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 vict0988 wrote:

If you think it's okay to add, subtract or change weapons in a PL game then what makes it not okay in a pts game? You can just play with +50 or -50 pts if you want, tournament players aren't going to chase you down and beat you with the official hammer just because you're fiddling with the game with a pts list instead of a PL list.

You're not wrong- I mean, I was talking about friendly games, and for sure if I met up with a player from my crew for 2k matched, and if we thought either of us was at a disadvantage, neither of us would bat an eye at someone adding heavies/ specials; one or the other of us might volunteer to remove heavies/ specials as well... But the point is that it's cleaner with PL because it doesn't change the cost/value of the army.

catbarf wrote:

Andykp wrote:I think it’s a brilliant system as long as you and your opponents are all sensible

How many special weapons can I take on a unit of Scions (who can take up to 4) before it stops being sensible, and where can I appeal to if my opponent and I don't see eye-to-eye?

It's called a conversation and they're surprisingly easy to have(well not for some people on here, it's just downright morally reprehensible).

Sooooo much stupid bs that people complain about the game is solved with a simple 5min conversation. If you can't come to an amiable compromise, maybe you shouldn't play that person...

If some how by some voodoo, GW managed to balance them?

No, it would not effect the amount i play because i cant play any less then i already do.

Racerguy180 wrote:

catbarf wrote:

Andykp wrote:I think it’s a brilliant system as long as you and your opponents are all sensible

How many special weapons can I take on a unit of Scions (who can take up to 4) before it stops being sensible, and where can I appeal to if my opponent and I don't see eye-to-eye?

It's called a conversation and they're surprisingly easy to have(well not for some people on here, it's just downright morally reprehensible).

Sooooo much stupid bs that people complain about the game is solved with a simple 5min conversation. If you can't come to an amiable compromise, maybe you shouldn't play that person...

The conversation of “Hey, can I follow the rules as written, or do I need to nerf myself beyond what’s already there?” Shouldn’t need to be had.

Points ain’t perfect-but they’re better than PL.

Racerguy180 wrote:

catbarf wrote:

Andykp wrote:I think it’s a brilliant system as long as you and your opponents are all sensible

How many special weapons can I take on a unit of Scions (who can take up to 4) before it stops being sensible, and where can I appeal to if my opponent and I don't see eye-to-eye?

It's called a conversation and they're surprisingly easy to have(well not for some people on here, it's just downright morally reprehensible).

Sooooo much stupid bs that people complain about the game is solved with a simple 5min conversation. If you can't come to an amiable compromise, maybe you shouldn't play that person...

Why should I have a conversation about what models I'm allowed to use?

 catbarf wrote:
Conversely, I don't think points would be even better if we increased the cost of everything by a factor of 10 and started playing 20,000 point games- less granularity doesn't necessarily translate into worse outcomes.

Not really the point I was getting at.

I was more making the point that if you're going out of your way to add more detail to the Power Level system, why bother, as we already have points? Trying to make Power Level more details and better representative of relative effectiveness between upgrades and options would essentially be reinventing the wheel.

We have points. Use points. Don't create a sorta-kinda half-way system that uses smaller numbers to add up.

PenitentJake wrote:
It always makes me happy to see other Crusade players, and we've heard from a few. That's where I'm at- PL and Crusade is pretty much all I play.

Yeah for me it's a big problem in Crusade. For Orks, you have units like the Big Mek that have a PL as if they took a 30 point upgrade, so if you want to run a Big Mek with a Tellyport Blasta, or a Battlewagon without hardcase etc, you're shooting yourself in the foot. And then for the Ork Crusade rules, each increase to your Warlord's stats increases their PL by 1?! That's BS. It's lame as hell. Basically, some factions get better stuff for cheaper. All the problems of points.


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Racerguy180 wrote:

It's called a conversation and they're surprisingly easy to have(well not for some people on here, it's just downright morally reprehensible).

Sooooo much stupid bs that people complain about the game is solved with a simple 5min conversation. If you can't come to an amiable compromise, maybe you shouldn't play that person...

"I think spamming Leviathan warriors is overpowered."

"No, it's not, Tyranids need this to compete, and they won't be winning major tournaments."

Actual conversation I heard the week after the new Nids codex came out. A conversation doesn't solve that level of selfishness. If the points/PL system doesn't allow for a framework that allows players with different ideas of how the game is balanced to have a fair game, it's trash. And if you're requiring both players to have a designer's level of understanding of the balance and come to similar conclusions about it in order to play... that's a gak take that makes for a game that's more unplayable.

PenitentJake wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

If you think it's okay to add, subtract or change weapons in a PL game then what makes it not okay in a pts game? You can just play with +50 or -50 pts if you want, tournament players aren't going to chase you down and beat you with the official hammer just because you're fiddling with the game with a pts list instead of a PL list.

You're not wrong- I mean, I was talking about friendly games, and for sure if I met up with a player from my crew for 2k matched, and if we thought either of us was at a disadvantage, neither of us would bat an eye at someone adding heavies/ specials; one or the other of us might volunteer to remove heavies/ specials as well... But the point is that it's cleaner with PL because it doesn't change the cost/value of the army.

My point is that it does change the value of the army, let's say you have 10 grenade launchers and you replace them with 10 melta guns or 10 lasguns. You're changing the value whether your list building system acknowledges it or not, because your opponent's list will be more or less vulnerable to melta guns or lasguns compared to grenade launchers, that's the whole point of changing which weapons you have because you want your weapons to be more or less valuable so that the true values of your lists match rather than the superficial value of PL.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
Conversely, I don't think points would be even better if we increased the cost of everything by a factor of 10 and started playing 20,000 point games- less granularity doesn't necessarily translate into worse outcomes.

Not really the point I was getting at.

I was more making the point that if you're going out of your way to add more detail to the Power Level system, why bother, as we already have points? Trying to make Power Level more details and better representative of relative effectiveness between upgrades and options would essentially be reinventing the wheel.

We have points. Use points. Don't create a sorta-kinda half-way system that uses smaller numbers to add up.

I think the point of a "more detailed" Power Level system is that both Power Level and Match Play Points are failing.

Power Level is not granular enough. In far too many units, the difference between a barebones unit and a maximum upgrade unit are too big for PL to effectively handle.

Match Play Points are too granular for the designers to successfully balance. Too many units with too many upgrades that need to be perfectly balanced or we end up with only "the more efficient" options being taken. They use these units, but not those. They use these upgrades, but not those.

Maybe landing somewhere in the middle will provide enough balance without small mistakes in points values either condemning things to the trash heap or making them the new flavor of the day?

How are points "too granular"?

I refuse to play any of the editions of the game that have PL so it wouldn't affect me at all. I'd rather play 3rd and have fun than play modern 40K and be miserable/frustrated.

 G00fySmiley wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

 G00fySmiley wrote:
i would prefer power level and good balancing so that each weapon or option served a specific purpose but was not definitively better.

as an example with an ork nob in a boyz squad you can take.
free loadout
choppa (str user ap0 D1, +1 attack)and pistol

5 points
big choppa (str +5, ap-1 D2)
power stabba (str user ap-2 D1)

Sorry but in what world are those two equal?

sorry str +2, used numpad guess a hit a number up

You can also give all nobz kombi skorchas. Power klaw + kombi skorcha doubles the cost of the model.


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EviscerationPlague wrote:

Racerguy180 wrote:

catbarf wrote:

Andykp wrote:I think it’s a brilliant system as long as you and your opponents are all sensible

How many special weapons can I take on a unit of Scions (who can take up to 4) before it stops being sensible, and where can I appeal to if my opponent and I don't see eye-to-eye?

It's called a conversation and they're surprisingly easy to have(well not for some people on here, it's just downright morally reprehensible).

Sooooo much stupid bs that people complain about the game is solved with a simple 5min conversation. If you can't come to an amiable compromise, maybe you shouldn't play that person...

Why should I have a conversation about what models I'm allowed to use?

Because the game's outcome is more dependant on what people actually have and field rather than players' skills. If you seek to play a reasonably balanced game between two friends this is standard procedure. Has been since decades actually. If you seek to play against strangers and prove yourself (and your army) of couse this doesn't make any sense.

 vict0988 wrote:

My point is that it does change the value of the army, let's say you have 10 grenade launchers and you replace them with 10 melta guns or 10 lasguns. You're changing the value whether your list building system acknowledges it or not, because your opponent's list will be more or less vulnerable to melta guns or lasguns compared to grenade launchers, that's the whole point of changing which weapons you have because you want your weapons to be more or less valuable so that the true values of your lists match rather than the superficial value of PL.

But isn't this the exact reason why both points and PL can never reflect balance properly anyway? If the value of a meltagun vs a lasgun depends on your opponent's army, then you cannot, by definition, assign a value to these items until your opponent's army has been revealed. Your opponent's army is as much a variable to be considered in an item's or model's value (in PL or points or fluffballs, regardless) as the item's or model's statline, the terrain setup on the table and the mission ultimately being played.
Along those lines, trying to work out whether a meltagun should be 5 or 7 or 11 points is farcical, isn't it? As such, I believe the idea already floated here, and somewhat similar to what the latest iteration of Apocalypse uses, actually does the job pretty well. A squad of bare-bones troops units will almost universally be less tactically flexible than one with a heavy or special weapon - so add +1 fluffballs per extra gun. Remove the option to change unit sizes but allow units that share the same datasheet to be merged into bigger blobs on the table (hang on, wasn't there a system out there that does just that ). Seems at least to provide a sensible baseline.

 alextroy wrote:
Match Play Points are too granular for the designers to successfully balance. Too many units with too many upgrades that need to be perfectly balanced or we end up with only "the more efficient" options being taken. They use these units, but not those. They use these upgrades, but not those.

This isn't a failing of matched play points, though. This is option overflow. If it's impossible to distinguish options in terms of value, because they all fill the same niche, then the options are redundant. It's awesome to have a host of different options from a modelling perspective, but once they're on the table, do they really all need to have a different statline for the game to be fun? OK, that's a silly question, because what makes a game fun lies in the eye of the beholder.

In terms of answering the OP's question, I'll play whenever I get the chance, PL or points. For me, the trick is in not expecting the game to be balanced.

 alextroy wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
Conversely, I don't think points would be even better if we increased the cost of everything by a factor of 10 and started playing 20,000 point games- less granularity doesn't necessarily translate into worse outcomes.

Not really the point I was getting at.

I was more making the point that if you're going out of your way to add more detail to the Power Level system, why bother, as we already have points? Trying to make Power Level more details and better representative of relative effectiveness between upgrades and options would essentially be reinventing the wheel.

We have points. Use points. Don't create a sorta-kinda half-way system that uses smaller numbers to add up.

I think the point of a "more detailed" Power Level system is that both Power Level and Match Play Points are failing.

Power Level is not granular enough. In far too many units, the difference between a barebones unit and a maximum upgrade unit are too big for PL to effectively handle.

Match Play Points are too granular for the designers to successfully balance. Too many units with too many upgrades that need to be perfectly balanced or we end up with only "the more efficient" options being taken. They use these units, but not those. They use these upgrades, but not those.

Maybe landing somewhere in the middle will provide enough balance without small mistakes in points values either condemning things to the trash heap or making them the new flavor of the day?

The problems you're talking about aren't really to do with the granularity of the system. You're simply highlighting the inability of the designers to balance the game. Whether that's because of inadequate playtesting, executive meddling, incompetence or some other problem, doesn't really matter. Tinkering with the points system won't fix a core problem with the design process. The way the issues manifest will be different depending on the system chose, but I don't think you can say one is better or worse than another in terms of how that inability to balance is reflected in the finished product.

Slipspace wrote:

 alextroy wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
Conversely, I don't think points would be even better if we increased the cost of everything by a factor of 10 and started playing 20,000 point games- less granularity doesn't necessarily translate into worse outcomes.

Not really the point I was getting at.

I was more making the point that if you're going out of your way to add more detail to the Power Level system, why bother, as we already have points? Trying to make Power Level more details and better representative of relative effectiveness between upgrades and options would essentially be reinventing the wheel.

We have points. Use points. Don't create a sorta-kinda half-way system that uses smaller numbers to add up.

I think the point of a "more detailed" Power Level system is that both Power Level and Match Play Points are failing.

Power Level is not granular enough. In far too many units, the difference between a barebones unit and a maximum upgrade unit are too big for PL to effectively handle.

Match Play Points are too granular for the designers to successfully balance. Too many units with too many upgrades that need to be perfectly balanced or we end up with only "the more efficient" options being taken. They use these units, but not those. They use these upgrades, but not those.

Maybe landing somewhere in the middle will provide enough balance without small mistakes in points values either condemning things to the trash heap or making them the new flavor of the day?

The problems you're talking about aren't really to do with the granularity of the system. You're simply highlighting the inability of the designers to balance the game. Whether that's because of inadequate playtesting, executive meddling, incompetence or some other problem, doesn't really matter. Tinkering with the points system won't fix a core problem with the design process. The way the issues manifest will be different depending on the system chose, but I don't think you can say one is better or worse than another in terms of how that inability to balance is reflected in the finished product.

Slipspace is correct in what he says but its not the full story either..in addition to... shal we say 'design politics' we also have the fundamentally unsolvable issue of assigning a single universal numeric value to each 'thing' to denote its value. The issue is the value is completely changed by context. 'How much should a marine with a meltagun cost' will give you a different answer based on what you're facing, who has it and a while host of other variables.

And until points values are self-mutating to account for these, they will never be 'accurate' - and lets not confuse 'just get the average cost' for accurate cost. Because if you're going into a game and your foundational building blocks are fundamentally inaccurate you will always have a lack of balance stemming from this - changing the numbers and/or increasing/decreasing the granularity wont solve anything, itll.just shift the imbalance around somewhwre else.

this is why a lot of solutions from people involved the 'negotiation phase' or the 'five minute chat' etc. Which isn't ideal but in a real world scenario with someone who is likeminded its an acceptable bodge.

Deadnight wrote:
Slipspace is correct in what he says but its not the full story either..in addition to... shal we say 'design politics' we also have the fundamentally unsolvable issue of assigning a single universal numeric value to each 'thing' to denote its value. The issue is the value is completely changed by context. 'How much should a marine with a meltagun cost' will give you a different answer based on what you're facing, who has it and a while host of other variables.

And until points values are self-mutating to account for these, they will never be 'accurate' - and lets not confuse 'just get the average cost' for accurate cost. Because if you're going into a game and your foundational building blocks are fundamentally inaccurate you will always have a lack of balance stemming from this - changing the numbers and/or increasing/decreasing the granularity wont solve anything, itll.just shift the imbalance around somewhwre else.

this is why a lot of solutions from people involved the 'negotiation phase' or the 'five minute chat' etc. Which isn't ideal but in a real world scenario with someone who is likeminded its an acceptable bodge.

I don't think this is right. It works on the assumption that you want every possible list to be "balanced" against every other possible list. If I bring an army consisting of nothing but melta guns - and you bring an army of nothing but grots - its not that the melta guns are suddenly overcosted while grots are undercosted. We both made a skewed list - knowing that we'd have good games and bad games. Points are balanced across a certain aggregate of all points - which should, hopefully, (although possibly not practically) encourage a TAC tendency over a skew.

Obviously such skews can be avoided with a 5 minute conversation. You can also avoid "I'm bringing Leviathan Tyranids, yes its a copy of that list which won three majors at the weekend, what of it? Oh you are bringing Guard? Well this is likely to be quite one-sided then."

But you are still in the situation because one faction is overpowered and the other is underpowered.

The concern for PL is that the granularity is too low because balance isn't *that* bad. Generally speaking the issues in the game are caused by a unit which should be 100 points only being 85-90 - or 110-115 - and that if you replicate this across 2k points you can get a clear advantage or disadvantage. Sometimes you get a Voidweaver which needs a near 50% hike - but its not that common. But the difference between 90/100/110 in PL is kind of blurred. Are they all just 5? Or is it 4, 5, 6? In which case the 6 is really going to suck against the 4 - as for 12 PL, I'm getting 270 points compared to your 220?

I don't play PL - and so maybe for those who do this just isn't an issue. But it feels like it would become an issue if GW made it the only way to play.

@Deadnight is correct, but in a practical sense, also incorrect. It's not possible to get a fully accurate cost for a given unit, weapon, upgrade etc. The power of any of those will vary depending on scenario, opponent and so on.

However, that doesn't mean you can't have a system that is better than we have now, nor does it mean you can't have a system that is, for practical purposes, close to accurate. One thing you may need to do to achieve that is alter the parameters of the game to reduce things like skew or manage imbalance in scenarios.

To put it another way, Voidweavers were far too cheap at their original cost, regardless of any outside factors, skew etc. They are much less powerful at their new cost and arguably more balanced as a result. Even if we accept that GW may have gone too far with the points increase for Voidweavers, there exists a cost between their original one and new one where they would be more balanced and fair. That's what the designers should be aiming for.

Tyel wrote:
I don't think this is right. It works on the assumption that you want every possible list to be "balanced" against every other possible list.

I thought the point was to have balanced lists for fair games?

Tyel wrote:
If I bring an army consisting of nothing but melta guns - and you bring an army of nothing but grots - its not that the melta guns are suddenly overcosted while grots are undercosted. We both made a skewed list - knowing that we'd have good games and bad games.

You've actually proved my point.

An army of models armed with meltaguns will be worth something different against an army of grots as it would be against a tank horde.

Tyel wrote:
Points are balanced across a certain aggregate of all points - which should, hopefully, (although possibly not practically) encourage a TAC tendency over a skew.

Points are balanced very very poorly[/u] when you cost them across an aggregate of scenarios. That's the whole point.

Like I said, the average is absolutely not the same thing as the accurate. And straight away you're going into a scenario where your foundational building blocks are out of whack.

Slipspace wrote:@Deadnight is correct, but in a practical sense, also incorrect. It's not possible to get a fully accurate cost for a given unit, weapon, upgrade etc. The power of any of those will vary depending on scenario, opponent and so on.

How?

Slipspace wrote:

However, that doesn't mean you can't have a system that is better than we have now, nor does it mean you can't have a system that is, for practical purposes, close to accurate. One thing you may need to do to achieve that is alter the parameters of the game to reduce things like skew or manage imbalance in scenarios.

.

I don't disagree on the system could be better, but this often also isn't very rewarding - it often leads to the vagueness of 'how much better is good enough' and the answer of what is 'acceptable' is typically so close to unachievable as to be impractical. I mean, if half a dozen things were tightened up would that be accepted or would people just continue to complain? Honestly, with how toxic some gamers can be, I can understand why at times the writers really can't be bothered - there is no 'winning' to be had.

The other thing you touch on is an interesting area though..ive raised it as a point myself previously and you are not wrong - if you narrow the scale and scope and reduce the variables in scenarios, list construction and faction rosters balance becomes more achievable. Its not a wrong approach but there is a price to be paid.
As an example of scale/scope, Infinity might be easier to balance than 40k for example since in 40k terms its the equivalent of a dozen Guardsmen on each side with autoguns and flak armour. It works because it keeps to this scale and scope. Now expand the scale and scope of infinity to cover everything from bikers armed with chains to city stomping robots and I suspect the 'better balance' will swiftly go out the window.
Other things that help are reducing the roster sizes (a game with 2 factions each of 2 units will be easier to balance) but I don't think you will endear yourself to many people by invalidating swathes of the game. :p and things like reducing choice and army building options - but again you won't endear yourself to a lit of people if they wake up and find their armies can't be fielded anymore.

It's almost better to burn it to the ground and start again with a small game and build organically from there. Not that this is really viable for 40k/gw either...

There is also the problem of "being finished."

GW *has* to add options. They have to add factions. They have to add campaign books, and new models with new data sheets.

How would they make their money otherwise?

I mean, you wouldn't want them like Too Fat Lardies, publishing some damn good rules and living comfortably on the income

 Blackie wrote:

Because the game's outcome is more dependant on what people actually have and field rather than players' skills. If you seek to play a reasonably balanced game between two friends this is standard procedure. Has been since decades actually. If you seek to play against strangers and prove yourself (and your army) of couse this doesn't make any sense.

This is where the issue of balance really comes into play. In a properly balanced system, X points of an army should be equally effective against X points of anything else. Fundamentally, spamming units should not provide an inherent advantage over balanced lists but the game system as it stands does not support this. A balanced list will often struggle as every weapon in the opponent's army will have a viable target. Spamming armoured units is a viable way to overload your opponent's anti-tank weapons and similarly spamming hordes of infantry can achieve the same effect.

Deadnight wrote:
Points are balanced very very poorly[/u] when you cost them across an aggregate of scenarios. That's the whole point.

Like I said, the average is absolutely not the same thing as the accurate. And straight away you're going into a scenario where your foundational building blocks are out of whack.

I don't think points are poor when you look at an aggregate of scenarios. They are balanced very poorly when GW goes "sure, we think a Tyranid Warrior with T5 and 3 wounds, a 3 shot assault 24" S5 AP-2 gun and 4 S7 AP-2 2 damage attacks should cost 25 points". This isn't because Tyranid Warriors are somehow a skew into something - but because this is clearly bonkers when you compare said warriors to other units in the game. Look at say Heavy Intercessors costing 28 points. Or Intercessors at 20 points. Or Skorpekh Destroyers at 30 points. The overwhelmingly majority of datasheets.

You can always argue it both ways - i.e. "no, Tyranid Warriors are fine - its that everything else is too expensive". But its this gap which is the imbalance. GW may have imagined that lots of 3 damage weapons would keep them in check - but unfortunately they then dolled our Transhuman & invuls to protect them from this. The result is a unit which is too good. (And there are plenty of other examples in the Tyranid book).

There seems this pervasive idea that balance is hard/impossible, because you have complicated interplay between hordes, elites, tanks, flyers etc. But this isn't the case in todays' 40k - and at least from memory, has rarely, if ever been the case in 40k. (You can argue that say Flyers were broken on introduction, because plenty of other armies didn't have them - and also didn't have anything that specifically countered them - but they've kind of been a mess for 10+ years.)
If GW could decide "a horde is X points, an elite is Y points" etc - and keep it consistent, you might get those interaction issues. But they have never done that. You always have good and bad types of every unit - because they can't keep themselves consistent. Hence why the above Tyranid Warriors are considered OP, but no one mentions Heavy Intercessors at all. The balance issue consequently is always that someone is paying 100 points for X - and someone else is paying 100 points for Y. But Y is clearly better than X. And so instead of being 100 points, it should be say 120~ points. The bigger the gap, the bigger the imbalance.

Unsurprisingly, someone playing with "effectively" 2400~ points will tend to have a major advantage over someone with 2000 points. And this will in turn be identified in win% and tournament placings. This is the balance we are concerned about - and what GW could easily fix.

 Karhedron wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

Because the game's outcome is more dependant on what people actually have and field rather than players' skills. If you seek to play a reasonably balanced game between two friends this is standard procedure. Has been since decades actually. If you seek to play against strangers and prove yourself (and your army) of couse this doesn't make any sense.

This is where the issue of balance really comes into play. In a properly balanced system, X points of an army should be equally effective against X points of anything else. Fundamentally, spamming units should not provide an inherent advantage over balanced lists but the game system as it stands does not support this. A balanced list will often struggle as every weapon in the opponent's army will have a viable target. Spamming armoured units is a viable way to overload your opponent's anti-tank weapons and similarly spamming hordes of infantry can achieve the same effect.

I don't think X points of army should be equally effective against X points of anything else, since deciding to skew is a feature not a bug. Otherwise armies have to be pretty similar to each other or they have to have very few units and options so that only one or two lists archetypes exist for each faction. I think the goal should be based around two different levels of balance: faction X vs faction Y considering all the possible combinations, which is competitive gaming for people who are willing to chase the flavour of the month and update their armies very frequently, and random/average collection of faction X vs random/average collection of faction Y.

If we assume that it's possible (and fun) to field a footslogging ork horde army or a speed freaks ones with all the possible shades, compromises and mixes up between the archetypes then it's flat out impossible to achieve something like "X points of army should be equally effective against X points of anything else". A tank based AM army with 10+ tanks can't possibly perform equally well against any kind of opponents, etc...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
There is also the problem of "being finished."

GW *has* to add options. They have to add factions. They have to add campaign books, and new models with new data sheets.

How would they make their money otherwise?

Simply by giving the same amount of love to each faction. I'd buy something like 7-8 complete different faction if I had the money/space, even if GW didn't release anything since 2014. The catalogue would still be pretty massive. To make their money they could encourage people to switch to new factions rather than forcing them to keep up with updated rules or buy models they don't need. What I certainly don't and won't do is continuing to pay a lot of money on collections I already consider complete, just to have all the possible rules I may use and all the units variants.

Take the recent orks releases, most of them were useless. Beastsnaggas are basically just boyz and we already had a psyker, multiple kinds of warbosses, multiple kinds of wagons and a dok, while the other snagga character still doesn't have any role and no one takes him. The only units that could have some purpose were the three squigriders units: warboss, nob and regular dudes. But most of the new datasheets didn't add anything to the ork roster, they're just repetitions of stuff that was already there, maybe just basically improved just to make them more appealing.

Snugiraffe wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

My point is that it does change the value of the army, let's say you have 10 grenade launchers and you replace them with 10 melta guns or 10 lasguns. You're changing the value whether your list building system acknowledges it or not, because your opponent's list will be more or less vulnerable to melta guns or lasguns compared to grenade launchers, that's the whole point of changing which weapons you have because you want your weapons to be more or less valuable so that the true values of your lists match rather than the superficial value of PL.

But isn't this the exact reason why both points and PL can never reflect balance properly anyway?

I think there is a difference between properly and perfectly. I don't think PL can reflect balance properly, I do think pts can.

Along those lines, trying to work out whether a meltagun should be 5 or 7 or 11 points is farcical, isn't it?

If it didn't matter every competitive player would always take the weapon that does the most damage on every available model.

 alextroy wrote:
Match Play Points are too granular for the designers to successfully balance. Too many units with too many upgrades that need to be perfectly balanced or we end up with only "the more efficient" options being taken. They use these units, but not those. They use these upgrades, but not those.

This isn't a failing of matched play points, though. This is option overflow. If it's impossible to distinguish options in terms of value, because they all fill the same niche, then the options are redundant. It's awesome to have a host of different options from a modelling perspective, but once they're on the table, do they really all need to have a different statline for the game to be fun? OK, that's a silly question, because what makes a game fun lies in the eye of the beholder.

The funny thing is that if you don't have points to distinguish between thunder hammers and chainswords people will always take the thunder hammer, so the problem is magnified in PL games. You can try to give chainswords 5 extra attacks and power swords 2 extra attacks but there will always be a weapon that is best for your army. With points you can just allow a thunder hammer to be more badass than a chainsword and allow people to pay a few more points to upgrade their weapon.

I don't think there is a huge option overflow, whether a unit has gauss or tesla makes a pretty big difference to how I use it on the table and how effective it is against various units. Power weapons should be consolidated for modelling reasons though.

Racerguy180 wrote:

catbarf wrote:

Andykp wrote:I think it’s a brilliant system as long as you and your opponents are all sensible

How many special weapons can I take on a unit of Scions (who can take up to 4) before it stops being sensible, and where can I appeal to if my opponent and I don't see eye-to-eye?

It's called a conversation and they're surprisingly easy to have(well not for some people on here, it's just downright morally reprehensible).

Sooooo much stupid bs that people complain about the game is solved with a simple 5min conversation. If you can't come to an amiable compromise, maybe you shouldn't play that person...

'I've taken four special weapons on every Scion squad because they're elite special forces troopers that are heavily equipped for each mission.'
'Well I think that's unreasonable because they couldn't take four weapons in prior editions, and you're not paying extra for them.'
'I don't have any extra models, though.'

Cool, so either one player gets to impose their idea of what's reasonable and the other player resents it, or I guess we just won't play 40K today.

Or maybe it goes like-

'Hey, can you drop the special weapons on your Guardsmen to make it fair?'
'What? Dude, you're playing Drukhari.'
'Yeah, but they suck ever since they got nerfed, and Guard just got a major buff.'

Weird ideas of balance? It's more likely than you think, and tricky to resolve without hurt feelings- it's easy to play rules-as-written and gripe about far-away GW's balance, but when you're negotiating with your opponent about balancing the game, now it's personal.

I swear, half the people who pull the 'just have a conversation' card sound like they have never actually had a conversation before a pick-up game, because they seem to have no idea how much disagreement there can be on what's fair, what's reasonable, what's balanced, or what's OP. Let alone what a minefield it is to resolve in a hobby that, let's face it, isn't entirely composed of socially well-adjusted people to begin with.

You shouldn't need to be on the exact same page as a stranger regarding balance and fluff, or come to some uneasy compromise, just to play the game. No other game I play requires this sort of co-creation.

H.B.M.C. wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
Conversely, I don't think points would be even better if we increased the cost of everything by a factor of 10 and started playing 20,000 point games- less granularity doesn't necessarily translate into worse outcomes.

Not really the point I was getting at.

I was more making the point that if you're going out of your way to add more detail to the Power Level system, why bother, as we already have points? Trying to make Power Level more details and better representative of relative effectiveness between upgrades and options would essentially be reinventing the wheel.

We have points. Use points. Don't create a sorta-kinda half-way system that uses smaller numbers to add up.

My point was that granularity is only useful if it's being used effectively. When GW sets rules like making all special weapons costing 5pts, or all special weapons costing no points, that granularity isn't being used and it might as well be a coarser points system to start with.

I don't really care if the end result is a PL system that includes wargear, or a points system that sets appropriate costs for every upgrade, or a revised/hybrid system, just so long as it works well and is maximally usable.

 catbarf wrote:


I swear, half the people who pull the 'just have a conversation' card sound like they have never actually had a conversation before a pick-up game, because they seem to have no idea how much disagreement there can be on what's fair, what's reasonable, what's balanced, or what's OP. Let alone what a minefield it is to resolve in a hobby that, let's face it, isn't entirely composed of socially well-adjusted people to begin with.

i guess i've been lucky so far

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
So, cards on the table. Would anyone actually have a marked decrease in play if 40k went full Power Levels and abandoned points entirely? Because I'll be honest, I don't think it would stop the competitive scene, and frankly, that's the only leg propping up this horse these days. It won't affect the painters, or the modelers, or the fluffers, only the hard-core enthusiasts that still cling to points as the saving balance grace of 40k.

I'm not making a judgment for or against PL, only that GW is showing that it's no longer really relavent to success of a faction, and if that's true, it's not inherently tied to balance. I know I am glossing over a LOT of minutia here, but do you honestly see GW just saying everything is Free, like they appear to be doing with Guard, for EVERY faction? No. It would only work for a very few factions. Factions where there aren't a great deal of options or point flux therein. Custodes could go FULL power level tomorrow and not notice. Guard can as well, if they bake it into the cost of the squads. Space Marines, being the Hyper generalist. ultra customizable bois, would be more difficult. And herein lays what I see as the future:

GW will Legends all non-primaris units that aren't infantry. Infantry will be made to be basically stock standard copies of Primaris, IE Terminators would become Gravis Clones. Scouts would become Infiltrators. Standard squads would become their closest primaris option. And just delete half the weapon options. You get Plasma, HBs, and the varying Bolt rifles. That's basically it. They would have to legends all the old vehicles as well.

I haven't tried out the PL in 40K for 9th edition. I also am unsure if I used it in 8th, most of the folks that play in my area are obsessed with the "balance" of points even though I don't think points are all that balanced myself. But I would be very much interested in it. The small group of folks who do use it play by a couple of added house rules, stuff like "Don't be a WAAC dick" and use upgrades sparingly, not spamly (is that a word?).

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
There is also the problem of "being finished."

GW *has* to add options. They have to add factions. They have to add campaign books, and new models with new data sheets.

People that play Marines bought up a lot of the Mk3-4 kits ON TOP of the HH board games. They don't have different rules last I checked.
Alternative models to the default SELL, period. If GW remade Catachan, y'all would buy it up and their Infantry rules aren't necessarily different.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Karhedron wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

Because the game's outcome is more dependant on what people actually have and field rather than players' skills. If you seek to play a reasonably balanced game between two friends this is standard procedure. Has been since decades actually. If you seek to play against strangers and prove yourself (and your army) of couse this doesn't make any sense.

This is where the issue of balance really comes into play. In a properly balanced system, X points of an army should be equally effective against X points of anything else. Fundamentally, spamming units should not provide an inherent advantage over balanced lists but the game system as it stands does not support this. A balanced list will often struggle as every weapon in the opponent's army will have a viable target. Spamming armoured units is a viable way to overload your opponent's anti-tank weapons and similarly spamming hordes of infantry can achieve the same effect.

One army's TAC list should not be, by default, more powerful than another army's TAC list. This isn't a difficult concept to grasp.

 Blackie wrote:
Because the game's outcome is more dependant on what people actually have and field rather than players' skills. If you seek to play a reasonably balanced game between two friends this is standard procedure. Has been since decades actually. If you seek to play against strangers and prove yourself (and your army) of couse this doesn't make any sense.

Is it? Because I usually see players who complain constantly about WAAC trying to get the stuff that can beat their army nerfed or disallowed. And say you "balance" a game between two friends, and one player stomps the other. Is that because one player had a better plan and played on the table, or just that, as amateur balancers, the players involved failed to balance things?

 catbarf wrote:

Andykp wrote:I think it’s a brilliant system as long as you and your opponents are all sensible

How many special weapons can I take on a unit of Scions (who can take up to 4) before it stops being sensible, and where can I appeal to if my opponent and I don't see eye-to-eye?

I mean, the caveat 'it works as long as you're sensible' is really just offloading the burden of balancing the game from the developer onto the players, and then throwing in a layer of undeserved moral judgment to boot (because the implication is if you can't figure it out on your own, you're not being sensible).

H.B.M.C. wrote:Again, at which point you're just doing more different-er points, but with less granularity, and less accuracy... so why bother?

Conversely, I don't think points would be even better if we increased the cost of everything by a factor of 10 and started playing 20,000 point games- less granularity doesn't necessarily translate into worse outcomes.

I don't regularly use PL, but given how GW has been approaching upgrades thus far (embracing sidegrades and baking wargear into unit costs), I would be okay with PL becoming the less-granular points system that it could be but for lack of representing wargear.

Wasn't there a bit of a discussion in 8th with Cultists, Guardsmen, and a few others all sitting at around 5 points per model and how it was a shame you couldn't make them 4.5 or 5.5? Going to 4,000 points (doubling everything) would probably give the right amount of granularity to make the game better. The caveat being that the current awful general balance by GW using points or PL means it wouldn't be worth the bother for now.

Honestly, it's hard to see the real difference between PL and points. You have to use math to add to a certain agreed upon level only to find out that GW doesn't understand how to balance their forces with either system.