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leopard wrote: ask yourself this with 40k, how often have you seen your army, seen the enemies army and said to yourself "I know how this one is going" and been right? (good or bad result), the game shouldn't be won in the list building phase but it appears is often is
I disagree with this. I think it should. Before you roll your eyes to the back of your head, let me explain.
I don't think you should see their army and be like "Ah ... orcs. And I have tau (whatever) ... well I'm definitely going to lose this, orcs beat tau like rock beats scissors". That's not good, and if that happens, then imo there needs to be some balancing of the rules. Is that what you're talking about? If yes, then I agree. Is no, then read on.
If you're talking about actual specific army lists, then I don't agree. For example, you've built an army the specializes in one thing, and it happens your opponents army specializes in oblitering that thing, then I think it's fair enough. "Ah gak, my all-tank army is going to struggle against his anti-tank patrol ... I know how this is going to go" ... and it goes that way. The problem is, that if that doesn't happen, it means the game is so "balanced" that no choices you make really matter. Anti-tank weapons? Why bother? A squad of plebs with flashlights will do exactly the same job as long as they "cost" the same amount of points. It removes all creative choice and personal style from the game and reduces it to "how many points did you spend? Doesn't matter on what, they all do the same gak in the end". I don't think that's the type of game anyone wants.
One solution to this problem is to build an army list that is versatile. Not one based on "cool models" (for example, I'm not sure if that's a point you made personally, but others have).
Or to make it really simple. Models that you buy with real life cash , ones you like, should not make you feel bad about the game and you shouldn't suddenly look for love of painting or writing stories about your army, to somehow compensate for the lack of fun in game.
I kind of agree. I just don't think that "you bought the model with real life cash" is relevant. Buying a model makes you entitled to own that bit of plastic and nothing else.
But I do think if some model or unit is hopeless broken ... like you bought an anti-tank unit ... but it can't destroy tanks ... then that should be fixed. But I think that should be fixed whether you bought the model or not.
Apple is in the business of selling smart phones. A smart phone can go on the internet, make calls and send texts. If the phone on release is broken, Apple has failed to deliver on the agreed delivery of a working smart phone, you weren't agreeing to pay for a hunk of metal and glass, but a smart phone. When Apple decided to slow down old smart phones, they were fined.
When you buy a Warhammer miniature you are buying a game piece, not just a hunk of plastic, Games Workshop cannot deliver a faulty product and they cannot ruin the product you bought later on by deliberately or through gross negligence giving it an unfairly high pts cost.
What you are doing is wrong, by protecting the bad practices GW engages in and trying to obfuscate the issues GW have had with game balance and playing it off as player mistakes instead of the often obvious mistakes GW have made. Stuff like increasing the pts cost of units that cost 3-4 to 5, 5 to 6, 6 to 8, 7 to 9 and 8 to 11 and increasing the pts cost of everything else by 25% instead of looking at what units were actually worth with the new missions at the start of 9th was not okay. GW fethed up and supporting that kind of practice is hurting yourself and fellow consumers.
You know that Wood Elves are better than Goblins in Blood Bowl, it's not down to players playing Goblins wrong the Goblins just aren't good enough, but how much better do they need to be? I'd say a 55% win rate for Wood Elves and 45% win rate for Goblins would be enough to ensure that competitive players are rewarded for skillful play with their Wood Elves and not encouraged to rely too much on luck by playing Goblins. If that difference is 60% vs 35% then something is way off base and GW should fix it and saying that Goblins just need to never take 2 of their 5 player options and instead rely on some kind of Star Player for a 40% win rate is white knighting that I don't know why you'd engage in.
I don't quite buy the smart phone analogy, but that's not important.
I think your points here are all fair enough. I just think you're misunderstanding my points. As I have said (multiple times actually), if the problem is that "army X always beats army Y just as predictably as rock beats scissors" that is a problem. It's also a problem if a unit doesn't behave in the game that way it's expected. If scouts are actually gak at scouting, or anti-tank cannons can't stop tanks. If that's what you're saying and that's actually what's occurring in 40K, I totally agree with you that should be fixed (so please don't say I'm making a strawman argument!).
But that's not really the point I've being making. It's something else and I think you're missing it.
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Arbiter_Shade wrote: I can not help but realize acutely that The Pig-Faced Orc is a self described new player because their arguments make little sense in the history of 40k. I've been playing since 3rd, not the oldest of grognards but been around a bit, and I can tell you with absolute honesty that there have been times in 40ks history where you could tell what the outcome of a game was going to be based on the armies independent of the list.
Well, like I've said a lot of times, that's a problem. I'm not saying it's not a problem and I'm not saying that shouldn't be fixed. I'm making a different point.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2023/05/19 16:23:12
When you buy a Warhammer miniature you are buying a game piece, not just a hunk of plastic, Games Workshop cannot deliver a faulty product and they cannot ruin the product you bought later on by deliberately or through gross negligence giving it an unfairly high pts cost.
LOL. 30some odd years of GW history says that they can most certainly, and WILL, do that.
But no, when you buy a Warhammer miniature you are definitely just buying a hunk of plastic (or metal, or resin). There's nothing saying you have to use it to play a GW game. Or any game at all as some peoples hobby is just collecting & painting minis.....
If GW sells me a kit missing parts? (and they have) They need to fix that. If they sell me a resin kit from FW that's miscast/broken/too severely warped? (and they have) They need to fix that. And they do.
The rules they publish for the game? That's a completely separate product from the models. Publishing rules you dislike =/= defective product. And those rules don't make the models defective.
The Pig-Faced Orc wrote: If that's what you're saying and that's actually what's occurring in 40K, I totally agree with you that should be fixed (so please don't say I'm making a strawman argument!).
The point you keep making is that a thrown-together tank-heavy list shouldn't expect to go 50/50 with a honed-to-the-bone anti-tank list. Nobody at any point in this thread has disagreed.
What has routinely happened in 40K history is that some factions have been weaker than others, and you can run into the situation where the thrown-together tank list of Army A actually does have a pretty good chance of beating an optimized anti-tank list from Army B because the balance is so lopsided.
And every time someone points out that this is a thing and calling it a 'challenge' doesn't make it fun, you respond with this thing about '''''perfect balance''''', which at best is completely irrelevant to the actual discussion, and at worst is a misrepresentation of the actual complaint- ie, a straw man.
We get it, you don't think it's possible or desirable for a randomly-generated army to have a 50% shot of beating the latest LVO winner. If that's your sole point, it's been made, nobody disagrees, move on.
catbarf wrote: We get it, you don't think it's possible or desirable for a randomly-generated army to have a 50% shot of beating the latest LVO winner. If that's your sole point, it's been made, nobody disagrees, move on.
Ha! Well, fair enough then. What I'm saying is not quite that simple, but close enough.
And it sure seems people disagree because when I write something like that, I get a page full of replies with stuff like, "I bought the model with my own money", "what if a beginner builds an army and is dissapointed?", "some factions lose 90% of their matches" ... okay ... kind of sounds like they're disagreeing ... and with not-very-good arguments either.
This message was edited 5 times. Last update was at 2023/05/19 19:36:16
catbarf wrote: We get it, you don't think it's possible or desirable for a randomly-generated army to have a 50% shot of beating the latest LVO winner. If that's your sole point, it's been made, nobody disagrees, move on.
Ha! Well, fair enough then. What I'm saying is not quite that simple, but close enough.
And it sure seems people disagree because when I write something like that, I get a page full of replies with stuff like, "I bought the model with my own money", "what if a beginner builds an army and is dissapointed?", "some factions lose 90% of their matches" ... okay ... kind of sounds like they're disagreeing ... and with not-very-good arguments either.
What you are doing is a straw man fallacy, you seem to take it that anyone stating their opinion on something or even responding to a portion of your post is arguing for the side of "random armies deserve 50/50 win rate." The argument isn't that people shouldn't have a general idea of the game when planning out what to buy in order to have a competitive army. The argument is that an army should have enough viable list that follow the general play style of the army. For example, an Evil Sunz player is going to love vehicles and bikes; their list is going to be primarily vehicles and bikes. That army, regardless of what edition it is, should be viable because the game presents it as an option and has fluff/history to it. The problem is that that hypothetical army is going to range from dominating the meta to being unable to compete in beer and pretzel games depending on the edition.
40k has always been notoriously unbalanced and while it has been a lot worse than what we have now, it could still stand to be better.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2023/05/19 23:44:45
When you buy a Warhammer miniature you are buying a game piece, not just a hunk of plastic, Games Workshop cannot deliver a faulty product and they cannot ruin the product you bought later on by deliberately or through gross negligence giving it an unfairly high pts cost.
LOL. 30some odd years of GW history says that they can most certainly, and WILL, do that.
But no, when you buy a Warhammer miniature you are definitely just buying a hunk of plastic (or metal, or resin). There's nothing saying you have to use it to play a GW game. Or any game at all as some peoples hobby is just collecting & painting minis.....
If GW sells me a kit missing parts? (and they have) They need to fix that. If they sell me a resin kit from FW that's miscast/broken/too severely warped? (and they have) They need to fix that. And they do.
The rules they publish for the game? That's a completely separate product from the models. Publishing rules you dislike =/= defective product. And those rules don't make the models defective.
I would disagree to a limited extent. The people who forked over tons of money for a Land Raider Terminus Ultra got boned. Just because many people choose not to play and just collect/paint/etc doesn't mean that's the limit of GW's product line or their responsibilities to it. A new unit should have rules for at least a couple editions before it goes Legends.
When you buy a Warhammer miniature you are buying a game piece, not just a hunk of plastic, Games Workshop cannot deliver a faulty product and they cannot ruin the product you bought later on by deliberately or through gross negligence giving it an unfairly high pts cost.
LOL. 30some odd years of GW history says that they can most certainly, and WILL, do that.
But no, when you buy a Warhammer miniature you are definitely just buying a hunk of plastic (or metal, or resin). There's nothing saying you have to use it to play a GW game. Or any game at all as some peoples hobby is just collecting & painting minis.....
If GW sells me a kit missing parts? (and they have) They need to fix that. If they sell me a resin kit from FW that's miscast/broken/too severely warped? (and they have) They need to fix that. And they do.
The rules they publish for the game? That's a completely separate product from the models. Publishing rules you dislike =/= defective product. And those rules don't make the models defective.
I would disagree to a limited extent. The people who forked over tons of money for a Land Raider Terminus Ultra got boned. Just because many people choose not to play and just collect/paint/etc doesn't mean that's the limit of GW's product line or their responsibilities to it. A new unit should have rules for at least a couple editions before it goes Legends.
No, some of those Terminus Ultra players chose to be boned. Like I said, rules you don't like =/= defective model. Or even defective rules. If you choose not to use the Legends rules GW provides, that's not GWs fault.
No, some of those Terminus Ultra players chose to be boned. Like I said, rules you don't like =/= defective model. Or even defective rules. If you choose not to use the Legends rules GW provides, that's not GWs fault.
Both people have to chose those rules unlike the regular ones. And nobody chooses to get boned. Squat Players, Terminus Ultra, and Sisters have all taken a turn at it. None of them chose it. Long term, sure models and potentially even factions could float in and out of the game - but a new model or a new faction should stick around for a while.
catbarf wrote: We get it, you don't think it's possible or desirable for a randomly-generated army to have a 50% shot of beating the latest LVO winner. If that's your sole point, it's been made, nobody disagrees, move on.
Ha! Well, fair enough then. What I'm saying is not quite that simple, but close enough.
And it sure seems people disagree because when I write something like that, I get a page full of replies with stuff like, "I bought the model with my own money", "what if a beginner builds an army and is dissapointed?", "some factions lose 90% of their matches" ... okay ... kind of sounds like they're disagreeing ... and with not-very-good arguments either.
What you are doing is a straw man fallacy, you seem to take it that anyone stating their opinion on something or even responding to a portion of your post is arguing for the side of "random armies deserve 50/50 win rate."
You've got it back-to-front mate.
They are replying to my original assertion that balance is nuanced, often mistaken for something else, and not even always desireable. I'm not replying to any proposition they put forwards, they're replying to me.
For what it's worth, drawing something out to it's ultimate conclusion maybe hyperbole in order to try and help clarify a point, but it's not a "strawman". In the case you quoted, my point is not that someone else said "random armies deserve a 50/50 chance of winning". I'm not saying anybody has said that. I'm just making the point that if you draw this concept of "balance" out to it's ultimate conclusion, that would be the result. So think about that a bit.
I think it first came about talking about army lists. Something else I said was that it should be possible to build horribly ineffective army lists by mistake (and a lot of people disagreed); that's a feature not a bug; and that's when I first bought up this random armies thing. To help exemplify my point.
This message was edited 7 times. Last update was at 2023/05/20 05:53:48
When you buy a Warhammer miniature you are buying a game piece, not just a hunk of plastic, Games Workshop cannot deliver a faulty product and they cannot ruin the product you bought later on by deliberately or through gross negligence giving it an unfairly high pts cost.
LOL. 30some odd years of GW history says that they can most certainly, and WILL, do that.
But no, when you buy a Warhammer miniature you are definitely just buying a hunk of plastic (or metal, or resin). There's nothing saying you have to use it to play a GW game. Or any game at all as some peoples hobby is just collecting & painting minis.....
If GW sells me a kit missing parts? (and they have) They need to fix that. If they sell me a resin kit from FW that's miscast/broken/too severely warped? (and they have) They need to fix that. And they do.
The rules they publish for the game? That's a completely separate product from the models. Publishing rules you dislike =/= defective product. And those rules don't make the models defective.
James Workshop wrote:Start playing Warhammer 40,000 with the Command Edition – a set designed to give you a comprehensive start with the world’s best sci-fi wargame.
GW is clearly marketing their products as game pieces and not just plastic, if you just wanted 3 kg of plastic you could buy it much cheaper at a yard sale. Are you going to tell me GW doesn't have a duty to make the miniatures appear like they do on the box with the same level of detail or can they just ship you a ball of recycled plastic?
When you buy a Warhammer miniature you are buying a game piece, not just a hunk of plastic, Games Workshop cannot deliver a faulty product and they cannot ruin the product you bought later on by deliberately or through gross negligence giving it an unfairly high pts cost.
LOL. 30some odd years of GW history says that they can most certainly, and WILL, do that.
But no, when you buy a Warhammer miniature you are definitely just buying a hunk of plastic (or metal, or resin). There's nothing saying you have to use it to play a GW game. Or any game at all as some peoples hobby is just collecting & painting minis.....
If GW sells me a kit missing parts? (and they have) They need to fix that. If they sell me a resin kit from FW that's miscast/broken/too severely warped? (and they have) They need to fix that. And they do.
The rules they publish for the game? That's a completely separate product from the models. Publishing rules you dislike =/= defective product. And those rules don't make the models defective.
James Workshop wrote:Start playing Warhammer 40,000 with the Command Edition – a set designed to give you a comprehensive start with the world’s best sci-fi wargame.
GW is clearly marketing their products as game pieces and not just plastic, if you just wanted 3 kg of plastic you could buy it much cheaper at a yard sale. Are you going to tell me GW doesn't have a duty to make the miniatures appear like they do on the box with the same level of detail or can they just ship you a ball of recycled plastic?
C'mon dude. Nobody is saying that you're literally only paying for the raw plastic material. You're paying for the sculpt as well, and a bunch of other stuff.
They are saying that the minaiture is somewhat seperate from the rulebook. The points values can (and are) easily tweaked.
And really ... if you are primarily a gamer, you have some responsibility to check the rules for whatever you're buying before you drop a fistfull of cash on it. If you're building an army-list based on how-cool-the-model-looks instead of how the unit functions, maybe that partly explains some things.
C'mon dude. Nobody is saying that you're literally only paying for the raw plastic material.
ccs wrote: But no, when you buy a Warhammer miniature you are definitely just buying a hunk of plastic (or metal, or resin).
When you buy an iPhone you aren't just buying a smartphone that can call, send texts and access the internet, you are also buying something with the Apple brand which would have value even without the functionality, like the people that paid hundreds for a Supreme(TM) construction brick. That doesn't mean that an iPhone shouldn't work as a smartphone, it should do that and have the branding and image of an Apple device.
Let's say Spike buys a Broviathan army during 8th edition just after it won the biggest 40k tournament in the world, it's got a mix of Dreadnoughts, infantry and characters and for all intents and purposes is a fluffy Iron Hands army. That should be a decent army in 9th edition and especially for the rest of 8th edition.
Let's say Timmy buys the start collecting box as depicted in his 9th edition Necrons codex and then adds the additional units that are depicted as being added to lift the start collecting box to 2000 pts in the codex, that should be a decent army, both in 9th and in 10th.
Both Spike and Timmy would get the gak beat out of them facing a regular Drukhari list when Drukhari first got their codex in 9th because GW didn't properly playtest and adjust points, the value of Spike and Timmy's game pieces was diminished in an unfair manner. GW done wrong, we should demand better unlike what ccs believes that we should accept it (ccs might be saying we should expect it which I'd agree with), unlike what you are saying it is not due to people building stupid lists but mainly due to GW incompetence.
This message was edited 4 times. Last update was at 2023/05/20 08:12:25
the model itself, the material, production and design cost
how useful and rare it is to the game, aka points
and the if people like the design and want to have one just to paint it
if people just want to paint the model their value in the game does not matter and they will pay the price
if someone does not like the design and the material, but it is really useful in the game it still has high value and they will pay the higher price
yet with ever changing rules and the game value changing, people hesitate and rather buy an alternative even if they like the original models, because the value in the game is only there for a short amount of time and it is only this time were the value of the model justify the price
like the 2nd hand market, outside of oldhammer OOP stuff, the good units/armies go for a much higher price than an army with units that are of no use in the current edition
and there is a difference in selling a painted army at 120% MSRP or 40% MSRP and that mostly depends on how useful the army is in the current setup
for a pure gamer, the value of a GW product is short lived, hence why 3rd parties and 3D printing is on the rise, much more value if you can make the stuff you need for cheap and throw it away after rather than buy an expensive display model and shelf it shortly after
Harry, bring this ring to Narnia or the Sith will take the Enterprise
kodos wrote: the value of a GW model comes from 3 parts
the model itself, the material, production and design cost
how useful and rare it is to the game, aka points
and the if people like the design and want to have one just to paint it
if people just want to paint the model their value in the game does not matter and they will pay the price
if someone does not like the design and the material, but it is really useful in the game it still has high value and they will pay the higher price
yet with ever changing rules and the game value changing, people hesitate and rather buy an alternative even if they like the original models, because the value in the game is only there for a short amount of time and it is only this time were the value of the model justify the price
like the 2nd hand market, outside of oldhammer OOP stuff, the good units/armies go for a much higher price than an army with units that are of no use in the current edition
and there is a difference in selling a painted army at 120% MSRP or 40% MSRP and that mostly depends on how useful the army is in the current setup
for a pure gamer, the value of a GW product is short lived, hence why 3rd parties and 3D printing is on the rise, much more value if you can make the stuff you need for cheap and throw it away after rather than buy an expensive display model and shelf it shortly after
You make some decent points. It's true that rarer and "better, game-wise" models will sell for more second hand. But I think that's kind of a seperate thing.
It's not good imo if miniature retail price is strongly correlated to game performance. They're expensive enough already, nobody should need to pay a premium for something as arbirtrary and intangible as "table-top performance"; especially considering the majority of miniatures sold never even see the tabletop. If that is the case, then it's dodgey. And if it that is the case then we should rightly see the opposite: discounts for models that are not high-performers, game-wise.
As far as I'm aware - and I maybe wrong - it's not the case. The price is dictated by size, rarity (which matters to collectors and painters as well as gamers) and complexity of the sculpt.
It's true there's a connection though. I don't think it's a coincidence that "the best" models (game-wise) are almost always huge. I maybe wrong, but I can't think of any really-powerful guard-sized models in the game. Which is a shame really. I guess that's GW way of artificially ensuring you pay fisftfulls for powerful units: make them big and detailed and/or rare collectors items.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2023/05/20 10:25:13
kodos was talking about the second-hand market value, which is different from retail price. GW aren't just trying to make the biggest profit on each type of kit, but rather the biggest overall profit. So they might have some kits be overpriced for tactical reasons, even though nobody will buy an ugly weak unit. GW are not making the costliest armiest the most OP, look at Custodes, some of their lists relied heavily on FW but their core units are some of the cheapest dollar to pts conversion you can get. GW also doesn't reliably buff or nerf the most/least popular units, look at Drukhari Beasts and Grey Knight Dread Knights, both have been bad and good respectively forever.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2023/05/20 11:37:51
Being a noob, I didn't know there were websites dedicated to statistics on this kind of stuff. Checking those it seems that the armies are actually surprisingly well balanced.
On the webiste I found, of the forces that had a representation over 3%, the win-rate differed by only about 10% between factions and they all hovered around 50%.
Drukhari had a win rate of 50.3% and Aledari had a huge win-rate of 62.5% in one set of stats (but "only 53.3%" in the other) . However, both of those factions were so under-represented that you could barely take anything meaningful from those numbers.
I know these statistics are quite limited due to the small playing pool (relatively - you'd really need millions of games to get sold statistics). But it's what we've got and they're still enough to make it pretty obvious there has been gigantic massive buckets of BS spouted in this thread.
From my small but growing knowledge of statistics you don't need millions of datapoints, a couple of thousand will already be plenty. A 3-month period is too short to get solid evidence of what to change about most factions, another reason to move to annual balance updates.
Spoletta wrote: 9th edition received critics on many aspects.
Balance wasn't one of these. It is commonly accepted as the most balanced version of 40k ever.
Only the talking heads would have you believe that, Drukhari, AdMech, Harlequins and Custodes were all busted. Guard and Tau were useless, this is no different from 6th editions Eldar gak or 7th edition's decurion winners and CAD losers. 9th is balanced now, but look at how we got here and tell me that it was a guaranteed shot at success, look at how people thought the most recent balance patch was going to cause havoc. The game is balanced by happenstance, not by design and if GW continues to rely on happenstance 10th will most likely start the same way 9th did, with several factions that are tier 4, a few tier 1 factions and most falling around tier 2/3 and it will continue that way until we get 6-10 changes and GW happens upon balance after making Eldar T4 and giving Orks M10 to make up for perceived rules problems that are actually core the faction identity and the imbalance could have been fixed with proper pre-release testing after all rules changes have been made and against a wide range of factions using every datasheet in the codex after a thorough baseline based on mathematical performance in various scenarios.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2023/05/21 07:43:59
Lord Damocles wrote: Also, 9th books for the most part aren't internally balanced at all.
Still, the variety in units taken across the board is higher than in any edition before, meaning internal balance - despite not being great - also was better than ever before.
7 Ork facts people always get wrong: Ragnar did not win against Thrakka, but suffered two crushing defeats within a few days of each other. A lasgun is powerful enough to sever an ork's appendage or head in a single, well aimed shot. Orks meks have a better understanding of electrics and mechanics than most Tech Priests. Orks actually do not think that purple makes them harder to see. The joke was made canon by Alex Stewart's Caphias Cain books. Gharkull Blackfang did not even come close to killing the emperor. Orks can be corrupted by chaos, but few of them have any interest in what chaos offers. Orks do not have the power of believe.
Lord Damocles wrote: Also, 9th books for the most part aren't internally balanced at all.
It's not so bad, while the choice between a 0 pt S6 AP-3 D1 weapon and 0 pt S7 AP-4 D2 weapon is utterly insane, if you have 1-2 characters taking that option it really isn't relevant overall. I think especially at release most of the 9th edition codexes have had good internal balance, AdMech vs Drukhari and Necrons vs Space Marines were both externally balanced matchups as well. My biggest problems with 9th have been the nonsensical rules like 1W CSM, titan-killer lasguns and magical Marine armour.
Lord Damocles wrote: Also, 9th books for the most part aren't internally balanced at all.
Still, the variety in units taken across the board is higher than in any edition before, meaning internal balance - despite not being great - also was better than ever before.
Has internal balance in 9th been getting better or worse since release? Will we see the greatest internal balance ever in 10th? I presume we won't get wargear costs in 10th, so I find it very likely we will see a tonne of weapons which would only be good on planet bowling bowl or in a cityscape end up being trash because there is no pts incentive to take them despite them filling a niche poorly that some other unit fills far better. Like maybe the heavy boltgun is strictly better than the assault bolter against tanks, but that's irrelevant if both are trash against tanks and lascannons are awesome against tanks, because then you're either not taking Intercessors, taking Intercessors with assault bolters, you're still not taking heavy boltguns.
Lord Damocles wrote: Also, 9th books for the most part aren't internally balanced at all.
It's not so bad, while the choice between a 0 pt S6 AP-3 D1 weapon and 0 pt S7 AP-4 D2 weapon is utterly insane, if you have 1-2 characters taking that option it really isn't relevant overall. I think especially at release most of the 9th edition codexes have had good internal balance, AdMech vs Drukhari and Necrons vs Space Marines were both externally balanced matchups as well. My biggest problems with 9th have been the nonsensical rules like 1W CSM, titan-killer lasguns and magical Marine armour.
Lord Damocles wrote: Also, 9th books for the most part aren't internally balanced at all.
Still, the variety in units taken across the board is higher than in any edition before, meaning internal balance - despite not being great - also was better than ever before.
Has internal balance in 9th been getting better or worse since release? Will we see the greatest internal balance ever in 10th? I presume we won't get wargear costs in 10th, so I find it very likely we will see a tonne of weapons which would only be good on planet bowling bowl or in a cityscape end up being trash because there is no pts incentive to take them despite them filling a niche poorly that some other unit fills far better. Like maybe the heavy boltgun is strictly better than the assault bolter against tanks, but that's irrelevant if both are trash against tanks and lascannons are awesome against tanks, because then you're either not taking Intercessors, taking Intercessors with assault bolters, you're still not taking heavy boltguns.
I very much hope that they don't continue with this "free" war-gear thing. I hope that was just a "meh whatever, new edition is coming out soon - have at it" thing at the end of 9th.
I get it ... "simpler rules" ... but that's so simple it's just dumb. I'm against anything that removes creativity and thought from the army-building process.
And really ... if you are primarily a gamer, you have some responsibility to check the rules for whatever you're buying before you drop a fistfull of cash on it. If you're building an army-list based on how-cool-the-model-looks instead of how the unit functions, maybe that partly explains some things.
Problem with that is, you go check.People tell you "play what you like", "It ain't that bad, only the top of the top go hog wild" etc and you know that in other game there are worse and better factions, and you are just not prepared for a faction being bad for years, with no reaction from GW, and not just a bit worse, but A lot worse, at a point where your factions tournament army gets beaten on a regular basis, by people just playing the good faction. And you better have picked a well played faction too. Because if you think you will a not popular one, and decide that you will try to win, but not go 'WAAC" with tournament lists, you can suddenly find out, that no one is playing the faction and the corelation of "because it is that bad" may not be the first thing you would think about.
If you have to kill, then kill in the best manner. If you slaughter, then slaughter in the best manner. Let one of you sharpen his knife so his animal feels no pain.
And really ... if you are primarily a gamer, you have some responsibility to check the rules for whatever you're buying before you drop a fistfull of cash on it. If you're building an army-list based on how-cool-the-model-looks instead of how the unit functions, maybe that partly explains some things.
Problem with that is, you go check.People tell you "play what you like", "It ain't that bad, only the top of the top go hog wild" etc and you know that in other game there are worse and better factions, and you are just not prepared for a faction being bad for years, with no reaction from GW, and not just a bit worse, but A lot worse, at a point where your factions tournament army gets beaten on a regular basis, by people just playing the good faction. And you better have picked a well played faction too. Because if you think you will a not popular one, and decide that you will try to win, but not go 'WAAC" with tournament lists, you can suddenly find out, that no one is playing the faction and the corelation of "because it is that bad" may not be the first thing you would think about.
Well, I dunno man. If that was a problem, it seems that it was solved in 9th edition. All the tournament statistics look surprisingly even.
People were telling me how much Aeldari and Drukhari (sp?) suck for half this thread, but both are sitting at above 50% win rate on the stats I looked at.
And really ... if you are primarily a gamer, you have some responsibility to check the rules for whatever you're buying before you drop a fistfull of cash on it. If you're building an army-list based on how-cool-the-model-looks instead of how the unit functions, maybe that partly explains some things.
Problem with that is, you go check.People tell you "play what you like", "It ain't that bad, only the top of the top go hog wild" etc and you know that in other game there are worse and better factions, and you are just not prepared for a faction being bad for years, with no reaction from GW, and not just a bit worse, but A lot worse, at a point where your factions tournament army gets beaten on a regular basis, by people just playing the good faction. And you better have picked a well played faction too. Because if you think you will a not popular one, and decide that you will try to win, but not go 'WAAC" with tournament lists, you can suddenly find out, that no one is playing the faction and the corelation of "because it is that bad" may not be the first thing you would think about.
Well, I dunno man. If that was a problem, it seems that it was solved in 9th edition. All the tournament statistics look surprisingly even.
People were telling me how much Aeldari and Drukhari (sp?) suck for half this thread, but both are sitting at above 50% win rate on the stats I looked at.
You're looking at a snapshot, we have had a balance patch every 3 months. With the current one being the best and the one before that being pretty good as well. Before that there were issue after issue and for every two steps forward GW took they took a step back, like when they nerfed Drukhari and buffed them at the same time causing one OP Drukhari list to be replaced by another one.
Win % also says a lot less than you would think when it is tournament data.
Better armies will win most of their early matches and pair up against the other better armies and start losing and will get something like a 55% win rate on average.
Worse armies will lose the first few matches and then face other weak armies and start to win games and end with a 45% win rate on average.
But what if you didn't use a random swiss system for pairings and had it be round robbin or pure random? The better armies would have even higher winrates and the worse armies even lower win rates.
Early 9th at some point BA had an overall winrate at something like 40% which didn't look that bad. But if you instead looked at individual faction win rates for Blood Angels you saw that it was a garbage army at the time. Against those 55% win rate armies that only had 15% better winrate some people might think the BA player at least should have a decent 30-45% chance to win, right? Nope, it was about a 10% chance to win against those armies. Only reason BA managed to get a 40% win rate was that they only had a chance to face those good armies in the first round or two at a 5-6 round event and then had 3-5 games against armies that were also poor. So like 75% or more of the games were against other bad armies and they could then get a close to 50% chance to win against them but they had almost a 0% chance to actually win an event.
Top players also more often than not playing top armies or just specific subfactions that can skew this even more. Space Marines could have all but 1 subfaction be terrible and that subfaction only having 1 very weird build relying on expensive FW dreadnoughts that are out of stock to compete so 95% of all casual SM armies would be garbage. But in tournament data the faction could look strong since the competitive players would use 3d prints or recasts to get those out of stock needed resin models while the casuals would suffer while only using the supplied GW plastic.
Unless you understand the game and the stats be careful drawing conclusions of tournament win rates.
Secondaries can also mess with how "enjoyable" a factions win rate is. Some factions might be really bad at the table but have some really good secondaries so even though they get wiped off the table often they can still win some games just due to some special scoring rules that requires very little interaction. Most people enjoy a good game over just winning a game so if they get wiped off the table while dealing very little damage to the opponent and yet manage to win that win could feel very hollow. It is only a win on paper to them.
TLR
Win rates aren't a good representation of actual chances to win for one army against another army. This is the winrates during swiss pairings, not when random armies meet other random armies. Win rates that only looked at the first round of any event would reflect better what people think win rates represent. A 55% army against a 45% army is in reality more an 80/20 skew if lucky and could be as bad as 90/10 or worse when you look at the individual stats. Game is less balanced than you think!
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2023/05/21 18:50:57
Klickor wrote: Win % also says a lot less than you would think when it is tournament data.
Better armies will win most of their early matches and pair up against the other better armies and start losing and will get something like a 55% win rate on average.
Worse armies will lose the first few matches and then face other weak armies and start to win games and end with a 45% win rate on average.
But what if you didn't use a random swiss system for pairings and had it be round robbin or pure random? The better armies would have even higher winrates and the worse armies even lower win rates.
Early 9th at some point BA had an overall winrate at something like 40% which didn't look that bad. But if you instead looked at individual faction win rates for Blood Angels you saw that it was a garbage army at the time. Against those 55% win rate armies that only had 15% better winrate some people might think the BA player at least should have a decent 30-45% chance to win, right? Nope, it was about a 10% chance to win against those armies. Only reason BA managed to get a 40% win rate was that they only had a chance to face those good armies in the first round or two at a 5-6 round event and then had 3-5 games against armies that were also poor. So like 75% or more of the games were against other bad armies and they could then get a close to 50% chance to win against them but they had almost a 0% chance to actually win an event.
Top players also more often than not playing top armies or just specific subfactions that can skew this even more. Space Marines could have all but 1 subfaction be terrible and that subfaction only having 1 very weird build relying on expensive FW dreadnoughts that are out of stock to compete so 95% of all casual SM armies would be garbage. But in tournament data the faction could look strong since the competitive players would use 3d prints or recasts to get those out of stock needed resin models while the casuals would suffer while only using the supplied GW plastic.
Unless you understand the game and the stats be careful drawing conclusions of tournament win rates.
Secondaries can also mess with how "enjoyable" a factions win rate is. Some factions might be really bad at the table but have some really good secondaries so even though they get wiped off the table often they can still win some games just due to some special scoring rules that requires very little interaction. Most people enjoy a good game over just winning a game so if they get wiped off the table while dealing very little damage to the opponent and yet manage to win that win could feel very hollow. It is only a win on paper to them.
TLR
Win rates aren't a good representation of actual chances to win for one army against another army. This is the winrates during swiss pairings, not when random armies meet other random armies. Win rates that only looked at the first round of any event would reflect better what people think win rates represent. A 55% army against a 45% army is in reality more an 80/20 skew if lucky and could be as bad as 90/10 or worse when you look at the individual stats. Game is less balanced than you think!
And don't forget, those win %? They don't represent you. Or those you'll be playing against.
Win rates, top 4s, twip and internal codex diversity and then you'll have a broad view. GW cannot care about any individual's experience of how powerful an army is, some people will have a lot more success or failure than the average but if you change things around for the individual not having fun or winning tournaments all over the place then you risk ruining it for the average player. For your "win rates don't say much example" you need to find something with at least 45% win rate because 40% is already something that is sending the red blinkers flashing that something needs to be fixed. You also have internal balance to look at regardless of whether a faction is 55% win rate it could need some buffs to certain units.
It's possible that Blood Angels will just be unviable at the top meta sometimes because of how the meta shapes out, trying to fix it could make the game worse for other factions. You also have to allow for lists to adapt to the meta, that's what perfect imbalance means and is exactly what I want.
9th is considered the best balanced Edition because there were official changes to get better balancing
in the past such changes were made by the community and not everywhere the same or even accepted
like if 5th was better balanced than 9th depends were you were playing the game rather on the rules itself
Harry, bring this ring to Narnia or the Sith will take the Enterprise
R