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 auticus wrote:
My problem with each faction having 1-2 viable builds means there are trash choices and trap purchases.

For example, I love thousand sons. And I was told its fine everythings fine thousand sons have a viable build.

It was demons, Mortarion, and Magnus lol.

Thats not fine.

Exactly this.

 Ordana wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Save the game? 40k is too big to fail. Popularity feedback loops be like that.

I wouldn't be to sure of that. GW shrunk during 7th edition and, tho based on anecdotal evidence, the general vibe online was that local communities were dying out and quitting or moving to other systems.

GW, through bad rules, is certainly capable of killing 40k. Its no easy feat and we are all addicted to plastic crack enough that a glimmer of hope sees us flocking back (aka 8th) but I would not call 40k to big to fail.

The problem with hoping 10th will fix the mess that is 9th is that there is no reason to assume GW is learning their lesson and won't change course yet again half way through the edition and then turn 11th into another bloated mess.

It wasn't just the general vibe. Their financials in those years were getting progressively more dire.

Then the AoS General's handbook and 8th dropped and it completely turned their fortunes around.

Yeah. Their size insulates them from competitors, but they're more than capable of steering into rocks.

At the worst period of 7th & AoS, shops around me were ordering less and less and actively shrinking their GW shelves. They managed to successfully dig themselves out of the hole of ill-will, but they can't chance that again.

GW's size certainly means they have a good few years of severe fuckups before they really start to hurt.
That's plenty of time for GW to pull something out of the hat - they don't need much, they have a huge community that wants to play 40k, even if they might temporarily get forced out by GW.

Its more cash reserves and lack of loans than sheer size, but yes. They can (and probably will) hit some rough patches and survive.

 auticus wrote:
My problem with each faction having 1-2 viable builds means there are trash choices and trap purchases.

For example, I love thousand sons. And I was told its fine everythings fine thousand sons have a viable build.

It was demons, Mortarion, and Magnus lol.

Thats not fine.

I think this is why tournament results are an awful way to measure how good a given faction (or codex) is.

 vipoid wrote:

 auticus wrote:
My problem with each faction having 1-2 viable builds means there are trash choices and trap purchases.

For example, I love thousand sons. And I was told its fine everythings fine thousand sons have a viable build.

It was demons, Mortarion, and Magnus lol.

Thats not fine.

I think this is why tournament results are an awful way to measure how good a given faction (or codex) is.

Not only that. In rock/paper/scisors/lizard/spock every "faction" has exactly 50% win rate but every match is a curbstomp Win rates in games with more than two sides can be very deceiving metrics.

 vipoid wrote:

 auticus wrote:
My problem with each faction having 1-2 viable builds means there are trash choices and trap purchases.

For example, I love thousand sons. And I was told its fine everythings fine thousand sons have a viable build.

It was demons, Mortarion, and Magnus lol.

Thats not fine.

I think this is why tournament results are an awful way to measure how good a given faction (or codex) is.

I can actually see some merit to this (i.e. it only reflects specific subsets of players, it gives insufficient data on options that require improvement, there's not a lot of tools for addressing internal balance, it's biased by the style of play, etc)

What would you use instead though?

ERJAK wrote:
. . . What would you use instead though?

More playtesting and/or listen to the playtesters more.

 Insectum7 wrote:

ERJAK wrote:
. . . What would you use instead though?

More playtesting and/or listen to the playtesters more.

I think any option that minimizes GW's involvement is going to be generally superior, to be honest. As nice as it would be to have real, professional game designers be involved in the process.

Tournament results show you how the game functions at the tournament level.

Having a viable tournament build doesn't mean the game is in a good place.

It means that in the tournament environment the game may have a viable build for everyone and some would consider that good, but that ignores the rest of the players.

Using my example with Thousand Sons...

Being told everything is fine because I can just go out and buy demons and Mortarion and Magnus so git gud is not a viable answer.

It means the rest of the codex was hot flaming garbage and that any "playtesting" failed.

If they were, as I suspect from my past experiences with playtesting, going "well they have demons and magnus and mortarion, we did our job!" then that is a super fail.

 auticus wrote:
Tournament results show you how the game functions at the tournament level.

Having a viable tournament build doesn't mean the game is in a good place.

It means that in the tournament environment the game may have a viable build for everyone and some would consider that good, but that ignores the rest of the players.

Using my example with Thousand Sons...

Being told everything is fine because I can just go out and buy demons and Mortarion and Magnus so git gud is not a viable answer.

It means the rest of the codex was hot flaming garbage and that any "playtesting" failed.

If they were, as I suspect from my past experiences with playtesting, going "well they have demons and magnus and mortarion, we did our job!" then that is a super fail.

Do we really think GW is competent enough to even think in those terms?

I actually doubt that GW think in terms of 'viable builds' or 'internal balance' when designing things. As far as I can tell it's all pew pew noises and cardboard tube swords with them.

'Aw man, this'll be so sweet!' seems to be a much more common phrase for them than 'okay, now let's see if it actually works'.

yukishiro1 wrote:
Get rid of basically everything. Stratagems suck, 90% of them are useless bloat and 5% of them are stupidly broken. Either eliminate them entirely or reduce them to 5 per army, with one usable each turn, each of which is powerful but limited by being once per game. Think something like transhuman but on a 5+ instead of a 4+.

Vastly simplify army construction. Give each army one core special rule plus the five stratagems and everything else is basically on the datasheets.

Go to AA or if you don't at least put in a lot more opportunities for interaction on your opponent's turn.

40k should have simple rules that are difficult to master, not be a bloated mess that is more about your ability to memorize rules and regurgitate them at the proper moment than your ability to actually make smart choices in-game.

At this point players should know that your ork boys and your kroot and your guard and your space marines are never going to REALLY work how you want them to. Constantly asking for more and more flavor bs is just going to make the game increasingly bloated and more focused on list building rather than actual strategy and gameplay.

I'd much rather play a game that has guardsmen and space marines on an even powerlevel than the current edition.

 kodos wrote:
each faction having 1-2 viable builds is ok from a certain perspective

the problem that comes with ETC like tournaments that 1 army being the hard count to 1 other army and useless against everything else is also a viable build

and I doubt 9th was tested enough to get each 1 army 1 viable build

Viable or ultra-competitive?

Because if the answer is the latter than yeah, it is ok.

The problem is when armies have one viable build (or even two) at casual levels, since some armies are extremely more powerful than others regardless of what they bring, so bottom tier armies HAVE to be fully optimized into their best build. I don't think it's what we currently have, those 9 voidweavers never existed outside a few hardcore GTs. The infamous ork list that one-shot 1800 points of drukhari never existed in real life for the vast majority of players, and that codex was out since several months at that point.

To me it's perfectly fine if in tournaments armies have one or two builds, as long as reasonably "highlander style" armies are on a comparable level with each other. And if that happens we have great balance, regardless of the factions WRs.

This is the game we wanted. GW said as much on their Twitter.
We should just wait and see how good 10th is.

 Sledgehammer wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
Get rid of basically everything. Stratagems suck, 90% of them are useless bloat and 5% of them are stupidly broken. Either eliminate them entirely or reduce them to 5 per army, with one usable each turn, each of which is powerful but limited by being once per game. Think something like transhuman but on a 5+ instead of a 4+.

Vastly simplify army construction. Give each army one core special rule plus the five stratagems and everything else is basically on the datasheets.

Go to AA or if you don't at least put in a lot more opportunities for interaction on your opponent's turn.

40k should have simple rules that are difficult to master, not be a bloated mess that is more about your ability to memorize rules and regurgitate them at the proper moment than your ability to actually make smart choices in-game.

At this point players should know that your ork boys and your kroot and your guard and your space marines are never going to REALLY work how you want them to. Constantly asking for more and more flavor bs is just going to make the game increasingly bloated and more focused on list building rather than actual strategy and gameplay.

I don't think that's necessarily true.

Instead, I'd argue a key problem is that the vast majority of 9th's bloat has nothing whatsoever to do with flavour.

Stratagems, for example, are probably intended to add flavour but instead have precisely the opposite effect. Rather than being an innate ability of a given unit, they're a completely abstract mechanic with arbitrary limitations. If a unit has Transhuman Physiology or Lightning Reflexes, surely it would have those things all the time? It's even more baffling how one squad having such an ability can prevent an otherwise identical squad from also having transhuman physiology or lightning reflexes.

Put simply, Stratagems collectively comprise about 50 pages of bloat, with 0 pages of flavour.

Then, of course, we have the wonderfully flavourful unit abilities like:

Master of the Chapter - "This unit rerolls to-hit rolls of 1"

Digital Weapons - "This unit rerolls to-hit rolls of 1"

Bio-Leech Ammunition - "This unit rerolls to-hit rolls of 1"

Veteran of a Thousand Wars - "This unit rerolls to-hit rolls of 1"

WIELDER OF THE DREAD SWORD DRACH'N'ATOR, DESTROYER OF WORLDS - "This unit rerolls to-hit rolls of 1"

What I'm getting at is that there's frequently a dissonance between the name and fluff of an ability and what it actually does.

There are so many abilities that masquerade as flavour but which merely offer generic and flavourless mechanics that are repeated across dozens of units across all armies.

Hence why, despite every unit being packed to the gills with bespoke rules, everything feels more samey than ever before.

 Blackie wrote:

 kodos wrote:
each faction having 1-2 viable builds is ok from a certain perspective

the problem that comes with ETC like tournaments that 1 army being the hard count to 1 other army and useless against everything else is also a viable build

and I doubt 9th was tested enough to get each 1 army 1 viable build

Viable or ultra-competitive?

Because if the answer is the latter than yeah, it is ok.

The problem is when armies have one viable build (or even two) at casual levels, since some armies are extremely more powerful than others regardless of what they bring, so bottom tier armies HAVE to be fully optimized into their best build. I don't think it's what we currently have, those 9 voidweavers never existed outside a few hardcore GTs. The infamous ork list that one-shot 1800 points of drukhari never existed in real life for the vast majority of players, and that codex was out since several months at that point.

To me it's perfectly fine if in tournaments armies have one or two builds, as long as reasonably "highlander style" armies are on a comparable level with each other. And if that happens we have great balance, regardless of the factions WRs.

This is the current GW level of "better balance is not possible", were one faction can throw anything in while the other one needs a competitive list to be viable for casual games

But other games do their playtesting to have 2 competitive lists per faction
So if tournament players do the testing it can work, but than the list those people chose to be valid does not necessarily fit what other people think fits the background

40k rules will never be "fixed" by GW itself for reasons that have been debated many times over : no long term vision, and the need to sell printed materials and miniatures above having a good and Balanced game.

Now if I could speak a language GW could understand easily. I would advise them to apply Apocalypse rules+alternative activation, drop stratagems relics and warlord traits, and sell rules-only army books with no pictures, no lore and no point values, and make all and any point update free (IE no "chapter approved" publications, just balance dataslates)

and sell rules-only army books with no pictures, no lore and no point values

Yikes.
After watching PP destroy their book line (as part of their drop to oblivion) and the first year+ of Age of Sigmar, no pics, no lore and no point values is a terrible suggestion.

That's guaranteed backlash for no gain. Rules only army books aren't worth money, let alone GW prices.

 vipoid wrote:

Then, of course, we have the wonderfully flavourful unit abilities like:

Master of the Chapter - "This unit rerolls to-hit rolls of 1"

Digital Weapons - "This unit rerolls to-hit rolls of 1"

Bio-Leech Ammunition - "This unit rerolls to-hit rolls of 1"

Veteran of a Thousand Wars - "This unit rerolls to-hit rolls of 1"

WIELDER OF THE DREAD SWORD DRACH'N'ATOR, DESTROYER OF WORLDS - "This unit rerolls to-hit rolls of 1"

As an exercise one day towards the start of 9th edition, I went through the new marine and necron codex and started tallying all the instances of the above by type of die roll and what the special rule effect.

You realize pretty quickly that 95% of the special bespoke rules just come down to different ways of framing a +1 or -1 or. Re-roll to different dice rolls. And you also realize that because of 8th9th Ed simplicity, there are only so many rolls available to be modified as such. There just aren't enough levers (eg morale) in the core rules to do all much with things.

It's almost comical when you see it all laid out.

Voss wrote:

and sell rules-only army books with no pictures, no lore and no point values

Yikes.
After watching PP destroy their book line (as part of their drop to oblivion) and the first year+ of Age of Sigmar, no pics, no lore and no point values is a terrible suggestion.

That's guaranteed backlash for no gain. Rules only army books aren't worth money, let alone GW prices.

Yeah, if you do rules only with nothing else you give that away for free online and sell beautiful army books full of art and lore as collectors pieces.

 Ordana wrote:

Voss wrote:

and sell rules-only army books with no pictures, no lore and no point values

Yikes.
After watching PP destroy their book line (as part of their drop to oblivion) and the first year+ of Age of Sigmar, no pics, no lore and no point values is a terrible suggestion.

That's guaranteed backlash for no gain. Rules only army books aren't worth money, let alone GW prices.

Yeah, if you do rules only with nothing else you give that away for free online and sell beautiful army books full of art and lore as collectors pieces.

Didn't exactly work out too well for PP. Though I know they had many more issues at the same time.

Most people don't actually care about the lovely art and stuff.

New players aren't that invested in the system so don't care what they're missing, so they'll happily save £30.

Veteran players already know the lore, they've already seen the art. Some of us have most of a library of the same lore and art reprinted with different covers sitting on our shelves already. Again, we'll happily save £30.

The rules are the driving force behind sales. GW knows that, that's why they make sure to include matched play rules in every publication, otherwise they just won't shift.
GW makes too much money on book sales to voluntarily throw that away.
Unlike smaller companies who do give away rules, GW doesn't need anything to encourage new players. Their sheer popularity, retail stores, and size of the community does that for them.

Or you know, they could just have smaller and cheaper oaperback codexes again that are more focused on rules but still has a decent sprinkling of lore and proper unit descriptions.

Rules are just a means to move my cool models around.

I do care about rules helping out to make a fun game, round 1 tabling is no fun for anyone (I hope ).

I think the game has too many armies and models per army to get 'good' (define good, I know) rules.

The way I view the latest balance sheet is that GW try to correct something and make more impact in places they didn't even think about. But they are damned if they do and damned if they don't.

I played my Orks for like five years I think before they got new rules, so yeah, I do like GW stepping up lately in that department. But now people are complaining that's it too much and others that this current pace is too slow (everything should get a new codex at once). I get those voices, but for me that's not realistic and don't really care much about it either. Just take your time GW and update my army now and then .

kirotheavenger wrote:Most people don't actually care about the lovely art and stuff.

New players aren't that invested in the system so don't care what they're missing, so they'll happily save £30.

Veteran players already know the lore, they've already seen the art. Some of us have most of a library of the same lore and art reprinted with different covers sitting on our shelves already. Again, we'll happily save £30.

The rules are the driving force behind sales. GW knows that, that's why they make sure to include matched play rules in every publication, otherwise they just won't shift.
GW makes too much money on book sales to voluntarily throw that away.
Unlike smaller companies who do give away rules, GW doesn't need anything to encourage new players. Their sheer popularity, retail stores, and size of the community does that for them.

* people you know, who you play with, and who are visible on the FLGS/Tournament level. All people I play with, and who I know were/are into 40k, were/are in it because of the setting/lore and despite the rules. To the point where we did our own ruleset to represent the lore better. But we are garagehammer players, completely invisible from pickup culture perspective.

Mezmorki wrote:Or you know, they could just have smaller and cheaper oaperback codexes again that are more focused on rules but still has a decent sprinkling of lore and proper unit descriptions.

You mean 3rd ed style codices. Compared to 2nd ed codices, those were bordering on sterile. But I agree, that GW has a hard time balancing the two aspects of codices, so it would be better to just publish the game in format of one rulebook, one battle book with rules of all factions (in a publication format that allows for separating each faction for practical purposes), and then one lore book and eventually one perpetual narrative book. That would make logical sense from game perspective, but absolutely no sense at all from the business perspective.

I care about my rules, because I want to play a game, but I have no confidence that GW can or wants to fix any of it.

Codexes should have a picture of the unit with their respective rules. This enables new players to pick up their rulebook and be able to immediately associate the rules with the physical object.

The most frustrating thing I had when starting was trying to exactly figure out what was what, not only for units but weapons. It was a chore to make sure I was buying the right unit and was building it with the right weapons. Needless barrier of difficulty to get people in.

TreeSparr wrote:
Codexes should have a picture of the unit with their respective rules. This enables new players to pick up their rulebook and be able to immediately associate the rules with the physical object.

The most frustrating thing I had when starting was trying to exactly figure out what was what, not only for units but weapons. It was a chore to make sure I was buying the right unit and was building it with the right weapons. Needless barrier of difficulty to get people in.

That's basically what the 7th edition codexes did. All the unit rules and options (minus the general wargear / armory table), a photo OF THE MODELS, and the fluffy descriptive text all on one page. One unit per page.

I hated the various iterations of the 4th-6th edition codexes (2nd did this too) where you'd have a unit entry with costs in the army list section, but then half of their special / unique rules were written out in a separate more fluffy section. So when you were learning a new army and trying to make a list, you were constantly having to flip between sections.

8th + 9th did take a good step forward in terms of trying to get all the pertinent info all on one data sheet - except of course for the point values in the back. Face palm.

Honestly, Wahapedia is the by far the best resource for actually seeing everything relevant to unit in one spot.

If 40k is dying why are tournaments across the country quickly sold out? Some of you guys have an unrealistic view of the state of 40k.