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 Rihgu wrote:
I think the game state would improve if this were the norm. If big tournaments/events had blanket bans on all codexes at release and waited for first FAQ/2 months

then competitive folk must be a big enough slice of the pie for GW to care.

How is GW supposed to make their changes without data from big tournaments? If they knew how to balance things with their own internal playtesting, we wouldn't be in this position. They need to see how the army does out in the wild in the hands of skilled players trying to break the game, against other skilled players doing the same.

Competitive tournament players make up a very small % of the overall playerbase, but a much higher % of the overall spending. The guys in my local group that travel for GTs are constantly buying and painting up new armies to keep up with the meta and be able to play practice games against what they expect to face at GTs. Sure it's only a few guys out of 30 people that play at this particular store, but they make up a very large portion of that stores 40k revenue. It's like mobile games where the top 1% of players are doing 80% of the spending (obv not that extreme but you get the idea). Players who just care about fluff and playing garagehammer with their 20 year old space marine army are definitely the vast majority of the playerbase, but probably the part GW cares the least about.

Dudeface 806816 11434149 wrote:
How do you explain balanced/lukewarm knights, chaos knights, CSM and daemons that preceded them then?

Demons are lukewarm? The only thing that keeps them restrained is their secondaries. For example they are the only army which doesn't have to worry about inv ignoring of LoV.
And there is always a difference between a faction with already existing model lines and fandoms, and something that comes out for the first time. Only necron were meh at day 1, as a new model line. We can be rather sure that WE are going to be very detailed in their design and their rules are going to be very good.

Bold assuming GW listens to any meaningful feed back.

Case and point one of the biggest questions that the community has been asking in 30k for example is if a rule applies to legion specific bolters.

For reference there is a rule in 30k called fury of the legion that gives bolt weapons and extra shot If they remain still, the problem is the rule says "applies to bolters" but no one is sure if that counts to legion specific bolters, like tsons with their asphyx bolter.

People have been asking GW clarification on this since 30k dropped and they recent faq basically addressed none of that.

The point is GW does not listen to feed back, hardly ever they only go off of their internal play testing. Hell rember when flying circus was a thing in 8th? The only reason that was nerfed was because some of the GW rule writers went to LOV and got absolutely demolished by it and itt was only after that, GW put in the rule of 3.

It would be nice if GW listened to the community but they really don't.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Bold assuming GW listens to any meaningful feed back.

GW has changes though! They have social media!

GW listens to the people they care about, the buyers who buy up the stuff they make and the people they anwser to. when both groups are happy, GW is happy too.

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Bold assuming GW listens to any meaningful feed back.

GW has changes though! They have social media!

And a Twitter!

But really, it's been clear for a long time GW does NOT listen to anyone outside of their play tester bubble and the sad fact is whoever is play testing has literally no idea what they are doing and or lack any ability to critically think in terms of how to break rules.

Another example in 30k or pure broke Bs. IH can replace their plasma pistols for grav pistols which a grav pistol has haywire which can glance a vehicle on a...4+ I think and pen on a 6. Any way because no one play tested, you can equip a moritat with 2 of them, a special gun slinging hq that can deep strike. He then has the ability to do something called chain fire, which let's you shoot each pistol 6 times, hitting on a 2 +. So you have a model that's about 120 pts, that can deep strike and kill a super heavy take in a single round of shooting.

This is something people found within like 10 min of the leaks being out.

Karol wrote:

Demons are lukewarm? The only thing that keeps them restrained is their secondaries. For example they are the only army which doesn't have to worry about inv ignoring of LoV.

Demons aren't the only ones...Imperial Guard don't have to worry about it either since the couple units that can get an invuln have character protection.

Karol wrote:

Dudeface 806816 11434149 wrote:
How do you explain balanced/lukewarm knights, chaos knights, CSM and daemons that preceded them then?

Demons are lukewarm? The only thing that keeps them restrained is their secondaries. For example they are the only army which doesn't have to worry about inv ignoring of LoV.
And there is always a difference between a faction with already existing model lines and fandoms, and something that comes out for the first time. Only necron were meh at day 1, as a new model line. We can be rather sure that WE are going to be very detailed in their design and their rules are going to be very good.

Tons of new models are meh day 1.

Votann is just GW cutting corners to get the book out in time to run with the models. And now the community will rage at people like Brandt or the playtesters when this is all likely out of their control and they have to try and clean up the mess.

A bit of general speculation: could all this bad balance just be that the rules teams are stretched too thin and don't have enough time to do things right? Essentially each book becomes a rush of "get the thing written and working first and if there's time do some balance changes; we can always fix it after publication." It's possible that the codices that came out and weren't broken came together a bit smoother or had more dedicated attention (or both). Based on the rumor that the Imperial Guard codex was sent back to the rules team four times (no clue how accurate that is), I've sort of gotten the feeling that the Imperial Guard codex was supposed to come out a few codices ago. If that's the case, then perhaps LoV wasn't intended to be this early? On the other hand, I've heard arguments that Imperial Guard should be next as it's unlikely that GW would want to introduce two new codices back to back (since WE are technically a new codex albeit not a new faction), which would mean that LoV would either have to have been intended to have Imperial Guard or Space Marines 2.0 between it and World Eaters. This is of course completely speculative so could be completely wrong...but I'm curious to hear if anyone has hear anything that either supports or refutes it.

Dudeface wrote:
I see judgement tokens more as an attempt to speed up gameplay, it's an offensive buff that actually reduces dice rolling rather than adding to it; which if it is "written with 10th in mind", meaning we might see crop up in other areas.

I think you'd be wrong. It's an attempt to apply a buff to attacks.


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Toofast wrote:


How is GW supposed to make their changes without data from big tournaments? If they knew how to balance things with their own internal playtesting, we wouldn't be in this position. They need to see how the army does out in the wild in the hands of skilled players trying to break the game, against other skilled players doing the same.

Then they shouldn't release codexes; they should release beta rules to the community.

Hopefully GW gets the hint and starts playtesting more. And hopefully Votann players properly direct their ire towards GW and not the other players who don't want to auto-lose.

Karol wrote:

Dudeface 806816 11434149 wrote:
How do you explain balanced/lukewarm knights, chaos knights, CSM and daemons that preceded them then?

Demons are lukewarm? The only thing that keeps them restrained is their secondaries. For example they are the only army which doesn't have to worry about inv ignoring of LoV.
And there is always a difference between a faction with already existing model lines and fandoms, and something that comes out for the first time. Only necron were meh at day 1, as a new model line. We can be rather sure that WE are going to be very detailed in their design and their rules are going to be very good.

Yes, they resist that one mechanic that's on about a dozen weapons across the entire game.
Tell you what, Karol-we'll give GK the same thing, but increase their cost by 80%, give them mediocre statline buffs, and strip out most of the other special rules.

Nurgle Daemons, at the least, are pretty damn mediocre, and thoroughly uninteresting.

Karol wrote:

Dudeface 806816 11434149 wrote:
How do you explain balanced/lukewarm knights, chaos knights, CSM and daemons that preceded them then?

Demons are lukewarm? The only thing that keeps them restrained is their secondaries. For example they are the only army which doesn't have to worry about inv ignoring of LoV.

yeah, and 90% of their datasheet are overcosted and the codex options are anemic and not at all in line with the rest of 9th ed codexes

Hecaton wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
I see judgement tokens more as an attempt to speed up gameplay, it's an offensive buff that actually reduces dice rolling rather than adding to it; which if it is "written with 10th in mind", meaning we might see crop up in other areas.

I think you'd be wrong. It's an attempt to apply a buff to attacks.

I mean, that's literally what I said.

Daemons are just the Paper to the Votann's Rock, but only for this one specific build. And sometimes T'au.

Asmodios wrote:
Banning definently isnt the way to go if people want the codex re tuned. GW needs to see LOV dominate if you want them to be re balanced kind of like when nids won almost all the top spots at nova one year.

As much as i think they do need to be tweeked it can actually be relatively minor as i said earlier. I think a slight change to the judgment token buffs would leave them in a (very competative but not broken) state. The JTs just break the math of the game too much atm

I remember it working Great with Knights and Iron Hands Dreadnaught lists. After 1 major banned them, they basically got hyper nerfed.

Toofast wrote:

 Rihgu wrote:
I think the game state would improve if this were the norm. If big tournaments/events had blanket bans on all codexes at release and waited for first FAQ/2 months

then competitive folk must be a big enough slice of the pie for GW to care.

How is GW supposed to make their changes without data from big tournaments? If they knew how to balance things with their own internal playtesting, we wouldn't be in this position. They need to see how the army does out in the wild in the hands of skilled players trying to break the game, against other skilled players doing the same.

Competitive tournament players make up a very small % of the overall playerbase, but a much higher % of the overall spending. The guys in my local group that travel for GTs are constantly buying and painting up new armies to keep up with the meta and be able to play practice games against what they expect to face at GTs. Sure it's only a few guys out of 30 people that play at this particular store, but they make up a very large portion of that stores 40k revenue. It's like mobile games where the top 1% of players are doing 80% of the spending (obv not that extreme but you get the idea). Players who just care about fluff and playing garagehammer with their 20 year old space marine army are definitely the vast majority of the playerbase, but probably the part GW cares the least about.

Your post reminds me of this famous piece from The Onion: https://www.theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-nation-where-this-r-1819576527

GW can hire and pay playtesters to the standards necessary to ensure GW rules come out of the oven fully baked instead of wet and raw in the middle.

I actually can't think of a better way for the community to prod them in that direction than banning codexes from tournament play.

Dudeface wrote:

Hecaton wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
I see judgement tokens more as an attempt to speed up gameplay, it's an offensive buff that actually reduces dice rolling rather than adding to it; which if it is "written with 10th in mind", meaning we might see crop up in other areas.

I think you'd be wrong. It's an attempt to apply a buff to attacks.

I mean, that's literally what I said.

No, you said the intent was to speed up gameplay. I doubt that was on GW's agenda.


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 Altruizine wrote:

Your post reminds me of this famous piece from The Onion: https://www.theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-nation-where-this-r-1819576527

GW can hire and pay playtesters to the standards necessary to ensure GW rules come out of the oven fully baked instead of wet and raw in the middle.

I actually can't think of a better way for the community to prod them in that direction than banning codexes from tournament play.

I really do want to see if I can get near some of them at LVO to hear if they complain about "American players abusing rules" again.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:

Asmodios wrote:
Banning definently isnt the way to go if people want the codex re tuned. GW needs to see LOV dominate if you want them to be re balanced kind of like when nids won almost all the top spots at nova one year.

As much as i think they do need to be tweeked it can actually be relatively minor as i said earlier. I think a slight change to the judgment token buffs would leave them in a (very competative but not broken) state. The JTs just break the math of the game too much atm

I remember it working Great with Knights and Iron Hands Dreadnaught lists. After 1 major banned them, they basically got hyper nerfed.

I could be wrong but I remember both of these being toned down after winning LVO. If I remember correctly knights with “the loyal 32” dominating LVO then we got the changes to how CP were generated. The iron hands was the exact same thing with like 4-5 of the top 10 at LVO being iron hands and then they were nuked after

Hecaton wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

Hecaton wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
I see judgement tokens more as an attempt to speed up gameplay, it's an offensive buff that actually reduces dice rolling rather than adding to it; which if it is "written with 10th in mind", meaning we might see crop up in other areas.

I think you'd be wrong. It's an attempt to apply a buff to attacks.

I mean, that's literally what I said.

No, you said the intent was to speed up gameplay. I doubt that was on GW's agenda.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Altruizine wrote:

Your post reminds me of this famous piece from The Onion: https://www.theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-nation-where-this-r-1819576527

GW can hire and pay playtesters to the standards necessary to ensure GW rules come out of the oven fully baked instead of wet and raw in the middle.

I actually can't think of a better way for the community to prod them in that direction than banning codexes from tournament play.

I really do want to see if I can get near some of them at LVO to hear if they complain about "American players abusing rules" again.

Such a tired complaint. Rules shouldn't be able to be exploited to BEGIN with, and all that does is excuse gakky writing.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:I remember it working Great with Knights and Iron Hands Dreadnaught lists. After 1 major banned them, they basically got hyper nerfed.

You remember wrong. Castellans and IH both got nerfed after utterly dominating two different LVOs.

Toofast wrote:How is GW supposed to make their changes without data from big tournaments? If they knew how to balance things with their own internal playtesting, we wouldn't be in this position. They need to see how the army does out in the wild in the hands of skilled players trying to break the game, against other skilled players doing the same.

There's this thing called playtesting. Maybe you've heard of it? You're never going to catch 100% of problems with internal playtesting, but if people are noticing the obviously broken combos minutes after a Codex leaks then your internal procedures are to blame. It's not our job to balance this stuff and maybe if more tournaments and groups went down this route it might force GW to react by changing their internal processes. I think it's reasonable to accept, even expect, some measure of imbalance at release, but not to the extent we've seen with some Codices recently. Harlequins, Tau, Nids and now LoV were all monumentally busted on release. That's a pathetic strike rate for GW.

DeadliestIdiot wrote:A bit of general speculation: could all this bad balance just be that the rules teams are stretched too thin and don't have enough time to do things right?

I don't think so. I think it's a company culture issue. They either don't value balance or the designers are incapable of delivering it. I suspect it's a combination of the two.

As an example of this, just look at a very common problem we've seen time and again from new Codices. In lots of cases we see that spamming a powerful unit utterly breaks the game. The most recent, most egregious example of this was the Void Weaver. In 8th edition they had to introduce the Rule of 3 because the designers didn't consider the possibility of someone taking 7 Hive Tyrants or 11 PBCs. To me, that's indicative of a lack of playtesting, probably exacerbated by the internal culture at GW being skewed away from building armies like that. Nobody at GW would consider building an army with 7 of the same HQ or 9 of the same gunboat because it goes against the fluff and feel of the army. We saw the same thing with SM 2.0, where the designers seemed genuinely shocked that people were simply remaining in Devastator Doctrine for the whole game, because to them it made no sense when the background dictated SM armies should move through the Doctrines as the game progressed. But as a designer your job is to try to break your creation. The first question you should ask once you've got a unit's stats and cost figured out is "what happens if I spam the maximum number of these things".

Asmodios wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:

Asmodios wrote:
Banning definently isnt the way to go if people want the codex re tuned. GW needs to see LOV dominate if you want them to be re balanced kind of like when nids won almost all the top spots at nova one year.

As much as i think they do need to be tweeked it can actually be relatively minor as i said earlier. I think a slight change to the judgment token buffs would leave them in a (very competative but not broken) state. The JTs just break the math of the game too much atm

I remember it working Great with Knights and Iron Hands Dreadnaught lists. After 1 major banned them, they basically got hyper nerfed.

I could be wrong but I remember both of these being toned down after winning LVO. If I remember correctly knights with “the loyal 32” dominating LVO then we got the changes to how CP were generated. The iron hands was the exact same thing with like 4-5 of the top 10 at LVO being iron hands and then they were nuked after

Its really funny bc both those lists were only a problem in ITC, play Maelstrom or Eternal and they while killed a lot, still lost games lol.

But I agree banning isn't healthy for the game bc of power creep, now banning bc they are not fully release yet 100% on board with that bc it just pushes people into 3rd party which if no models being out how do we know the correct sizes? how do we know if that community is struggling and trying to get local support, etc....

 Valkyrie wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
I see judgement tokens more as an attempt to speed up gameplay, it's an offensive buff that actually reduces dice rolling rather than adding to it; which if it is "written with 10th in mind", meaning we might see crop up in other areas.

I don't get this mindset of having to speed up the game as much as possible. The game's already much quicker than an equivalent game in 4th-7th Edition, if we want to go the whole hog why not just roll off at the start and the highest number wins?

It's faster only because game is so stupidly lethal...

In terms of play speed SECOND EDITION is faster. Only way it's so fast is because everything dies and after 2nd turn there's generally not much of an army left for one side.


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 kodos wrote:

 Irbis wrote:
And that's why 7th edition big mid edition design shift (decurions) was completely abandoned in 8th?

from everything we heard, you must have too as you are long enough around, was that GW planned something different for 8th wich was skipped because of how big AoS failed

but than, it might simply be that GW is just that bad at writing rules no one there knows what they are doing at all and they just keep going because it sells not matter what

Just one problem with that theory. Leadtimes.


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Tyel wrote:
[
I think its reasonable to say Marines 2.0+Sisters were written with the new edition in mind, as they got purity bonuses which were as yet unknown in 8th edition 40k.

Ahahaha. Sisters written in 9e in mind? With special rules that were invalidated in 9e? With new book among first in 9e?

Claim that sisters were with 9e in mind is just marketing speech for guillible people.


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Toofast wrote:

How is GW supposed to make their changes without data from big tournaments? If they knew how to balance things with their own internal playtesting, we wouldn't be in this position. They need to see how the army does out in the wild in the hands of skilled players trying to break the game, against other skilled players doing the same.

Sale numbers. Which is where decisions comes anyway.

Tneva is right. The only language gw is willing to understand is sales numbers.
Considering what little influence the community testers had and how gw just cut them out,there is no point in gw to consider data from tournaments, in essence any concern of the community of depriving gw of "valuable data" by banning lov from tourneys is pretty irrelevant.

Unless by the fluke chance some of the gw designers get their backsides handed to them in the freak incident. But that requires these designers to leave their ivory tower, which they rarely do. But even then that is debatable and may be coinciding with a balance related loss of sales.

Which rules are concerning you Tneva?

Its like the fact an ever increasing number of units ignored the Heavy -1 to hit rule. The fact that this was going to be removed for non-infantry in 9th wasn't an oversight - the fact it was being thrown out in the second half of 8th was probably with the knowledge that this was going to go - and so armies might as well get it now, not later.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

Asmodios wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:

Asmodios wrote:
Banning definently isnt the way to go if people want the codex re tuned. GW needs to see LOV dominate if you want them to be re balanced kind of like when nids won almost all the top spots at nova one year.

As much as i think they do need to be tweeked it can actually be relatively minor as i said earlier. I think a slight change to the judgment token buffs would leave them in a (very competative but not broken) state. The JTs just break the math of the game too much atm

I remember it working Great with Knights and Iron Hands Dreadnaught lists. After 1 major banned them, they basically got hyper nerfed.

I could be wrong but I remember both of these being toned down after winning LVO. If I remember correctly knights with “the loyal 32” dominating LVO then we got the changes to how CP were generated. The iron hands was the exact same thing with like 4-5 of the top 10 at LVO being iron hands and then they were nuked after

Its really funny bc both those lists were only a problem in ITC, play Maelstrom or Eternal and they while killed a lot, still lost games lol.

But I agree banning isn't healthy for the game bc of power creep, now banning bc they are not fully release yet 100% on board with that bc it just pushes people into 3rd party which if no models being out how do we know the correct sizes? how do we know if that community is struggling and trying to get local support, etc....

Banning AND abstaining from buying both need to be done

a_typical_hero wrote:
LoV seem to be banned in parts of German tournaments:

Spoiler:

Whatever happened to German players liking a challenge?

If the intent was "We're not allowing Leagues until the full release", that's one thing, but if they're doing this when they weren't doing it for other OP books during the edition, I have to wonder at the sudden onset of cowardice.

EviscerationPlague 806816 11434477 wrote:
Banning AND abstaining from buying both need to be done

But why is it this army. There were other more broken armies, broken and edition breaking for months, but tournament orgenisers never claimed they want to ban specific armies. suddenly LoV arrive and they should be banned, and on top of that not played against.

It gives me this distinct rules for thee, not for me feel.


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FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:

Asmodios wrote:
Banning definently isnt the way to go if people want the codex re tuned. GW needs to see LOV dominate if you want them to be re balanced kind of like when nids won almost all the top spots at nova one year.

As much as i think they do need to be tweeked it can actually be relatively minor as i said earlier. I think a slight change to the judgment token buffs would leave them in a (very competative but not broken) state. The JTs just break the math of the game too much atm

I remember it working Great with Knights and Iron Hands Dreadnaught lists. After 1 major banned them, they basically got hyper nerfed.

Or salamander aggresor list. One week of wins, and we have not yet seen salamanders back in 9th.

Karol wrote:

EviscerationPlague 806816 11434477 wrote:
Banning AND abstaining from buying both need to be done

But why is it this army. There were other more broken armies, broken and edition breaking for months, but tournament orgenisers never claimed they want to ban specific armies. suddenly LoV arrive and they should be banned, and on top of that not played against.

That's a fair question. When I say both need to be done for Votaan, it's because Votaan aren't exactly released yet. So it's a two-fold punch compared to just banning armies that have lots of players already have thousands of points of. If you've noticed I also encourage not buying new codices either.

 Dysartes wrote:

a_typical_hero wrote:
LoV seem to be banned in parts of German tournaments:

Spoiler:

Whatever happened to German players liking a challenge?

If the intent was "We're not allowing Leagues until the full release", that's one thing, but if they're doing this when they weren't doing it for other OP books during the edition, I have to wonder at the sudden onset of cowardice.

It doesn't invalidate existing collections. Even without bandwagoners armies have a body of players who stick with them even when they aren't top dog. Giving them the middle finger when their army finally becomes good isn't something people want to do, let alone the bad optics. LoV don't have that issue.

 Dysartes wrote:
If the intent was "We're not allowing Leagues until the full release", that's one thing, but if they're doing this when they weren't doing it for other OP books during the edition, I have to wonder at the sudden onset of cowardice.

they have done it with the Orks and Sisters Codex until the full release and in general all Factions that don't have a FAQ/Errata are not allowed

so until LoV get their full release we won't know if they are banned because of the rules