations in the past where there were tiny rules differences between Chapters and they still felt unique and characterful. You do not need all the rules we currently have to effectively differentiate various Chapters.

Agree. Tiny rules differences between the chapters are ok, it's unique units and characters that truly differentiate the chapters.

Most SM chapters, those who never had a standalone codex, don't really need to be significantly different from each other in the first place.

Generally speaking I like one maybe two armywide rules that are the same for all chapters from the same faction and a dedicated trait, relic, stratagem for each chapter to differentiate them. Problem with SM is that they have tons of armywide rules, other than the chapter related stuff. How many rules are merged into Angels of death and doctrines alone?

Most Chapters being true to the Codex so the main difference is in colours only

though by being able to chose a different FOC to represent the different companies it would be 1-2 USR that are needed to get them done

with CSM it is a little different, Thousand Sons and World Eaters are not just a different FOC
Same as Space Wolves and Ultras

but looking at the current books and how the factions play, I would be fine with less and a 3rd/4th Edition like setup with 1 book per faction

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Now we're facing layering of rules. You can't precisely point things when people might not use that particular rule. It wouldn't exactly be fair to point Battlesuits as if they have extra AP and full rerolls. You need appropriate restrictions within those items. CORE has been somewhat half baked at times, but that is one lever they at least had the forethought to create at the onset.

Harlequins are the army where points AND layering are out of whack. Stuff like Battlesuits are not wildly cheap - they just stack so much gak they become nuts in addition to being efficient ( and often using a poorly regulated rule - ooLOS shooting ).

Not really convinced you can't price in rules. Its generally a safe assumption that if its there people will use it. If people use it, other people will start using it as everyone learns about it.
This may make for a badly designed codex - because you have to build the way its "designed to" synergy wise. But if you are going to have those rules, you have left yourself no other option.

I agree many of the issues in 40k are due to compounding synergy. Tau probably shouldn't have seen
A) improved datasheets and weapons
B) improved Mont'ka
C) improved markerlights
D) improved chapter tactics, warlord traits, stratagems etc

All at the same time.

But if they were going to, they certainly needed to be dramatically more expensive per point than they are. And any half sensible play test (or someone with 30 minutes in a spreadsheet) should have concluded this.

I know the game isn't just a function of A on B duels. There is more than simple mathhammer. But when such analysis shows units being massively ahead of the rest, they almost always prove to dominate the game. The voidweaver should have been incredibly easy to pick up. (I sort of regret not jumping up and down more when the rules first came out in order to be able to claim more of a "I told you so" here. But I think like many I kind of got bored of the book by the time I reached the Harlequin datasheets. So the reaction was just "that seems a bit good... now onto Ynnari anything interesting there?")

Slipspace wrote:
You do not need all the rules we currently have to effectively differentiate various Chapters.

I don't recall saying that we did.