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Toofast wrote:
If we could get to the point where the top army is 55% win rate and the bottom army is 45%, and most units within a faction at least fulfill some type of role that would let them be viable in a certain type of list, I would be happy.

Just a point toofast, apologies if it seems I'm picking on you, it's not meant as a critique or an attack.

I often hear folks say 'perfect balance doesn't exist, we just want 'better' balance'. Or something 'good enough'. You've probably heard it too.

And then you say: 45 -55% win rate, most units having a viable role and you'll be happy.

This is what I mean when I say that there is often so little daylight between what people dismiss as impossible (perfect balance) and what people desire (ie better balance) that they might as well be the same thing.

You might not have asked for perfect balance a
here my friend, but what you've asked for is so damn close in the real world there is very very little difference. Not even chess has this, and chess is the most balanced game out there.

And if this is what happy in the hobby looks like, I'll have to joke and say I'm afraid you might be waiting a while. I have to ask if they're really enjoying it, as having expectations that can, imo, never realistically be met is asking for trouble and burn out in the long run.

Like i said, not a critique, or an attack - i know we come from different povs etc - this is just something to think about.

Chess does not have white win 68% or 78% of match ups. If a team has win rates like that it is considered a freak accident. If a sportsman has win rates like that, especially at the very top then you always find out that they are a litteral freak of nature with 1L extra lung capacity, or a super hightened metabolism that lets them deal with Lactic Acid better then anyone else. etc
And it is awesome to behold, when the thing is natural. but very often such wins were aquired with being drugged out of your ass.


Just because a 50/50 win rates of all armies can't be achived, and no one claims they wanted that, it doesn't mean that we should "wait and see" or accept that some armies stay at above 65% win rates for months. Because it looks as if GW was trying to make people buy in to an army, only to nerf it soon after, and make them buy another army if they want to have fun playing.

Deadnight wrote:
This is what I mean when I say that there is often so little daylight between what people dismiss as impossible (perfect balance) and what people desire (ie better balance) that they might as well be the same thing.

You might not have asked for perfect balance a
here my friend, but what you've asked for is so damn close in the real world there is very very little difference. Not even chess has this, and chess is the most balanced game out there.

I don't play LOL myself, but isn't 45-55% win rates their target for each hero before buffs/nerfs are applied? I've seen those numbers talked about before on the forums for LOL, with it being held up as an example of "good enough" balance.

Karol wrote:Chess does not have white win 68% or 78% of match ups.

You missed my point karol.

Anyway ive read in more than one place that White has something like a 56 or a 58% win rate. a few percent shy of winning 3 games to every two for black. Or a win rate equal to 150% of black if my out of use math is right. (Different places give slightly different numbers)

Quick google and this is the first thing that comes up (though i suspect that digging down, the picture gets more nuanced, edi: quick dig down and it does get nuanced and it becomes an interesting read!):

'Statistics on Chess
In tournament games that have a winner in chess (decisive games), White on average beats Black in 55 percent of them (Elo ratings of 2100 or above), but for elite players (Elo ratings of 2700 or above), the winning percentage is 64 percent.'

And remrmber, chess is widely regarded as the epitome of balanced. Aspiring to this is one thing, but its basically so-close-as-makes-no-difference to the 'perfect balance' that everyone says doesn't exist and this is the 'compromise' that will accepted. No wonder people are perpetually unhappy in this hobby.

Fergie0044 wrote:
I don't play LOL myself, but isn't 45-55% win rates their target for each hero before buffs/nerfs are applied? I've seen those numbers talked about before on the forums for LOL, with it being held up as an example of "good enough" balance.

Heh. Never played, nor do I want to play lol. Not my thing im afraid! I'm happy with bumbling about on my xbox playing 'life is strange' and 'fallout'.

But if that's the mark that is regarded as being merely 'good enough', christ, no wonder so many gamers are bitter and angry. Like I said earlier, you can provide your best work to the gaming community and it will often be at best, very grudgingly and bitterly received.

I really like auticus points.

This gets a bit longer, so TLDR at the bottom

My main issue with the current 9. Edition next to the mission is the fact that a lot of units serve redundant purposes. This always results in one choice being superior to the other.
The best example of this is the space marine primaris reiver.
To quickly recap its abilities, as I have never seen it (except when I played it in an Apocalypse game, were the units rules where different)
- Elites
- Basic Primaris Statline
- Special Pistol, Combat Knife
- Terror Troops Ability
- Option to replace Knife with a Bolt Carbine
- Option to take a grav-shute (deepstrike), grapnel launcher (outflank, ignore vertical distance in movement)

Because it is Elites and not Troops, it takes up a slot I would prefer to use for a support character or something more heavy hitting.
Compared to Assault Intercessors, the basic equipment is worse. The different pistol types are comparable, (extra Range vs extra AP), but the chainswords are better then the knives.
Additionally, the Reiver has the Terror Troops ability (which I think was buffed compared to 8. Edition), a -2 moral penalty.
How do you compare these two units, pointswise? I know that in the current iteration, the Reivers are a point cheaper then the Assault intercessors.
But if I wanted to fill a close combat need in my Army Design, and had the choice between the two, I would pick the Assault Intercessors, because they are Troops and better in close combat.
Morale is again such a strange thing this edition that the Terror Troops ability just doesn't really matter enough to even concider it. And in the Elites slot I can pick far better close combat specialists.

The same line of reasoning holds for the Bolt Carbine: I could just take Regular Intercessors with a better gun, that fill a required Troops slot instead.
Again, this is a case of optimal damage output (reivers are cheaper but weaker) and the army composition I want to fill, for IMO the Intercessor wins.

So the Reivers appear quite redundant in their basic load out. How can you correctly balance this unit in the context of the other army units?

Of course, the Reiver can take some equipment to add more versatility, maybe I can find a handy use for its upgrades in my armies needs:
Grav Shute: Gain the Deepstrike ability. Sounds a bit more usefull at first, as getting into combat could be difficult. But I can't move the reiver after deepstriking and a 9 inch charge isn't a guaranteed success.
And the small board sizes mean that it could well be easier to just set up at the edge of the deployment zone and charge from there.
And for a hole point more per model I can get Incursors. They have the, in my eyes, way better ability to just set up anywhere on the board before the game begins. And they are, again, Troops and not Elites.
The damage output comparison in shooting or close combat of both units depends a bit on the weapon selection of the reiver, but at a cursory glance I would say they are actually similar enough for the points cost.

Grapnel Launcher: This one is interesting, as its value highly depends on the board. The greater the height differences on the board, the more valuable the upgrade gets.
And this is another good point already made in this thread: How does the designer correctly balance this piece of equipment? It may be totally overcosted on a board with only 4 inch high ruins
(think of a board solely made up of the munitorum containers or the new fronteris stuff) and way too cheap on a board made up of several levels high skyscrapers.
Having a tournament context known to the designers and players would allow narrowing down the best point cost to make the upgrade useful, as the terrain height is more standardized.
But to a player playing at home who my have scratchbuild his terrain, this standard is totally irrelevant. An alternative would be a point cost function depending on the highest piece of terrain, which is of course totally impractical and again may not asign a correct point cost depending on terrain diversity. The Outflank ability is of course a bit easier to determine a cost, but again for a point more I can set up my Incursors where ever I want. How does a designer balance this difference? Write an AI to play the games, optimize it so a game simulation takes several seconds, use machine learning to balance out the point costs?

TLDR 1: Balancing Reivers with the myriad of Troops choices a Space Marine Army has is IMO impossible.

Another good point made is that 2000 points of random units I liked versus 2000 points of units picked to achieve a purpose in the greater game plan should not make a balance match with equal chances to win.
I have read before that people argue that 2000 points should be 2000 points. In my mind, that doesn't really make sense. A list is supposed to be able to handle different aspects of the game: Close Combat, Shooting, Standing on an objective, psychic powers, etc.
Two perfectly balanced lists would require the exact same amounts of points invested into these aspects, and additionally the units chosen in both armies must have the same output to cost ratio.
But some abilities aren't as useful as others depending on mission, opposing army, terrain setup.
I haven't played this edition aside from two test games because my regular opponent and I both really don't like the current missions. We play a different game, Dropzone Commander.
Yes, Dropzone Commander has some balancing issues as well, there are less efficient choices and some armies need a crutch unit to even compete. But the missions are more fun, and, most importantly,
the game itself requires different unit types to achieve different purposes. Without infantry, it is impossible to score objectives in buildings.
Without anti-air units, it is impossible to shoot down enemy aircrafts, most importantly enemy transports.
My rule of thumb for dropzone is to roughly invest a third of my points into infantry and anti infantry, a third into my command units and anti-vehicles (anti-tank),
and get at least two squads of anti-air (area denial and aircraft hunting)
The remaining points go into utility units that appear useful compared to the rest of the army.

My opponent roughly follows the same rule of thumb, so we end up with a pretty balanced match up. But it is easily apparent that a differently constructed army completely changes the dynamic.
Maybe my opponent decides to bring less anti-tank units and buy more infantry units, to really make sure to have the advantage getting objectives inside buildings. One mission is all about getting into all buildings on the table. Of course he has an advantage in this mission. Another mission has no objective in buildings and requires holding an objective in the open. Suddenly, his list is really bad (Infantry in the open is a really bad idea in dropzone). Again, is it unfair that his list with the same amount of points as my list is way worse or way better depending the scenario chosen? Luckily, Dropzone has a more rigid list buidling system compared to 40k 9. Edition, so a beginner is likely to chose units in way that his list is not completely unable to compete. But the player can get away with constucting a list containing a single infantry unit and nothing more, and he will have a very bad day regardless of the mission.

So in my mind, having a diverse set of mission with different list building requirements, and deciding the mission after list building, ensures a more balanced match, as the list is more or less optimized to work in the constraints of the different missions. A good mission selection ensures balance.
My issue with the current 40k missions is the fact that only two list components seem to matter: How much can I kill and how much can I survive while standing on a specific point. All other considerations are basically tailored to achieve these two imperatives, forcing and optimization into this. Correctly costing a unit of reivers is difficult under these conditions, as their special gear they can equip doesn't really matter in the context of killing more or surviving more.

Additionally, the game has a lot of different ways to achieve the same thing. Psychic powers either inflict mortal wounds (so, damage) or provide some kind of buff. But they don't really interact with the missions.
There is some secondary stuff for psychic powers but they are just ... meh. Either the psycher is efficient in damaging or the buff is better and cheaper then just buying another unit, or he is useless. Not great for balancing.
Shooting or close combat are difficult to correctly point, as one is always better depending on table setup. In the end I all seems to come down to a function of points vs damage output, which really highlights issues.

Now I am aware that I don't have a lot of experience in the current edition and espacially my last point may be totally wrong. And yes, I could just walk away from the game and return once the mission design and army balancing is preferable for me compared to now. And that is what I basically did. I have an eye on the new releases, my hobby his more than just playing the game, and some new units can be used for my 5 parsecs from home solo adventures or are just fun to paint/build. But I really like the universe of 40k and would like to play games set in this universe. I just haven't found a set of missions that create an engaging experience for me yet. An ideal scenario for me would be a set of diverse missions, requiring different unit types to win, and an army roster ensuring that roughly equal amounts of points are spend on both sides for the same mission requirements.

TLDR 2: I started rambling, but my point is that balancing an army selection is way more complex than just correctly pointing unit abilities and stats, because these are so depending on context of mission, opponent army selection (units and faction), and terrain set up. A diverse set of missions requiring different types of units would make balancing more complex but lead to more fun games.

To answer the main question of the OP: No, the meta does not affect me, but that is because I currently don't play 40k and only buy what I want to build and paint.

I think the issue is how you are measuring balance.

There's a difference between thinking any army should at worst have a 45% shot against any army (which is impossible). And thinking that - measured over a few weeks - Tau shouldn't be getting more than 55% win rate in tournaments - and say Guard shouldn't be getting worse than 45% (which isn't impossible).

There has to be some allowance for player favoritism (i.e. good players dont tend to play bad books.) and the results of individual tournaments will be all over the place. But if win percentages are coming through across thousands of games, played at dozens of tournaments, with different faction compositions, terrain, and players themselves, plus the general chaos that is dice, something is probably wrong. Harlequin players are not on 70%+ win rates because they all use loaded dice but because their book is much better than everyone else's.

In much the same way, if the top 4 spots are consistently being monopolised by lists drawn from a handful of books - while the rest get almost nothing, that's also likely because they are better than everyone else.

Points allow this. If Halequin players were told "sorry your book is busted, we aren't going to try and fix it though, you just only get 1750 points in our 2k tournament" - they'd do worse than now. How much worse I cannot say but its obvious any list without a unit or 3 on the table will do worse - across hundreds of games etc - than one that had them. At some level Harlequin win percentages would be brought to the level desired.

Its fair to say GW doesn't have any interest in this sort of balance - hence why their rules changes are no obviously designed to produce it. But this idea its impossible to achieve doesn't make much sense to me.

Put another way - at 90 points a voidweaver is probably the best unit in the game. At say 200 (to be a bit silly) it wouldn't be any good at all. There is therefore clearly some biting point in the middle where - in the context of all the other datasheets in 40k - its reasonable. And this is broadly what we mean by balance. If all the datasheets were balanced in this way, you'd expect faction win percentages to broadly line up.

Some armies may have natural advantages/disadvantages in certain matchups. But even that I suspect would not be so dramatic if the raw material was broadly speaking worth its points in the context of 40k as a whole.

Tyel wrote:
I think the issue is how you are measuring balance.

There's a difference between thinking any army should at worst have a 45% shot against any army (which is impossible). And thinking that - measured over a few weeks - Tau shouldn't be getting more than 55% win rate in tournaments - and say Guard shouldn't be getting worse than 45% (which isn't impossible).

True. A faction with a huge roster getting an high WR, say 60%, just for one spammy build and dropping below 50% with everything elses in my opinion is in a very bad state. Orks being competitive with greentides at the end of 8th meant orks were very bad then from my perspective. In such cases the WR alone doesn't mean much in terms of measuring balance between the factions. No one but a handful of hardcore meta chasers was playing 9 squigbuggies and 5 flyers months ago, and yet orks got a very high WR (and a terrible reputation) thanks to a few players fielding that build.

But when a faction has very limited options (who said Harlequins?) and gets an high WR, that actually means something or even a lot.

IMHO a good measure of balance is when armies play reasonably highlander style TAC lists and then the gap between each other is something close to 45% - 55%. But that's not even remotely how competitive gaming is played so all WR collected must be analyzed, and with subjective eyes. They don't provide info without analysis and such analysis is never truly objective. Those data only provides some info about competitive gaming, and such lists not always are common to find in any other environment. Sometimes they are instead. That's why reading the WRs alone is never a good measure of balance and doesn't really describe the state of 40k.

 Blackie wrote:
True. A faction with a huge roster getting an high WR, say 60%, just for one spammy build and dropping below 50% with everything elses in my opinion is in a very bad state. Orks being competitive with greentides at the end of 8th meant orks were very bad then from my perspective. In such cases the WR alone doesn't mean much in terms of measuring balance between the factions. No one but a handful of hardcore meta chasers was playing 9 squigbuggies and 5 flyers months ago, and yet orks got a very high WR (and a terrible reputation) thanks to a few players fielding that build.

But when a faction has very limited options (who said Harlequins?) and gets an high WR, that actually means something or even a lot.

IMHO a good measure of balance is when armies play reasonably highlander style TAC lists and then the gap between each other is something close to 45% - 55%. But that's not even remotely how competitive gaming is played so all WR collected must be analyzed, and with subjective eyes. They don't provide info without analysis and such analysis is never truly objective. Those data only provides some info about competitive gaming, and such lists not always are common to find in any other environment. Sometimes they are instead. That's why reading the WRs alone is never a good measure of balance and doesn't really describe the state of 40k.

I mean its probably good for the game as a whole if more casual, highlander style TAC lists broadly matchup - because I suspect that's what the vast majority of the playerbase actually play.
But its harder to get the data on that because its not reported in the same way tournament results are. (And at that level, really, list balance is probably secondary to skill/knowledge gaps between players.)
WR doesn't tell you everything - but a game where say Orks (and Necrons, and Thousand Sons, and Sisters etc etc) have a "competitive list" which (with minor variations) is regularly placing at tournaments - is almost certainly better and more balanced than one where they have none.

Its not good perhaps because you can get a codex where 75% is unplayable, but the rest is deemed fine. But it beats having 100% being unplayable. Really this is where GW just need to understand their game a bit better. And not think DG Terminators need a nerf because... DE and Ad Mech are winning all the events.

Hecaton wrote:
"Open play" is just as screwed up as Matched Play.

Not disagreeing entirely with you here, but "Open War" doesn't really contribute to the Meta, which is what the thread was asking.

The Meta, and any articles based on it, do affect players who prefer 'Open Play' to 'Matched Play'. Competitive 40k used to represent the best all round hobbyists the game had. Competitive 'Matched Play' is still being treated that way despite excluding Competitive 40k players.

Unit/model cost is definitely a concern and I've stayed out of it because that horse is going through its death throes. 'Matched Play' hasn't made any effort to contribute to balancing anything, and hasn't done anything positive for the game since those responsible for it becoming a part of the game started it a few editions ago.

VPs are just one example. GW already knows that scoring/ranking purely off of VPs doesn't work. They learned this back in 3rd where VPs were tied to how many points were destroyed/remaining. Even then they knew that VPs weren't useful for determining a winner, and the difference in points was used to determine major/minor victories, etc. Going back to THAT would have more of an impact that 'Matched Play' because the VPs would tied directly to points to provide better feedback on a units tabletop strength to get their points adjusted accordingly.

Getting rid of 'Matched Play' isn't going to fix all of the issues with the game, let alone the Meta. It's removal would have an impact on getting players back into Competitive 40k, so that balance can be addressed, hopefully before the next edition.

I chimed in since the topic is 'How much does the Meta affect me?'. I'm simply tired of it having an effect on my motivation to even hobby, when it is based on 'Matched Play'. A system that hasn't included myself for a while now. A system that with each 'innovation' removes more Competitive players from having a home, or an impact on the Meta.

Hecaton wrote:

DeadliestIdiot wrote:
I don't get why folks seem resistant to the idea of all units being viable...

No one is.

Nou said: "The first part though, 45-55 brackets and viability all around is not "happy medium""

Farther back, aticus had said "Every unit. Every single unit. Every LAST unit in a codex should be viable." to which you responded "Nobody's saying that, so have fun arguing against scarecrows."

Now, obviously, I misinterpreted this to mean you didn't think every unit should be viable...not sure exactly what you were referring to that no one was saying, but I'm going to guess you meant that no one was arguing that all units shouldn't be viable, which tracks with another statement buried in a previous post you made in the thread and with your response to me. Either way, reading the text as written, it sounded to me like there was some sort of resistance to the concept and I wanted to understand why (which I suppose you answered, albeit you were rather curt about it).

Deadnight wrote:

Toofast wrote:
If we could get to the point where the top army is 55% win rate and the bottom army is 45%, and most units within a faction at least fulfill some type of role that would let them be viable in a certain type of list, I would be happy.

Just a point toofast, apologies if it seems I'm picking on you, it's not meant as a critique or an attack.

I often hear folks say 'perfect balance doesn't exist, we just want 'better' balance'. Or something 'good enough'. You've probably heard it too.

And then you say: 45 -55% win rate, most units having a viable role and you'll be happy.

This is what I mean when I say that there is often so little daylight between what people dismiss as impossible (perfect balance) and what people desire (ie better balance) that they might as well be the same thing.

You might not have asked for perfect balance a
here my friend, but what you've asked for is so damn close in the real world there is very very little difference. Not even chess has this, and chess is the most balanced game out there.

And if this is what happy in the hobby looks like, I'll have to joke and say I'm afraid you might be waiting a while. I have to ask if they're really enjoying it, as having expectations that can, imo, never realistically be met is asking for trouble and burn out in the long run.

Like i said, not a critique, or an attack - i know we come from different povs etc - this is just something to think about.

And this entire problem in chess stems from just a single "faction specific special rule" of "fights first"...

Deadnight wrote:
And then you say: 45 -55% win rate, most units having a viable role and you'll be happy.

This is what I mean when I say that there is often so little daylight between what people dismiss as impossible (perfect balance) and what people desire (ie better balance) that they might as well be the same thing.

Considering there was a time early in 9th when winrates were in the 40-60% range, and considering that many of the 9th Ed codices have (unfortunately, while screwing external balance in the process) featured good internal balance where nearly all units have a role, I really can't agree that that's some pie-in-the-sky expectation tantamount to perfect balance.

Perfect balance would be every faction hovering around 50% and every unit being just as viable as every other unit. Somewhat better external balance, and good enough internal balance that most things have a niche (even if they aren't all equally useful), doesn't seem like an unreasonable goal to me.

Am I the only one who read this in absolute shock at how clearly it points out the fundamental flaws of the gakky GT mission design with fixed terrain layouts?



Summary...
If the tabletop is a constant and the win conditions are a constant then it's easy to determine which units are optimal as well as which units will over perform.

IMO, competitive players want predictability. They refer to predictability as 'balance' because it sounds better and can rally players to their false cause.

Mike Brandt = The new Matt Ward

oni, you really need to stop doing Matt Ward dirty with that comparison.

 oni wrote:
Am I the only one who read this in absolute shock at how clearly it points out the fundamental flaws of the gakky GT mission design with fixed terrain layouts?

Spoiler:

"[...] To put it another way, if the tabletop is six feet by four, if the deployment is 'line 'em up and go', if the terrain falls within certain narrow limits, and if you know what the victory conditions are - then it's possible to work out points values that have some broad credibilty. You will know how useful or how valuable certain kinds of troops will be within the context of the game. Points values make perfect sense if we are talking about a very limited type of confrontational scenario. However, points values make almost no sense if you take armies into radically different kinds of situations. To give a few obvious examples, if a battlefield is impassable to heavy armoured vehicles then the value of tanks is going to be reduced considerably, if the battlefield is very small or very large, then the value of long range weapons is lessened or enhanced respectively, if the objectives set for the armies require positions to be taken by infantry then this affects the effective utility - and hence the value - of infantry/non-infantry units. Simply put- in different situations the value of units will also be different.

Summary...
If the tabletop is a constant and the win conditions are a constant then it's easy to determine which units are optimal as well as which units will over perform.

IMO, competitive players want predictability. They refer to predictability as 'balance' because it sounds better and can rally players to their false cause.

Mike Brandt = The new Matt Ward

I would put it in a bit different phrasing - predictability shifts the weight of the game with the army construction element towards pre-match-time part of the "competition" and reduces the impact of the match-time in the overall result of the game. ITC style secondaries make it even more pronounced, as you basically already score some VPs before the game even happens. Unpredictable game however skews the result of the singular match to a degree which require a lot of individual matches to be played so that the distribution of skew in those matchups is close to even. So there aren't really too many choices in designing your tournament mission pack for practical implementation. But in the process of gearing the game for tournaments you inevitably make it work worse for contexts that deviate far enough from the tournament/tournament prep setting. The extreme example - "rigid tournament format" makes no sense at all for a minimal sized group of two garagehammer players who know their collections inside out and under the "list building as a skill" premise will end with the same, perfectly optimal lists. The game becomes an exercise in futility for them, as too many parameters are set before the match has started. The unpredictable format however, provides them with the problem to solve only during match time, not before. Those garagehammer players will strive not when the mission context is as rigid as possible, but if it is as broad as possible. This is why so many players call 9th sterile, cookie cutter, boring, etc...

This is of course a completely different problem than the imbalance mess or through the roof lethality.

I would strongly agree that a lot of competitive players want predictability.

That is why random missions (that are truly different) and random terrain are oft rallied against in the most aggressive manner.

Because you can't min/max against a variety of random scenarios or tables. At best you can try to be good all around, but you will then need to rely on your ability to respond to something you aren't built for, which I'm not going to say goes against "competitive play", because competitive players I find relish those opportunities because thats when skill starts to really come through in a game - but I'd say it goes against many of the current modern crop of players that consider themselves competitive players that often have a deckbuilding game in their background that they were competitive with.

 auticus wrote:
I would strongly agree that a lot of competitive players want predictability.

That is why random missions (that are truly different) and random terrain are oft rallied against in the most aggressive manner.

Because you can't min/max against a variety of random scenarios or tables. At best you can try to be good all around, but you will then need to rely on your ability to respond to something you aren't built for, which I'm not going to say goes against "competitive play", because competitive players I find relish those opportunities because thats when skill starts to really come through in a game - but I'd say it goes against many of the current modern crop of players that consider themselves competitive players that often have a deckbuilding game in their background that they were competitive with.

you can minmax if you know the possible missions tho. Current competitive mission design is the most boring gak ever

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 auticus wrote:
I would strongly agree that a lot of competitive players want predictability.

That is why random missions (that are truly different) and random terrain are oft rallied against in the most aggressive manner.

Because you can't min/max against a variety of random scenarios or tables. At best you can try to be good all around, but you will then need to rely on your ability to respond to something you aren't built for, which I'm not going to say goes against "competitive play", because competitive players I find relish those opportunities because thats when skill starts to really come through in a game - but I'd say it goes against many of the current modern crop of players that consider themselves competitive players that often have a deckbuilding game in their background that they were competitive with.

you can minmax if you know the possible missions tho. Current competitive mission design is the most boring gak ever

So imagine a scenario where you had six different missions. Each with their own win criteria. One was a kill point scenario. One was a take and hold scenario. One was an assassination mission. One was an objective mission. Etc.

And now imagine that before the game began you were on a random table layout... and rolled the random scenario.

It is a very difficult task to truly min/max for six different types of objectives because some missions require one type of army and other missions require something different. And now you have to take all of those into account instead of just always building for one thing, which is where I see a lot of competitive scenarios in 40k and warhammer over the past 15 - 20 years.

I'm not going to use the word impossible to min/max for those, but I'm going to say it would make armies much more rounded and have to take a lot more into consideration. Predictability gets thrown right out the door and you have to rely on your own tabletop skills to see a victory instead of letting your list auto pilot it.

 auticus wrote:

I'm not going to use the word impossible to min/max for those, but I'm going to say it would make armies much more rounded and have to take a lot more into consideration. Predictability gets thrown right out the door and you have to rely on your own tabletop skills to see a victory instead of letting your list auto pilot it.

GOOD thats exactly what missions should encourage

My experience has been that a fair number of competitive players will still optimize towards kill points and then, if they roll a different mission, complain that they got screwed by RNG.

I think there's some merit to the complaint that the roll for mission can have a massive effect on how two armies stack up against one another, but there are also ways you can give the players some influence so it's not a totally random roll.

 auticus wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 auticus wrote:
I would strongly agree that a lot of competitive players want predictability.

That is why random missions (that are truly different) and random terrain are oft rallied against in the most aggressive manner.

Because you can't min/max against a variety of random scenarios or tables. At best you can try to be good all around, but you will then need to rely on your ability to respond to something you aren't built for, which I'm not going to say goes against "competitive play", because competitive players I find relish those opportunities because thats when skill starts to really come through in a game - but I'd say it goes against many of the current modern crop of players that consider themselves competitive players that often have a deckbuilding game in their background that they were competitive with.

you can minmax if you know the possible missions tho. Current competitive mission design is the most boring gak ever

So imagine a scenario where you had six different missions. Each with their own win criteria. One was a kill point scenario. One was a take and hold scenario. One was an assassination mission. One was an objective mission. Etc.

And now imagine that before the game began you were on a random table layout... and rolled the random scenario.

It is a very difficult task to truly min/max for six different types of objectives because some missions require one type of army and other missions require something different. And now you have to take all of those into account instead of just always building for one thing, which is where I see a lot of competitive scenarios in 40k and warhammer over the past 15 - 20 years.

I'm not going to use the word impossible to min/max for those, but I'm going to say it would make armies much more rounded and have to take a lot more into consideration. Predictability gets thrown right out the door and you have to rely on your own tabletop skills to see a victory instead of letting your list auto pilot it.

So if you make each mission have a wildly different win condition that is only achievable if you build towards that win condition to prevent skewing to a specific win condition, that just makes players play whatever points level it takes to comfortably be able to build towards all win conditions. This is why we saw the tournament game of 40k lift from 1500 to 1750/1850 to now 2000, because that's how many points it took to build lists with enough things to manage mission sets/various opponents.

Which in turn makes getting into the game more onerous for new players as in many groups they'll be playing "the competitive way", at 2500 or 3000 points, and won't have a lot of room for players wanting to start smaller. Sort of like the problem WHFB had where many people thought you couldn't really play the game lower than 2000 (or 1999+1, or whatever) and many even prefered 2400/2500.

I break it down thusly:

* player builds list to min max for kill points.
* player rolls take and hold mission
* player's army was not designed for take and hold mission
* player has a hard game because of this.
* player complains he was "screwed by RNG"

Conclusion:
* player stacked his army for one thing and by choice did not build for the other possibility. Player's list building in this case was at fault, not RNG... though pawning it off on RNG deflects blame on the player's choice for not preparing properly.

This same scenario plays out across tables across the world when a player shows up to a game with a tournament tuned list and smashes another player and then tells the player that the game is fine, they just chose not to tune their list and that it was their fault for not building appropriately (an ism I see several times a week on discords from my old competitive community).

Giving player influence in the mission would depend on how its implemented. However if they could just say "kill points" and then min max for kill points, we have just brought ourselves back to where we stand today.

So if you make each mission have a wildly different win condition that is only achievable if you build towards that win condition to prevent skewing to a specific win condition, that just makes players play whatever points level it takes to comfortably be able to build towards all win conditions. This is why we saw the tournament game of 40k lift from 1500 to 1750/1850 to now 2000, because that's how many points it took to build lists with enough things to manage mission sets/various opponents.

Or the controlling entity sets the points value to 2000 or whatever and thats it.

The whole crux / nugget of what I see repeated is players want to choose what to min max for and don't want to have to respond to battlefield conditions not in their control - which are all essential parts of wargames. Command & Control - its been almost if not entirely removed from these games.

There is one more consequence of the current tournament mission pack - the predictability of the mission and secondaries you can tailor for/agains, actively amplify any imbalance. In the diverse mission format, an imbalance of a unit that only excels in one out of six cases is less impactful than the imbalance of a unit that excels in all cases.

Basically, the problem of 9th is that 40k is currently so shallow, it became solvable.

 Rihgu wrote:

So if you make each mission have a wildly different win condition that is only achievable if you build towards that win condition to prevent skewing to a specific win condition, that just makes players play whatever points level it takes to comfortably be able to build towards all win conditions. This is why we saw the tournament game of 40k lift from 1500 to 1750/1850 to now 2000, because that's how many points it took to build lists with enough things to manage mission sets/various opponents.

Which in turn makes getting into the game more onerous for new players as in many groups they'll be playing "the competitive way", at 2500 or 3000 points, and won't have a lot of room for players wanting to start smaller. Sort of like the problem WHFB had where many people thought you couldn't really play the game lower than 2000 (or 1999+1, or whatever) and many even prefered 2400/2500.

uhhh, no? The standard game size has been pushed by GW more than by the players.

 auticus wrote:

So if you make each mission have a wildly different win condition that is only achievable if you build towards that win condition to prevent skewing to a specific win condition, that just makes players play whatever points level it takes to comfortably be able to build towards all win conditions. This is why we saw the tournament game of 40k lift from 1500 to 1750/1850 to now 2000, because that's how many points it took to build lists with enough things to manage mission sets/various opponents.

Or the controlling entity sets the points value to 2000 or whatever and thats it.

The whole crux / nugget of what I see repeated is players want to choose what to min max for and don't want to have to respond to battlefield conditions not in their control - which are all essential parts of wargames. Command & Control - its been almost if not entirely removed from these games.

I just don't see how you could make such a mission set work, without conceding that 2/6 or 3/6 potential missions you're just instantly going to lose unless you're playing an opponent who also did not gear their list towards those specific missions.

If you set the points limits low enough where you have to trade off which missions you're capable of doing, then there's a number of games that really aren't worth playing. is that better than the current state of things? No, I think it's the same. You've just now built into the core rules that there are matchups and missions not worth rolling the game out, instead of the imbalance of army lists causing that.

And to be clear, I'm not talking about skewing. I'm talking about trying to bring a TAC list, but if going against another TAC list means each player needs about 500 points of their army to reasonably take any given possible objective, then you can only build a list capable of taking 4 out of 6+ of those possible objectives. If I have picked 500 points into doing assassinate and you didn't, I win that. If neither of us have 500 points into Take and Hold, then I guess there's a game. If one of us skewed 1500 points into Kill Points and the other did TAC of 500, that's also a fun game. What this sort of system effectively does is INCREASE the number of bad matchups UNLESS! You also make the game size 3000 points, so each player can bring 500 points towards each of the 6 objectives. But then you still have bad matchups where one player decided to skew 1000 points into one and drop the points from another entirely. Now they have 1 great matchup, 1 terrible matchup, and 4 decent matchups...

Yea, I don't see this sort of mission set working at all better than what we currently have...

uhhh, no? The standard game size has been pushed by GW more than by the players.

This is weird to me because many of their White Dwarf/battle report videos are still doing 1500 to this day, besides ones which they specifically call out as like, Matched Play Tournament style.

nou wrote:
There is one more consequence of the current tournament mission pack - the predictability of the mission and secondaries you can tailor for/agains, actively amplify any imbalance. In the diverse mission format, an imbalance of a unit that only excels in one out of six cases is less impactful than the imbalance of a unit that excels in all cases.

Basically, the problem of 9th is that 40k is currently so shallow, it became solvable.

This basically

I mean, if someone skews hard towards one situation and runs into said situation, their army should perform amazingly well at that situation. Outside of that situation, they're probably going to (and should) do pretty poorly. In a sense, I think this is how things should be.

Of course, if you can only play 40k every now and then, it would really suck to play against that player who got the lucky match between skew and situation. Not sure what the answer to that situation is though (thankfully, there was a social pressure to always bring a TAC list in the small group I played with and that has carried through to present day where I've only been playing against one person from that group)

I just don't see how you could make such a mission set work, without conceding that 2/6 or 3/6 potential missions you're just instantly going to lose unless you're playing an opponent who also did not gear their list towards those specific missions.

I've been doing it for 25 odd years. If you build a general list, you don't auto lose. The only time you auto lose is when you min max your list to one set of scenarios.

And even then its not auto lose, its just very difficult.

I make it very very clear there is a difference between difficult, very difficult, and auto lose.

This missions set has provided me about 20 campaign seasons worth of great games that were not decided by list skewing. I don't think its fair at all to hand waive that type of design as you'll just lose most of the missions if you bring a well rounded list, because in my experience... thats simply not true.

I think its a hard concept to grasp because today we just avoid those type of missions.

Even in warhammer days back in early 2000s they tried doing this and the player base removed missions like the watch tower because it wasn't about kill points and they wanted to skew toward kill points.

I must be completely misinterpreting what you're talking about because how can the win conditions be so diverse as to combat skew but also still allow for TAC where as long as you do not skew you have decent odds (based on game skill) of winning?

That would imply to me that the win conditions are not so diverse, and the real way to play is to skew units which can perform multiple of them? Or that the conditions are easy enough that you don't even need to build towards them in which case I don't see how that punishes skew at all.

This whole discussion reminds me of the NOVA 2019 Question and Answer session for the Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game:

40k player looking to enter MESBG: "When are you going to remove missions X, Y, and Z from the tournament pack? They can make it difficult for armies A, B, and C to compete."

MESBG designer: "we aren't removing those missions. The fact that armies A, B, and C do not have a trivial answer to those missions is a design choice to make A, B, and C look outside the box for solutions - either a more diverse set of units or a complex and clever interaction..."

40k player: [shocked Pikachu]

Obviously it went down slightly differently, because I didn't record it verbatim. But it was a kind of funny interaction.