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PenitentJake 805449 11378839 wrote:

Nope. It usually goes something like this:

Player 1: Wow, you brought a lot of armour- I'm not sure I've got enough anti-tank to give you an interesting game.

Player 2: Yeah, if I had the rest of my collection here, I'd probably swap a unit or two.

Player 1: I brought a few extra heavy weapons- mind if I substitute them into a few of my TAC squads to give me a fighting chance?

... And then, you have to have discussions about points if that's what you're using- IE whether or not you're going to make the guy adjust his entire army in order to accommodate the extra cost of the heavy weapons. If you happen to be playing PL, you can skip that part of the conversation because swapping the gear doesn't change costs.

It only goes like that with veteran players or people who collect more then 2000pts of an army. For new players what they have is what they have. And even for people who play longer then an edition, the different stuff they have is often models which are illegal or outright bad this edition, and no amount of talking can fix their army being bad, if they were to use them.


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nou 805449 11379231 wrote:

For any given game, narrative players only have to balance two particular lists, consisting of a handful of entries each, in a specific context of a known scenario and terrain layout.

On the other hand, GW is expected to balance thousands of entries for dozens of factions in the context of any blind draw of any two lists, any mission and a whole scope of terrain layouts, from planet bowling ball to a cluttered maze of a multilevel hive or dense jungle.

I see a tiny bit of difference in difficulty here

No they aren't. Unless maybe someone is in his first week of playing and collecting. What people would like to have is for each codex to have one build which is competent actualy worth spending money on, and which isn't pushed in the illegality or being bottom tier after 3 months.

Karol wrote:

PenitentJake 805449 11378839 wrote:

Nope. It usually goes something like this:

Player 1: Wow, you brought a lot of armour- I'm not sure I've got enough anti-tank to give you an interesting game.

Player 2: Yeah, if I had the rest of my collection here, I'd probably swap a unit or two.

Player 1: I brought a few extra heavy weapons- mind if I substitute them into a few of my TAC squads to give me a fighting chance?

... And then, you have to have discussions about points if that's what you're using- IE whether or not you're going to make the guy adjust his entire army in order to accommodate the extra cost of the heavy weapons. If you happen to be playing PL, you can skip that part of the conversation because swapping the gear doesn't change costs.

It only goes like that with veteran players or people who collect more then 2000pts of an army. For new players what they have is what they have. And even for people who play longer then an edition, the different stuff they have is often models which are illegal or outright bad this edition, and no amount of talking can fix their army being bad, if they were to use them.

There's a thing, called community houserules, of course that requires a community that likes to cooperate.-

Cooperation is stuff like. We treat all terrain X as Y, or this bases which have forests on them don't actualy have to have actual trees on them but instead are rather treated like buildings or ruins. Being required to do a two army analyz, comparation of their power, then taking in to account scenarios and the models accesible to the players, followed by rewriting of the rules to make the game somehow balanced and funfor both of them is not cooperation. that is like writing a screen play for a movie or writing up rules for your own game.
And all those actions still require stuff like both players always agreing in to end, having enough knowladage of the game, so the changes done actually do work and make the game better.
And the time to do those things is not counted. And it works only on a player per player basis, so any community switch or playing somewhere else would mean it would no longer work.

Karol wrote:
that is like writing a screen play for a movie

Congratulations, you have found out what narrative play is

Blackie wrote:That's why I don't think it's realistic to expect a game in which it doesn't matter what people bring and have a balanced game anyway. Trying to nullify a large chunk of the opponent's list by surprising him with an extreme force has always been a feature. And something most players love, especially when it comes to blind games against random players.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this is only an issue because of how 40K handles listbuilding. We're seeing more and more games nowadays incorporate force-composition systems that allow some reaction to what your opponent brings, rather than the classic wargame system of writing an army list on paper in secret with no relevance whatsoever to who you're fighting or what terrain you're fighting on. I'm not sure it's fair to characterize surprise-skew as a desirable feature; being on the receiving end certainly sucks.

A lot about 40K's issues with skew, and having to make every choice equally valid in a vacuum (or worse, in a meta), could be at least somewhat alleviated by providing some built-in capability to choose assets that counter your opponent or fit the scenario. Of course that brings us back to not wanting to have to own/bring more than 2000pts of models to play a 2000pt game... but this thread is already talking about balancing the game yourself by swapping around wargear and units, so we're already there anyways.

Andykp wrote:I am a narrative gamer but understand some of them may prefer more balance, like yourself. But we shouldn’t all have to want the same thing. No ideas have to “die”.

This quest for balance has only damaged the game in my opinion. It applies restrictions and leads to developer removing character full rules. I prefer not to go that way. But again, this is only my opinion.

Sure, but the context of this thread is points vs PL. The options are the same, it's the accounting that differs; we're talking about different ways to build a force and the impact it has on balance.

In any case, there are presently ways to improve the balance without stripping options out of the game. I don't think it's going to hurt anyone's enjoyment of characterful rules if grenade launchers were buffed to be a reasonably equal choice to the other special weapons, or just cheaper, for example.

 catbarf wrote:

Blackie wrote:That's why I don't think it's realistic to expect a game in which it doesn't matter what people bring and have a balanced game anyway. Trying to nullify a large chunk of the opponent's list by surprising him with an extreme force has always been a feature. And something most players love, especially when it comes to blind games against random players.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this is only an issue because of how 40K handles listbuilding. We're seeing more and more games nowadays incorporate force-composition systems that allow some reaction to what your opponent brings, rather than the classic wargame system of writing an army list on paper in secret with no relevance whatsoever to who you're fighting or what terrain you're fighting on.

Which systems are those?
Also, wouldn't this end up in a contest of who can bring the most counters, and if a player doesn't have a counter with him at that moment he's screwed?

 catbarf wrote:

Blackie wrote:That's why I don't think it's realistic to expect a game in which it doesn't matter what people bring and have a balanced game anyway. Trying to nullify a large chunk of the opponent's list by surprising him with an extreme force has always been a feature. And something most players love, especially when it comes to blind games against random players.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this is only an issue because of how 40K handles listbuilding. We're seeing more and more games nowadays incorporate force-composition systems that allow some reaction to what your opponent brings, rather than the classic wargame system of writing an army list on paper in secret with no relevance whatsoever to who you're fighting or what terrain you're fighting on. I'm not sure it's fair to characterize surprise-skew as a desirable feature; being on the receiving end certainly sucks.

A lot about 40K's issues with skew, and having to make every choice equally valid in a vacuum (or worse, in a meta), could be at least somewhat alleviated by providing some built-in capability to choose assets that counter your opponent or fit the scenario. Of course that brings us back to not wanting to have to own/bring more than 2000pts of models to play a 2000pt game... but this thread is already talking about balancing the game yourself by swapping around wargear and units, so we're already there anyways.

Andykp wrote:I am a narrative gamer but understand some of them may prefer more balance, like yourself. But we shouldn’t all have to want the same thing. No ideas have to “die”.

This quest for balance has only damaged the game in my opinion. It applies restrictions and leads to developer removing character full rules. I prefer not to go that way. But again, this is only my opinion.

Sure, but the context of this thread is points vs PL. The options are the same, it's the accounting that differs; we're talking about different ways to build a force and the impact it has on balance.

In any case, there are presently ways to improve the balance without stripping options out of the game. I don't think it's going to hurt anyone's enjoyment of characterful rules if grenade launchers were buffed to be a reasonably equal choice to the other special weapons, or just cheaper, for example.

I have no issues with “reasonable” minor changes like that. I was more thinking of the sweeping balance changes they make like limiting the number of certain units or flyers, removing movement values from the game, you, the big changes they make.

It shouldn’t always be a race to the top, don’t make Grenade launchers better, make each other weapon only good at its special role. Meltaguns fry tanks up close. They should be crap at anything else, flamers likewise with infantry. The Grenade launcher has always been a jack of all trades but as other stuff has gotten tougher it’s stayed the same. Or just leave it be, I still have Grenade launchers on all my guard squads, with las cannons, because that is how a guard squad is armed.

Grenade launchers should really have some sort of disruption rule. It should deal decent damage to light infantry, but it should also apply a debuff to represent infantry ducking for cover.
Like pinning.
In computer games like Dawn of War or the UFO series explosives have a knockdown effect. Something simulating that might be interesting.
That way it can still be weak, but you'll want to have a couple of them for their utility.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 catbarf wrote:

Blackie wrote:That's why I don't think it's realistic to expect a game in which it doesn't matter what people bring and have a balanced game anyway. Trying to nullify a large chunk of the opponent's list by surprising him with an extreme force has always been a feature. And something most players love, especially when it comes to blind games against random players.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this is only an issue because of how 40K handles listbuilding. We're seeing more and more games nowadays incorporate force-composition systems that allow some reaction to what your opponent brings, rather than the classic wargame system of writing an army list on paper in secret with no relevance whatsoever to who you're fighting or what terrain you're fighting on.

Which systems are those?
Also, wouldn't this end up in a contest of who can bring the most counters, and if a player doesn't have a counter with him at that moment he's screwed?

Chain of Command comes to mind.

You choose your support (how to spend your "points" since your core platoon is fixed and known to your opponent) AFTER the mission is determined and the map/terrain is seen. You know what most of your opponent's combat power is (core platoons are fixed) and what your role is (attacker/defender) and your plan to execute it based on the map locations that are important.

And yeah, it does end up in a race to bring "the most counters", and since everything counters something or has a counter itself, you end up with a nice, mixed, combined arms list.

There is more nuance to it than "counterpicking" as well, due to unique abilities of different unit types (e.g. armored cars have major advantages and disadvantages relative to tracked tanks in different terrains, but since you see the map before you make your choice, it isn't just a guess).

Jidmah wrote:

Karol wrote:
that is like writing a screen play for a movie

Congratulations, you have found out what narrative play is

I spit out my drink when I read that...have an exalt!

 Jidmah wrote:

Karol wrote:
that is like writing a screen play for a movie

Congratulations, you have found out what narrative play is

Aint nothing narrative about the core game though.

CthuluIsSpy wrote:Which systems are those?
Also, wouldn't this end up in a contest of who can bring the most counters, and if a player doesn't have a counter with him at that moment he's screwed?

Chain of Command like Unit said is a good example. Your starting force is your choice of platoon, which has a certain rating. After the mission is chosen, the scenario combined with the difference in rating between the two platoons determines how many support assets each player has available. Sure, if your opponent decides to bring a tank and you didn't bring any AT choices with you for some reason, you may have a problem. But it's generally okay if you bring panzerschreck teams because you don't have an anti-tank gun, so it isn't strictly necessary to own and bring one of everything, and there are still ways to deal with tanks even if you don't have an ideal counter.

I haven't found that the game turns into a contest where whoever can out-counter the other wins, partly because both players have a mix of assets (maybe you can bring more AT guns than I have tanks, but if my infantry kill the AT guns first, it won't matter) and partly because the choices on the table matter a lot more than force composition.

Another example is Warcaster: Neo-Mechanika, where your only fixed starting unit is your warcaster. While you can have a bunch of units in your force, you only start with a few (of your choice) and bring more in as you go. If a unit is destroyed, it can be brought back later the same way.

So imagine a 40K game where you pick a 2000pt list, but you only start with 500pts on the field, and you can bring in some number of points' worth from your reserve- including units that have already been destroyed- each turn. An army that goes all-in on skew is going to be a one trick pony, while one with a more diverse set of units and capabilities can bring in the hard-counters ASAP and even recycle them if they get destroyed, and simply not field the units that are inappropriate to the matchup.

Maybe I'm being overly optimistic but I think something like that would really take the sting out of skew lists, allow for more variety in terrain and objectives without breaking the game, and give some utility to units and weapons that might have situational uses but currently don't see play.

Grenade launchers might get a new profile in 9th, who knows. But I feel like Grenade launchers should be "free" to a squad, as it's the base weapon. Anything else than that costs points. But who cares.

For the purposes of the game actually being played, what affect would this have on the competitive tournament scene? Would it create diversity, or force people into WAAC lists? Would this promote more Marine Lists at top tables, or would it not even shift the meta?

Hecaton wrote:
Your conversation above is entirely farcical, and doesn't apply to 40k - if someone showed up with a Crusher Stampede Tyranid list (previous to the most recent codex), and his opponent was playing Guard, the solution isn't to "take more heavy weapons" - it's to play a different codex. Furthermore, in the actual situation I described above, the codex had only just come out - why should the players have the responsibility of rebalancing the game within a few days of a codex release to get a balanced game or else be blamed? You need to put the fault on the right entity, GW.

Your anecdote is as reliable as Jake's is, so I'd pipe down with calling people's positions farcical.

+ + +

When it comes to grenade launchers, the idea of giving them "Ignore Line of Sight" has been an interesting one, but I haven't tested it to see how big a difference it makes, given the ammunition is still pretty weak.

Of course, if this were a game with a functioning morale system, then ILoS & Pinning might be an option for them...

I guess my concern about launchers is moot now with everything being free, however, in order to take the most launchers possible, you would need to take a Command squad, which maxes out at 4, which rule of three makes 12. Thats 12d6 S3 AP0 D1 direct fire only BS3+ shots, or 12 S6 AP1 Dd3 shots, no blast rule. For 30ppm. I would rather they took Missile Launchers, for only 10ppm more, or better yet, for only 50ppmppm, you can have 12d6 shots of S4, AP0 D1, Ignores LoS. What is the point of frag launchers again? Oh, and for 1CP they get +1 to hit and wound if they all target the same unit. Frag Launchers are a silly excuse for an option now with them being free. Has anyone heard any rumors if the HWTs will get free weapons as well?

 Dysartes wrote:

Hecaton wrote:
Your conversation above is entirely farcical, and doesn't apply to 40k - if someone showed up with a Crusher Stampede Tyranid list (previous to the most recent codex), and his opponent was playing Guard, the solution isn't to "take more heavy weapons" - it's to play a different codex. Furthermore, in the actual situation I described above, the codex had only just come out - why should the players have the responsibility of rebalancing the game within a few days of a codex release to get a balanced game or else be blamed? You need to put the fault on the right entity, GW.

Your anecdote is as reliable as Jake's is, so I'd pipe down with calling people's positions farcical.

No. Mine actually happened. Jake's is just what he *wishes* was true because it would allow him to win an argument.

 Dysartes wrote:
When it comes to grenade launchers, the idea of giving them "Ignore Line of Sight" has been an interesting one, but I haven't tested it to see how big a difference it makes, given the ammunition is still pretty weak.

Of course, if this were a game with a functioning morale system, then ILoS & Pinning might be an option for them...

Nah, they should kill units. Explosives are dangerous, and the game doesn't represent that well enough tbh. Krak grenades in particular are woefully underpowered compared to what they should be.

Hecaton wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:

Hecaton wrote:
Your conversation above is entirely farcical, and doesn't apply to 40k - if someone showed up with a Crusher Stampede Tyranid list (previous to the most recent codex), and his opponent was playing Guard, the solution isn't to "take more heavy weapons" - it's to play a different codex. Furthermore, in the actual situation I described above, the codex had only just come out - why should the players have the responsibility of rebalancing the game within a few days of a codex release to get a balanced game or else be blamed? You need to put the fault on the right entity, GW.

Your anecdote is as reliable as Jake's is, so I'd pipe down with calling people's positions farcical.

No. Mine actually happened. Jake's is just what he *wishes* was true because it would allow him to win an argument.

The lack of self awareness in this post is staggering. From our perspective, your anecdote is as reliable as Jake's is - we have just as much reason to take his at face value as we have to take yours. Your lived experience is not the same as other people's.

Actually for me personally I'd say his is more reliable - I've experienced conversations just like Jake's multiple times (from the perspective of both players and as a third party observer) and never seen one quite as... adversarial as yours.

I mean in Hecaton's example, "the talk" is just "can you please not play crusher stampede?"

Tyel wrote:
I mean in Hecaton's example, "the talk" is just "can you please not play crusher stampede?"

There are a fair amount of players who simply wont adhere to those wishes, either because they understand what the issue is, because they have been blasted to smithereens by the same guard player for the last five editions, or because they are playing to win and not for the other person's enjoyment.
Of course, you can just not play, but that might have social repercussions for you.

Any time you play in a store or in a larger group, you will face those issues. Few people are blessed with a stable group of like-minded players.

Tyel wrote:
I mean in Hecaton's example, "the talk" is just "can you please not play crusher stampede?"

Man do I miss the days when you didn't have to have a brunch discussion to get a game in. It used to be three things discussed: Game system, points size, any terrain that was potentially abnormal. Once in a while asking permission to use a named character.

 Just Tony wrote:

Tyel wrote:
I mean in Hecaton's example, "the talk" is just "can you please not play crusher stampede?"

Man do I miss the days when you didn't have to have a brunch discussion to get a game in. It used to be three things discussed: Game system, points size, any terrain that was potentially abnormal. Once in a while asking permission to use a named character.

Are you talking about 5th edition? Because my 5th edition's ork codex still has the 14 questions I had to ask my opponent before the game penned in it.

 Jidmah wrote:
There are a fair amount of players who simply wont adhere to those wishes, either because they understand what the issue is, because they have been blasted to smithereens by the same guard player for the last five editions, or because they are playing to win and not for the other person's enjoyment.
Of course, you can just not play, but that might have social repercussions for you.

Any time you play in a store or in a larger group, you will face those issues. Few people are blessed with a stable group of like-minded players.

True. Plenty of people may say no for a range of reasons. But I don't think that means you can't ask.

I also don't think this is a new feature of 40k.

I don't think the issue is points (tweek for maximum advantage) or PL (load out for maximum advantage), but rather the underlying game being at a low point for fun currently for myself (and others at club). Plus side we are all playing BFG, downside those that aren't have just stopped bothering to come so numbers are down.

Hecaton wrote:


No. Mine actually happened. Jake's is just what he *wishes* was true because it would allow him to win an argument.

Jake doesn't care about winning an argument- he's been playing 40k since '89 quite happily with friends and family outside of stores, and he's trying to tell people that they are free to choose the same thing rather than pissing and moaning on the internet.

If Jake cared about arguments on the internet, he'd probably do stupid things like assuming he understands people's motives better than they do, or assume they are lying about something, when really, he has no way of knowing one way or the other.

Quite frankly, if Bolter and Chainsword had finished it's migration yet, Jake wouldn't be here as often as he has been for the past two weeks, and you wouldn't have to worry about Jake at all... And he'd be pretty happy about that, because his tolerance for whiners is wearing thin.

Jake also does an awful lot of calling people whiners in the same post he asserts that the way they play is wrong.

After all, if you don't play with friends and family outside of stores, you're not doing 40k right.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Jake also does an awful lot of calling people whiners in the same post he asserts that the way they play is wrong.

After all, if you don't play with friends and family outside of stores, you're not doing 40k right.

It's fair to say that if you're not having fun you're hobbying wrong, whining indicates a lack of fun, although it is not always the case. You can have a really good game where you laugh and joke around and still be a little miffed about GW releasing AoC. Whether having fun means dropping the hobby, playing competitive instead of casual or crusade instead of competitive is up to the individual player.

The_Real_Chris wrote:
I don't think the issue is points (tweek for maximum advantage) or PL (load out for maximum advantage), but rather the underlying game being at a low point for fun currently for myself (and others at club). Plus side we are all playing BFG, downside those that aren't have just stopped bothering to come so numbers are down.

But points can be the problem. If PL as a unit cost are created by taking the cost of a unit fully upgraded and not upgraded, and then an avarge is created out of it. Then it is all well and good, when the upgrades are, as some said here, a no brainer and taken anyway. The problems start when the army is build in a such a way, that even if GW did give it options to take things , you never want to take those upgrades. Then you the switch from points to PL inflates the price of your army.

It is also a lot less easy to fix unit or gear options, the way GW fixs them most of the time, aka with point drops.

That is just a design issue - in essence GW is bad at points, they will be bad at PL too. There will be no brainer options (witness kill team variable load outs which is the closest to this PL nirvana some talk of). I think they will always be bad at balance, it doesn't really matter which system we are talking about. PL is less fiddly which is mistake, a big part of 40ks attraction is I believe that pouring over lists creating the ultimate army, and min maxing points is part of that.

So if that is making people play less you go onto are there other issues?

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Jake also does an awful lot of calling people whiners in the same post he asserts that the way they play is wrong.

After all, if you don't play with friends and family outside of stores, you're not doing 40k right.

id get a bit arsey too if some areogant little **** was calling me a bare faced liar.

Dai wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Jake also does an awful lot of calling people whiners in the same post he asserts that the way they play is wrong.

After all, if you don't play with friends and family outside of stores, you're not doing 40k right.

id get a bit arsey too if some areogant little **** was calling me a bare faced liar.

If someone's telling everyone else they're playing the game wrong, and then gives an unworkable solution to fix that, it's a reasonable take.

It's funny how people who say "just have a conversation before the game" never have *actual* examples, they just say "this happens all the time."

Almost like they don't play that much or in the way they say they do.


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PenitentJake wrote:
Jake doesn't care about winning an argument- he's been playing 40k since '89 quite happily with friends and family outside of stores, and he's trying to tell people that they are free to choose the same thing rather than pissing and moaning on the internet.

Some of us have jobs that necessitate moving around a lot. And games where the rules don't suck and the community is less toxic than 40k are better for building communities and meeting people in new towns - where you don't have to negotiate the fething Treaty of Westphalia before having a pickup game. Moreover, your practice of shaming people who do run into trouble is toxic positivity, and you're clearly dancing around culpability for that to avoid copping to it.

PenitentJake wrote:
If Jake cared about arguments on the internet, he'd probably do stupid things like assuming he understands people's motives better than they do, or assume they are lying about something, when really, he has no way of knowing one way or the other.

Well, you have done those "stupid things," when you assume that people don't try to solve the problems that this presents. The community doesn't allow for it.

PenitentJake wrote:
Quite frankly, if Bolter and Chainsword had finished it's migration yet, Jake wouldn't be here as often as he has been for the past two weeks, and you wouldn't have to worry about Jake at all... And he'd be pretty happy about that, because his tolerance for whiners is wearing thin.

People who think Dakka is full of whiners always crack me up. What, are you mad someone dared to criticize GW's rules writing? It's such a subservient viewpoint I can't have respect for it.