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 Daedalus81 wrote:

Karol wrote:
GK write up for 8th ed codex. That Nanavati guy throws in a blurb how GK MW generations and psychic powers had to be reigned in because otherwise GK would be too powerful, but this way they will be just powerful. What followed was GK being one of the worse or the worse faction with a codex in 8th ed. And the same time other "magic" heavy faction did not get any such limitations.

Later on when confronted on the state of GK, Nanavati claimed that GK players just don't know how to play and build a good GK army. And posted the same type of army everyone else playing as an example.

GK have been a solid army since their release.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

tneva82 wrote:
Yet you see try　hards playing different army constantly chasing new op all the time.

You might not think it works. Gw's profits disagree with you.

Again, those people already own or borrow whatever they need. I regularly see FB posts of people selling their pile of shame and some post literally tens of thousands of dollars in models.

The bolded is an objective lie. They were the worst faction in 8th edition for the majority of the edition. Even after their codex came out, they were still terrible. It took their Campaign book right before 9th to make them decently playable.


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 Mr. Burning wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Having printed material be occasionally errata'd is inconvenient but understandable, and perfectly tolerable for improving the state of the game.

Having printed material that is so badly designed it needs eratta within weeks of release to fix things that are obvious even without testing is a different matter.

As for intent, it is obvious there's no sinister scheme behind GWs terrible balance, but the powers that be within the company are definitely making a choice not to get better. There is no way they don't know it is such a common source of customer dissatisfaction. My assumption is that they know shifting imbalance drives sales short term and long term consequences be dammed. It fits with the extremely common mentality among corporations for disregarding a net loss in the long term in favor of short term gain.

GW have primed the pump with the new regular patches and updates.

10th ed could well be season 1 of 40k ...and the balance will still end up being horrendous. Its just the business mindset of GW.

The thing is, some amount of imbalance, even deliberate imbalance is fine. Just about any competitive game that isn't a traditional sport has some level of imbalance. Games like league of legends have a constantly rotating door of OP champions and that game's been around for over a decade now.

The thing is: Other games generally don't have THIS level of imbalance. A lol champion having a 60% winrate is unheard of, even if you adjust for champions that are unpopular enough to only be played by extremely skilled one-tricks. In the cases where a champion DOES breach that mark, it gets emergency hotfixed within a couple of days. The idea that LoL would release an 80% winrate champion is INSANE.

In fact, the only non-gw game I can think of that's AS poorly balanced as 40k is YUGIOH and YUGIOH is NOT a game you should be basing any sort of design philosophies around.

Having a degree of imbalance that lets small adjustment patches change things up and create new gameplay patterns or make new options viable is a good thing. It keeps the game fresh. Dropping a book that wins 80% of games for free, does not.

You are comparing orange to apples.

In LoL a champion is only one out of five players, in 40K a faction is your whole set up.

It is obvious that a champion in LoL cannot reach 80% win rates, since it would have to be so OP that he can win the game alone irrespective of the other 4 players in the team. LoL has also a ban system, and it isn't uncommon for OP champions to reach the 100% pick/ban, which means that the other team will allow you to pick it only when it has a plan.

To make a real comparison of LoL win rates vs 40K win rates, you should take in consideration only team tournaments and see which is the win% of those with a player of that faction. Unfortunately the number of those games being played are not enough to run any real analysis.

But even without actual data, if you consider that the other members of the team (let's say another 4 to keep a good comparison with LoL) have a 50% chance of winning their match, let's take the most edge case. One player has a faction so strong that he has a 100% win rate. This means that the rest of them to win needs to only win 2 out of the remaining 4 games. This translates to a 68.75% win rate for the team (not counting for mirrors). This is the absolute top result that you can get in a 5 player system.

Now let's apply a win percentage of 75% for the OP faction, which is an impossibly brokenly OP in 40k terms, probably never reached in the history of 40K (you have to take the numbers not accounting for mirrors in this analysis). After you run a bit of math, the win rate for the team is 59.37%.

So as you can see it isn't a really fair comparison. As soon as you consider a system with 5 players, the win% are artifically deflated.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Karol wrote:
GK write up for 8th ed codex. That Nanavati guy throws in a blurb how GK MW generations and psychic powers had to be reigned in because otherwise GK would be too powerful, but this way they will be just powerful. What followed was GK being one of the worse or the worse faction with a codex in 8th ed. And the same time other "magic" heavy faction did not get any such limitations.

Later on when confronted on the state of GK, Nanavati claimed that GK players just don't know how to play and build a good GK army. And posted the same type of army everyone else playing as an example.

GK have been a solid army since their release.

I know you like to defend GW for the sake of defending them, but you don't have to lie when doing it.

ERJAK wrote:


Having a degree of imbalance that lets small adjustment patches change things up and create new gameplay patterns or make new options viable is a good thing. It keeps the game fresh. Dropping a book that wins 80% of games for free, does not.

I don't think it's true. It's not the book that wins X% of games for "free", it's specific lists from that book. And a lot of players can't field those lists or even don't want to. In an era of frequent updates many players are discouraged to chase that flavour of the month and don't do it. That's why I don't think things are that imbalanced. For a simulator probably, for the actual miniature game definitely not.

 Daedalus81 wrote:


GK have been a solid army since their release.

In 8th ed with its chaos FW psyker spam , Inari and eldar soups from day one and later loyal 32+castellan etc? GK got okey, it was 2.0 marine time by then, when the PA book came out at very end of the edition. The fact that GK were getting nerfed every FAQ, CA etc become a meme.

 Jidmah wrote:

Tyel wrote:
GW clearly could do a better job balancing the game. Its unclear why they don't. I feel the playtesting clearly isn't working. (And while we had the much quoted "but we didn't test D3+3 damage dark lances" - that wasn't even the main reason DE were top faction for 9~ months.)

We also have some evidence that some of the pros are giving biased feedback to help factions they prefer and hurt factions they can't play well/don't like playing against.

I'm going to have to [Citation required] that claim - might just be that I've missed it, but even with the low regard I hold the groups that are doing the playtesting, I've not heard anything about this sort of malicious action.

And I mean a proper citation, Jid, not a conspiracy theory.

 Jidmah wrote:
On top of that, GW is keeping secrets from the playtesters - none of the beast snaggas were playtested.

This, on the other hand - like the Dark Lance change post-"playtesting" - is just plain stupid of them. You can't playtest a book properly if you don't have the full breadth of units to test.

Dudeface wrote:
The other is, should GW be printing them at all, should the delivery be different etc?

Different? No.

I could see doing the ebook (or whatever the format was in the past) versions of the books as a release alongside the physical ones, but not instead of.

The player base could grow up a bit, though, and stop complaining that their whole book is "invalid" every time there is a FAQ/errata/CA points release, especially when - as of the next MFM release - those updates won't cost them anything.

These things not getting changed was a problem in earlier editions - getting a set of fixes at a regular pace is something a lot of the people whining now wanted back then, if they were playing at that time.

 Blackie wrote:

I don't think it's true. It's not the book that wins X% of games for "free", it's specific lists from that book. And a lot of players can't field those lists or even don't want to. In an era of frequent updates many players are discouraged to chase that flavour of the month and don't do it. That's why I don't think things are that imbalanced. For a simulator probably, for the actual miniature game definitely not.

Yeah right. Go tell the IG players that it is not their codex being bad, but everyone else playing specific builds, that is the foult for them being bottom tier. Or when knights were build in a such a way that they would auto lose objectives, get shot from behind buildings, but couldn't fire back AND gave up free secondaries. Same with GK before their codex. As long as the opponent didn't have a psyker, which was most armies, a GK opponent was double or triple dipping on secondaries, while at the same time stopping the GK player from doing his. And to make it even more fun, it was still better then 8th ed.

Also the don't play or don't want play argument is all nice and good to hear. Until the "broken" thing in an army is the basic stuff or the stuff that makes people want to play a faction. If suits happen to be "OP" then expecting tau players to bring a full kroot force or an army of no suits is wishful thinking. Same with eldar and their gunboats. GK and their NDKs and interceptors etc. The only way to not see those units is for some hard nerf to them. Even the argument that people don't have the models is an odd one. Top way to play GK in 8th was spam NDKs, spam interceptors and strikes. In 9th the way to play GK , pre AoC change, was spam NDKs, spam interceptors and strikes. Same goes for armies like custodes, knights, harlequins unless someone soups them etc.

Spoletta wrote:
You are comparing orange to apples.

In LoL a champion is only one out of five players, in 40K a faction is your whole set up.

It is obvious that a champion in LoL cannot reach 80% win rates, since it would have to be so OP that he can win the game alone irrespective of the other 4 players in the team. LoL has also a ban system, and it isn't uncommon for OP champions to reach the 100% pick/ban, which means that the other team will allow you to pick it only when it has a plan.

To make a real comparison of LoL win rates vs 40K win rates, you should take in consideration only team tournaments and see which is the win% of those with a player of that faction. Unfortunately the number of those games being played are not enough to run any real analysis.

But even without actual data, if you consider that the other members of the team (let's say another 4 to keep a good comparison with LoL) have a 50% chance of winning their match, let's take the most edge case. One player has a faction so strong that he has a 100% win rate. This means that the rest of them to win needs to only win 2 out of the remaining 4 games. This translates to a 68.75% win rate for the team (not counting for mirrors). This is the absolute top result that you can get in a 5 player system.

Now let's apply a win percentage of 75% for the OP faction, which is an impossibly brokenly OP in 40k terms, probably never reached in the history of 40K (you have to take the numbers not accounting for mirrors in this analysis). After you run a bit of math, the win rate for the team is 59.37%.

So as you can see it isn't a really fair comparison. As soon as you consider a system with 5 players, the win% are artifically deflated.

Really nice post, interesting math you brought up. You cannot make a 1-1 comparison but I also think you are underselling the success LOL is seeing in terms of balance, because unlike 40k team events which are a series of 1v1 battles, LOL is a team game with snowballing, a strong champion can gain an advantage against their opponent and suppress the entire enemy team, not just their lane opponent.

The average first loss for Tyranids on release was round 3, I don't remember the win rate in the first round but it was probably around 80%. Custodes, when their FW units were first released in 8th with beta rules, had an 80% win rate. Bans and counterpicks are a part of LOL strategy, getting matched against a competitive Tyranids list while playing 80% of factions was just a death sentence and you couldn't try to play even and hope to get carried by your team. This is why the balance in 40k needs to be tight. 40k also has the randomness factor which should pull every faction towards a 50% win rate. I still think the people that are saying that 60% win rate is fine should be forced to eat a bag of flour and the wait and see crowd makes me gag, they are wrong every time.

 Dysartes wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

Tyel wrote:
GW clearly could do a better job balancing the game. Its unclear why they don't. I feel the playtesting clearly isn't working. (And while we had the much quoted "but we didn't test D3+3 damage dark lances" - that wasn't even the main reason DE were top faction for 9~ months.)

We also have some evidence that some of the pros are giving biased feedback to help factions they prefer and hurt factions they can't play well/don't like playing against.

I'm going to have to [Citation required] that claim - might just be that I've missed it, but even with the low regard I hold the groups that are doing the playtesting, I've not heard anything about this sort of malicious action.

Someone on Reddit claimed it and attributed the original claim to a judge (head LVO judge I think) and the poster was shouted down for lack of evidence.

These things not getting changed was a problem in earlier editions - getting a set of fixes at a regular pace is something a lot of the people whining now wanted back then, if they were playing at that time.

I think the problem is it seems like GW is using this new policy as an excuse for their lack of quality, instead of a way to enhance the quality beyond that of previous editions. If I told a 5th edition player they could 150% issues out the gate but that they would go down to 100% issues after 1 month and 50% issues after 18 months but the cost would be having to constantly keep up with news and pay money for extra rules to play the game, I think it'd be a lot less interesting instead of the imagined 100% issues on release, 50% issues after 12 months with a single patch.

Printing books works just fine when the design process behind it is solid. Going to digital will not help when the design process is deeply flawed.

Once again, I recall that the best year for GW stock -ever- was a year with an unprecedented amount of balance improvement, community outreach, and price cuts. It goes in a cycle; they do that and meet success, it goes to their head and they get cocky, they make the same mistakes and go into the same rut, then they get out with the same solution. Could the whole process easily be restructured to benefit literally everyone involved? Of course, but humans are bad at doing society large scale and GW is no exception.

I'd settle for them not putting point costs in printed books and instead use the lead time to playtest, then release a free download the day of release.

 vict0988 wrote:
I think the problem is it seems like GW is using this new policy as an excuse for their lack of quality, instead of a way to enhance the quality beyond that of previous editions. If I told a 5th edition player they could 150% issues out the gate but that they would go down to 100% issues after 1 month and 50% issues after 18 months but the cost would be having to constantly keep up with news and pay money for extra rules to play the game, I think it'd be a lot less interesting instead of the imagined 100% issues on release, 50% issues after 12 months with a single patch.

While we have seen from gaming, that since the prevalence of the internet and online updates a 'we'll fix it later' attitude to bugs is much more prevalent I think there is another massive factor that has a much bigger impact on the quality of codices being released between 5th edition and now.

5th was a codex every ~4-5 months. 9th is a codex every 1-2 months.

Give every codex in 9th another 3 months of testing time instead of dragging the writer off to the next project would probably have a very significant impact on the overall balance of the game.

The issue for comparisons with League, Dota etc is just the number of games and sources of information.

So to go with Dota, if I'm reading it right, in the last week there were 876k games with a Pudge - out of 3.2 million games in total. By contrast - there were... what? A few thousand 40k tournament games where the results are recorded? Of which low hundreds were Tyranids. If you start talking about individual Space Marine chapters its about 50 - or less.

You only have recorded information from a tiny pool of players. Which is why I think you get big swings. Because things can be "secretly good" - but if no one is playing them, no one finds out. Especially when you see factions buffed/nerfed, the big swing in win% is when the pro/esport scene ditch or join that faction. (This isn't to ignore the fact top players have made claims that have not been verified - but others have been, for example most recently with Sisters.)

So tl/dr, 40k balance should probably be less data driven and instead done on first principles.

There's always a battle over what should go up - and what should go down, where the "par" value for points is etc. But it should have been obvious, in a world where say a Heavy Intercessor is 28 points, where a Skorpekh Destroyer is 30 points (and that's only having been cut from 35), that a Tyranid Warrior, now with B3+ S5, T5, so effectively a 3 shot S5 AP-2 gun, and 4 S7 AP-2 2 damage attacks... shouldn't be 25 points. Even before you consider that Tyranids get better buffs. And this logic carries on through all the other problematic things.

If they want to go "new par, its fine" - that's okay too. But then we need "new season, new points" for every faction in the game.

ERJAK wrote:
The bolded is an objective lie. They were the worst faction in 8th edition for the majority of the edition. Even after their codex came out, they were still terrible. It took their Campaign book right before 9th to make them decently playable.

Wait - I thought we were talking about 9th?




Automatically Appended Next Post:

EviscerationPlague wrote:
I know you like to defend GW for the sake of defending them, but you don't have to lie when doing it.

Yea, so apparently I didn't read that he mentioned 8th. My bad. I'm guessing he was insinuating that Nanavanti helped to nerf GK?

Tyel wrote:
The issue for comparisons with League, Dota etc is just the number of games and sources of information.

So to go with Dota, if I'm reading it right, in the last week there were 876k games with a Pudge - out of 3.2 million games in total. By contrast - there were... what? A few thousand 40k tournament games where the results are recorded? Of which low hundreds were Tyranids. If you start talking about individual Space Marine chapters its about 50 - or less.

You only have recorded information from a tiny pool of players. Which is why I think you get big swings. Because things can be "secretly good" - but if no one is playing them, no one finds out. Especially when you see factions buffed/nerfed, the big swing in win% is when the pro/esport scene ditch or join that faction. (This isn't to ignore the fact top players have made claims that have not been verified - but others have been, for example most recently with Sisters.)

So tl/dr, 40k balance should probably be less data driven and instead done on first principles.

There's always a battle over what should go up - and what should go down, where the "par" value for points is etc. But it should have been obvious, in a world where say a Heavy Intercessor is 28 points, where a Skorpekh Destroyer is 30 points (and that's only having been cut from 35), that a Tyranid Warrior, now with B3+ S5, T5, so effectively a 3 shot S5 AP-2 gun, and 4 S7 AP-2 2 damage attacks... shouldn't be 25 points. Even before you consider that Tyranids get better buffs. And this logic carries on through all the other problematic things.

If they want to go "new par, its fine" - that's okay too. But then we need "new season, new points" for every faction in the game.

This would make sense if gw games were complicated that need data to fix balance.

Problem being the balance issues are found on first cursory reading. If imbalance wasn''t gw's goal they could fix problems by giving any school kid who can read english and kid would point them out.

Problem being balance hurts gw's profits as try hards wouldnt be buying new models to stay up with what's broken.

Imbalance is feature. Not a bug.

tneva82 wrote:
This would make sense if gw games were complicated that need data to fix balance.

Problem being the balance issues are found on first cursory reading. If imbalance wasn''t gw's goal they could fix problems by giving any school kid who can read english and kid would point them out.

Problem being balance hurts gw's profits as try hards wouldnt be buying new models to stay up with what's broken.

Imbalance is feature. Not a bug.

I challenge you not to read anything online prior to your next codex purchase or talk to anyone about the codex and then make a list of adjustments you think would fix the codex without using any spreadsheets or playing any games beforehand. Veteran 40k tournament players could not tell that Canoptek Reanimators were garbage or that Harlequins were OP in 9th on release. The truth is somewhere in the middle between "it's impossible to figure out how an army will do before thousands of competitive games have been played and tens of thousands of people have read the codex" and "a middle-schooler could fix this in a couple of hours".

 vict0988 wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
This would make sense if gw games were complicated that need data to fix balance.

Problem being the balance issues are found on first cursory reading. If imbalance wasn''t gw's goal they could fix problems by giving any school kid who can read english and kid would point them out.

Problem being balance hurts gw's profits as try hards wouldnt be buying new models to stay up with what's broken.

Imbalance is feature. Not a bug.

I challenge you not to read anything online prior to your next codex purchase or talk to anyone about the codex and then make a list of adjustments you think would fix the codex without using any spreadsheets or playing any games beforehand. Veteran 40k tournament players could not tell that Canoptek Reanimators were garbage or that Harlequins were OP in 9th on release. The truth is somewhere in the middle between "it's impossible to figure out how an army will do before thousands of competitive games have been played and tens of thousands of people have read the codex" and "a middle-schooler could fix this in a couple of hours".

Why no spreadsheets/playing games? These are tools that are available to the official designers themselves.

tneva82 wrote:

This would make sense if gw games were complicated that need data to fix balance.

Problem being the balance issues are found on first cursory reading. If imbalance wasn''t gw's goal they could fix problems by giving any school kid who can read english and kid would point them out.

Problem being balance hurts gw's profits as try hards wouldnt be buying new models to stay up with what's broken.

Imbalance is feature. Not a bug.

Right so over in Horus Heresy land...

Got my orders in, 1 copy of the box from one store, 2 copies of the box from another plus 2 kratos, 1 deimos, 1 liber hereticus, 1 liber astartes, 1 special weapon upgrade, 1 heavy weapon upgrade.

1x big box, 1x loyalists book, 1x kratos, 1x heavy weapons for me

I must be blessed by the Omnissiah today - got in early and just ordered!

Well, the queue was actually fine for me, got in at 09.55am and managed to order the boxed set, 2 x liber books and the bookmark.

I went for

1x boxset
1x Kratos
1x Deimos
1x Special Weapons box
1x heavy weapons box

...people are commenting on all the stuff they are buying. They don't know if the units in the box set will be bad or not. People will do the same thing with Squats or any large splash release. Because people will buy models despite rules. On eBay in the US they have sold over 500 boxed sets and counting.

 vict0988 wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
This would make sense if gw games were complicated that need data to fix balance.

Problem being the balance issues are found on first cursory reading. If imbalance wasn''t gw's goal they could fix problems by giving any school kid who can read english and kid would point them out.

Problem being balance hurts gw's profits as try hards wouldnt be buying new models to stay up with what's broken.

Imbalance is feature. Not a bug.

I challenge you not to read anything online prior to your next codex purchase or talk to anyone about the codex and then make a list of adjustments you think would fix the codex without using any spreadsheets or playing any games beforehand.

What kind of challenge is that? Walking is more difficult that spotting the crap in a GW book & coming up with a fix.

 vict0988 wrote:
Veteran 40k tournament players could not tell that Canoptek Reanimators were garbage or that Harlequins were OP in 9th on release.

Suuure they didn't. Next you'll try & convince us that GW makes perfectly balanced games.
I'm sorry, but anyone telling you they didn't think Voidweavers were under-costed & would soon be a problem at best simply didn't read the materiel & is now making excuses

ccs wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
This would make sense if gw games were complicated that need data to fix balance.

Problem being the balance issues are found on first cursory reading. If imbalance wasn''t gw's goal they could fix problems by giving any school kid who can read english and kid would point them out.

Problem being balance hurts gw's profits as try hards wouldnt be buying new models to stay up with what's broken.

Imbalance is feature. Not a bug.

I challenge you not to read anything online prior to your next codex purchase or talk to anyone about the codex and then make a list of adjustments you think would fix the codex without using any spreadsheets or playing any games beforehand.

What kind of challenge is that? Walking is more difficult that spotting the crap in a GW book & coming up with a fix.

 vict0988 wrote:
Veteran 40k tournament players could not tell that Canoptek Reanimators were garbage or that Harlequins were OP in 9th on release.

Suuure they didn't. Next you'll try & convince us that GW makes perfectly balanced games.
I'm sorry, but anyone telling you they didn't think Voidweavers were under-costed & would soon be a problem at best simply didn't read the materiel & is now making excuses

40k has awful balance.

But, if it's so easy, fix Guard, Tyranids, and... Let's say Daemons. Right now. Easier than walking, right?

I thought we were talking about seeing stuff is obviously broken at a single glance.

That is not the same as fixing it. QA don't propose fixes, they identify problems. Fixing it is the designers responsibility. It is literally part of what they are paid to do.

ccs wrote:
What kind of challenge is that? Walking is more difficult that spotting the crap in a GW book & coming up with a fix.

According to ccs, coming up with a fix is easy too.

 vict0988 wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
This would make sense if gw games were complicated that need data to fix balance.

Problem being the balance issues are found on first cursory reading. If imbalance wasn''t gw's goal they could fix problems by giving any school kid who can read english and kid would point them out.

Problem being balance hurts gw's profits as try hards wouldnt be buying new models to stay up with what's broken.

Imbalance is feature. Not a bug.

I challenge you not to read anything online prior to your next codex purchase or talk to anyone about the codex and then make a list of adjustments you think would fix the codex without using any spreadsheets or playing any games beforehand. Veteran 40k tournament players could not tell that Canoptek Reanimators were garbage or that Harlequins were OP in 9th on release. The truth is somewhere in the middle between "it's impossible to figure out how an army will do before thousands of competitive games have been played and tens of thousands of people have read the codex" and "a middle-schooler could fix this in a couple of hours".

Are you really claiming that we wouldn't be able to tell that the Reanimator, an overly expensive model with minimal benefit, would be bad without internet chatter?

Man the GW defense is killing me.

EviscerationPlague wrote:

Are you really claiming that we wouldn't be able to tell that the Reanimator, an overly expensive model with minimal benefit, would be bad without internet chatter?

Man the GW defense is killing me.

Thats litterally what happened tho. People thought the reanimator would be OP and that Quinns were just fine

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

Are you really claiming that we wouldn't be able to tell that the Reanimator, an overly expensive model with minimal benefit, would be bad without internet chatter?

Man the GW defense is killing me.

Thats litterally what happened tho. People thought the reanimator would be OP and that Quinns were just fine

I did not see anyone claim the Reanimator would be OP. I want a source on that.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
This would make sense if gw games were complicated that need data to fix balance.

Problem being the balance issues are found on first cursory reading. If imbalance wasn''t gw's goal they could fix problems by giving any school kid who can read english and kid would point them out.

Problem being balance hurts gw's profits as try hards wouldnt be buying new models to stay up with what's broken.

Imbalance is feature. Not a bug.

I challenge you not to read anything online prior to your next codex purchase or talk to anyone about the codex and then make a list of adjustments you think would fix the codex without using any spreadsheets or playing any games beforehand. Veteran 40k tournament players could not tell that Canoptek Reanimators were garbage or that Harlequins were OP in 9th on release. The truth is somewhere in the middle between "it's impossible to figure out how an army will do before thousands of competitive games have been played and tens of thousands of people have read the codex" and "a middle-schooler could fix this in a couple of hours".

Why no spreadsheets/playing games? These are tools that are available to the official designers themselves.

Because playtesting and using spreadsheets is not "a cursory reading", which tneva claimed would be enough. First GW should design the rules to be fun to play with and have them playtested by casual players. Then GW should invest in a spreadsheet that covers every unit's effectiveness when attacking a small variety of enemies (5 or so different profiles) and when being attacked by a small variety of enemies (again around 5 different weapon profiles). This should be the first principles stage of assigning points, units that are more mobile, durable or killy should cost more points. Units with broad effectiveness should not be as effective as units with a more narrow focus, being able to kill tanks is good, being able to kill hordes and tanks is better. Then each unit needs to get spammed and each Strat, Relic, etc. needs to be used at least once to better understand their in a tactical situation outside of a spreadsheet where the player is trying to break the game with combos and stuff like that. Each unit will be assigned to one competitive playtester who combines the thoughts and experiences all the competitive playtesters who used that unit had and deliver it to the developers to fine-tune the points and iron out any issues with bad RAW issues that can cause things like infinite attacks or just stupid combos like liquifiers with that one Drukhari sub-faction.

I think it would be good to try to allow the competitive playtesters to make videos on their experiences and the rules that will be coming out for one codex so they can spend earn some money doing the work and thus have an incentive to spend more time playtesting instead of making regular content. See whether more testing gets done and whether sales go down because people know about the rules far in advance instead the week before launch.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

Are you really claiming that we wouldn't be able to tell that the Reanimator, an overly expensive model with minimal benefit, would be bad without internet chatter?

Man the GW defense is killing me.

Thats litterally what happened tho. People thought the reanimator would be OP and that Quinns were just fine

I remember the opposite. People saw the points cost on the Reanimator and were quick to dismiss it as useless.

For example, here's Goonhammer breaking down the then-new RP rules and saying the Reanimator isn't worth it.

That sure doesn't seem like 'Veteran 40k tournament players could not tell that Canoptek Reanimators were garbage (...) on release'.

Edit: In fact, in their main Necron codex review, they stated:

Finally, the Canoptek Reanimator. I do not “get” the Canoptek Reanimator. The Reanimation Beam is clearly very good to have on a big unit that is under fire, but with the effect being so short ranged and requiring visiblity, it’s frequently going to be impossible to set it up without this being visible, and it’s so squishy for the cost that it’s a tough sell. The Reanimation Prioritisation strat makes this just that bit closer to worthwhile as alpha strike prevention, as you can hide it behind terrain (but still able to see the unit you want to protect at an angle or something) and turn the beam on when your more precious stuff is shot. You could also theoretically bring this on from strategic reserves to do the same later in the game. With that option open I guess you can maybe make this work (and it’s obviously considerably better against pure melee matchups) but the use remains so clunky that I’m yet to be convinced this is something I want in my armies.

Was Goonhammer somehow the only site that got it right? You tell me.

I do recall that DakkaDakka had the opinion that the Tau were going to be broken in the early 9th edition (and instead they became one of the weakest factions until their 9th ed codex).

Or that the Hammerfall Bunker was going to be OP (has anyone even played that thing?).

Admittedly sometimes it is very easy to tell what is going to be broken or worthless, but sometimes is not always.

 catbarf wrote:
[

I remember the opposite. People saw the points cost on the Reanimator and were quick to dismiss it as useless.

For example, here's Goonhammer breaking down the then-new RP rules and saying the Reanimator isn't worth it.

That sure doesn't seem like 'Veteran 40k tournament players could not tell that Canoptek Reanimators were garbage (...) on release'.

seems like i misremembered that, sorry.

But weren't the harlequins thought as "fair" on release?

 VladimirHerzog wrote:


seems like i misremembered that, sorry.

But weren't the harlequins thought as "fair" on release?

How about you tell us? It's your argument, you should be supplying us with the evidence to back it up.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:


seems like i misremembered that, sorry.

But weren't the harlequins thought as "fair" on release?

How about you tell us? It's your argument, you should be supplying us with the evidence to back it up.

so i found this article which seems to put them at 7-9/10, and nothing in there seemed to call for heavy nerfs

we even get this from Nick

I think they would be a 7 out of 10. Maybe an 8 if someone really mastered them. Capable of winning a Major, but it would be hard, and a super major is probably out of reach.

even in the goonhammer codex review, they weren't considering bringing 9x voidweavers in every lists and seemed to favor bikes over them

ccs wrote:
Walking is more difficult that spotting the crap in a GW book & coming up with a fix.

The biggest challenge is probably avoiding rumours, if you can do that for your next codex purchase I look forward to your post explaining every issue.

 vict0988 wrote:
Veteran 40k tournament players could not tell that Canoptek Reanimators were garbage or that Harlequins were OP in 9th on release.

Suuure they didn't. Next you'll try & convince us that GW makes perfectly balanced games.
I'm sorry, but anyone telling you they didn't think Voidweavers were under-costed & would soon be a problem at best simply didn't read the materiel & is now making excuses

https://www.goonhammer.com/the-codex-aeldari-competitive-roundtable/

EviscerationPlague wrote:
Are you really claiming that we wouldn't be able to tell that the Reanimator, an overly expensive model with minimal benefit, would be bad without internet chatter?

Man the GW defense is killing me.

I called it right. Tabletop Titans, Sup3rSaiy3n and Werner Born did not. All you have to do is find a thread discussing something previewed or leaked is OP and you will find an equal number of people saying that thing is underpowered. I got Ork Boyz wrong at the beginning of 9th and for the 9th edition codex. I was kind of right about Hammerhead, I predicted they would be OP, which they are and that they might still not see much use because other units could end up being more OP, which ended up being the case. I was right about Deathwing not being a big deal. That does not leave me with the flawless record it would take to say that a cursory reading will catch every flaw in a codex. I'll probably catch a couple of flaws with a cursory reading and I'll assume there are a couple of flaws which end up not being a big deal and any changes I would suggest would end up producing a bigger flaw. I also have experience writing a lot of codexes which most posters probably don't, that has also humbled me a few times.

Saying GW has a terrible playtesting system is the opposite of defending GW. Telling people not to buy codexes where possible, is the opposite of defending GW. I barely play anymore because I am pissed at Armour of Contempt and Hammer of the Emperor.