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 RaptorusRex wrote:
Really surprised SM are that low. Maybe it's tournament players not playing them, but OOM is really strong for taking out big centerpieces in my experience.

OoM is quite overrated honestly. It's really good against "all eggs in one basket"-lists, decent againg some lists, and near worthless against some lists.
Eldar and GSC (and other horde lists) for instance, can easily play around OoM, or flat out ignore it.

yeah. people are mixing up things sometimes. My wake up call was finding out that sports schools and trainers think about themselfs, their money, contracts, future contracts AND then about their students, and after that their welfare.

 RaptorusRex wrote:
Really surprised SM are that low. Maybe it's tournament players not playing them, but OOM is really strong for taking out big centerpieces in my experience.

Guard are in a rough place. The army feels like it should work, but a lot of its really good buffs are contingent on staying still, which is not the name of the game in most scenarios.

OOM is good. I think the problem for SM is that's pretty much all they have. Their datasheets are OK, their strats are OK and they have some nice synergies but those things don't make you a top tournament army. They're up against Eldar, who are broken in numerous ways, GSC who pretty much play their own version of 40k with all their weird shenanigans, and Custodes who essentially shut down the Fight phase for everyone else while being incredibly resilient. Then there are a bunch of armies that don't have faction abilities as good as OOM, but just have better datasheets and synergies.

SM aren't bad, like LoV or DG. They're just really middle of the pack, which is reflected in their win rate.

They are in many ways Codex Desolators. And it so happens that some of the best factions can mitigate the impact of that unit type.

Are we sure that GW Marketing has not fiddled with the stats, to sell more Eldar, GSC and Knights?

As to the conversation, games should be balanced.
If a company wants to tailor the New Big Thing to be overpowered on release, that is on them. But, once they have sold enough of the NBT, it gets nerfed into line with everything else.
Games should be based on many factors, such as balanced lists and player skill, but not inherrant strength of the army as a whole (or selected OP units).

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
winrates don't matter for the company tho, its all about profit.

I'd actually argue that they think they're important, but that they don't understand them.

They see a flat 50% and immediately think "Job's a good 'un!" and move onto the army that's at 43% or 62% to "fix" them. It might never occur to them that the reason Army X is at a flat 50% is because it's abusing a combo of two or three units, and completely ignoring almost the rest of the entire Codex, meaning that the army is fundamentally broken but the high-level 50% win rate isn't showing the problems and is, in fact, masking them.

This what I mean when I bring up the Dunning–Kruger effect. They don't know what they think they know, and talk confidently about the successes they've had and changes they'll make without any real understanding of why the game is the way it is.

 Skinnereal wrote:
Are we sure that GW Marketing has not fiddled with the stats, to sell more Eldar, GSC and Knights?

Hanlon's Razor would say otherwise.

And games should be balanced. One such lever they could pull to increase balance could be... oh I dunno... a more granular and flexible points system. But that'd just be crazy. It's not like they've ever tried that over the previous 9 editions of the game.

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:

ccs wrote:
I'm sure that GW knows how to run their business better than you think you know how to run their business.

That table of win rates at the start of this thread says they don't. Do you have anything to add here besides asserting that GW must know what they're doing because GW is doing it?

I'm sure there's more involved in running a multi-billion $ earning, global, multi-faceted, publicly traded company that's an (if not the) industry leader than the mere tourney rankings for 1 of its games.
That you disagree proves my point.

ccs wrote:

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:

ccs wrote:
I'm sure that GW knows how to run their business better than you think you know how to run their business.

That table of win rates at the start of this thread says they don't. Do you have anything to add here besides asserting that GW must know what they're doing because GW is doing it?

I'm sure there's more involved in running a multi-billion $ earning, global, multi-faceted, publicly traded company that's an (if not the) industry leader than the mere tourney rankings for 1 of its games.
That you disagree proves my point.

You have to write good rules as well, which you can split into innumerable sub-categories of good game design and GW has failed at all of them with 10th edition.

The fact that GW is the industry leader pretty much proves you don't have to write good rules.

You can definitely make the argument that good rules help, but they are not a priority.

or you can say once you reach a critical mass of players, it does not matter any more what you are doing as long as there is something new every once in a while

 Tyran wrote:
The fact that GW is the industry leader pretty much proves you don't have to write good rules.

You can definitely make the argument that good rules help, but they are not a priority.

Exactly. You need to write good enough rules. And that is the general state of 40k RT - present.

if you are GW, anyone else needs to write perfect rules for people even to consider looking at it

ccs wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
The fact that GW is the industry leader pretty much proves you don't have to write good rules.

You can definitely make the argument that good rules help, but they are not a priority.

Exactly. You need to write good enough rules. And that is the general state of 40k RT - present.

Aha and at what point exactly are rules not good enough anymore, if even GW's more favourable looking very generalized metawatch statistic completely fails to hide that the game is currently pretty much in it's most unbalanced state since people have even seriously started to make such statistics?

Even with the most favourable reading of this hot mess, just 11 of the factions are in GW's own quite generous balanced zone(while using more than just GT data, without excluding mirror matches, etc...) while 15 of the factions aka the majority are not, and that is after emergency nerfs and with multiple of the armies in the too weak zone already being propped up by broken allys(Knights).

gunchar wrote:
Aha and at what point exactly are rules not good enough anymore

when people actually stop playing 40k and go for something else

 kodos wrote:
when people actually stop playing 40k and go for something else

And even then I would say when people actually abandon the GW ecosystem.

I'm doubtful GW cares that much about people that left 40k to play 30k or AoS.

one could argue that 30k and Kill Team are just there to catch people who are upset with 40k and give them an alternative so they don't leave

ccs wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
The fact that GW is the industry leader pretty much proves you don't have to write good rules.

You can definitely make the argument that good rules help, but they are not a priority.

Exactly. You need to write good enough rules. And that is the general state of 40k RT - present.

You can write bad rules too. As long you more or less have a monopoly it doesn't matter. GW are in the Apple in the US situation. The only thing that could change them is if for some reason a region like US or main land europe decided to become very angry at GW, and went full recast. Only if the loses from something were that 500-1000k big, someone higher up could potentialy wake up. They had a wake up like that in 7th ed, from what industry people were talking on various podcasts.

Let us not forget there was a time when everyone was jumping ship from GW to Privateer Press and better rules and tighter rules writing was one of the big contributing factors.

It wasn't all, but I think it highlights how even a monoply, if it lets one area get too weak, will create a void for a competitor to rise up. Furthermore it shows that its rarely just one thing, there are often many factors in customer choices and behaviours and trying to single out one thing is always going to trip up with "well actually" etc...

Rules are one part of many parts that contributes toward a successful wargame miniature company. One tool in the box; one cog in the machine. The better they are the better it helps the whole.

 Overread wrote:
Let us not forget there was a time when everyone was jumping ship from GW to Privateer Press and better rules and tighter rules writing was one of the big contributing factors.

It wasn't all, but I think it highlights how even a monoply, if it lets one area get too weak, will create a void for a competitor to rise up. Furthermore it shows that its rarely just one thing, there are often many factors in customer choices and behaviours and trying to single out one thing is always going to trip up with "well actually" etc...

Rules are one part of many parts that contributes toward a successful wargame miniature company. One tool in the box; one cog in the machine. The better they are the better it helps the whole.

And then unfortunately, Privateer Press started slipping. Their rules got worse, their community support got worse, models, SKU... all those issues, around when 8th Edition released. I saw the local Warmahordes community all just shift back to 40k.

 Overread wrote:
Let us not forget there was a time when everyone was jumping ship from GW to Privateer Press and better rules and tighter rules writing was one of the big contributing factors.

It wasn't all, but I think it highlights how even a monoply, if it lets one area get too weak, will create a void for a competitor to rise up. Furthermore it shows that its rarely just one thing, there are often many factors in customer choices and behaviours and trying to single out one thing is always going to trip up with "well actually" etc...

Rules are one part of many parts that contributes toward a successful wargame miniature company. One tool in the box; one cog in the machine. The better they are the better it helps the whole.

Wasn't the problem with warmachine the fact that it got very popular, people still remember it fondly here, but they couldn't produce enough models. So stores were ordering and not getting merch to sell. People wanted to play, so they were ordering online, slowly killing the stores, to which the store reaction was to not allow warmachine to be played. Thing is GW is slowly moving in to the same spot. They are under printing stuff, and their policy towards or against stores outside of UK, US and west europe is not gaining them many friends around the world. Recasting was always popular here. But in 8th people weren't killing themselfs to straight up rip off GW box designs and start selling them, before the stores can even get their hands on the boxes.

 Thadin wrote:

 Overread wrote:
Let us not forget there was a time when everyone was jumping ship from GW to Privateer Press and better rules and tighter rules writing was one of the big contributing factors.

It wasn't all, but I think it highlights how even a monoply, if it lets one area get too weak, will create a void for a competitor to rise up. Furthermore it shows that its rarely just one thing, there are often many factors in customer choices and behaviours and trying to single out one thing is always going to trip up with "well actually" etc...

Rules are one part of many parts that contributes toward a successful wargame miniature company. One tool in the box; one cog in the machine. The better they are the better it helps the whole.

And then unfortunately, Privateer Press started slipping. Their rules got worse, their community support got worse, models, SKU... all those issues, around when 8th Edition released. I saw the local Warmahordes community all just shift back to 40k.

Part of the problem was WarmaHordes being hyped as “not GW”. And then, arguably inevitably, new editions came out, more rules were added, stuff shifted in perceived rankings and boof, doing everything which had irked their customers about GW was manifesting.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 Thadin wrote:

 Overread wrote:
Let us not forget there was a time when everyone was jumping ship from GW to Privateer Press and better rules and tighter rules writing was one of the big contributing factors.

It wasn't all, but I think it highlights how even a monoply, if it lets one area get too weak, will create a void for a competitor to rise up. Furthermore it shows that its rarely just one thing, there are often many factors in customer choices and behaviours and trying to single out one thing is always going to trip up with "well actually" etc...

Rules are one part of many parts that contributes toward a successful wargame miniature company. One tool in the box; one cog in the machine. The better they are the better it helps the whole.

And then unfortunately, Privateer Press started slipping. Their rules got worse, their community support got worse, models, SKU... all those issues, around when 8th Edition released. I saw the local Warmahordes community all just shift back to 40k.

Part of the problem was WarmaHordes being hyped as “not GW”. And then, arguably inevitably, new editions came out, more rules were added, stuff shifted in perceived rankings and boof, doing everything which had irked their customers about GW was manifesting.

Indeed. At the same time that perception of GW was generally turning up. Optimism was at a decent level around the release of 8e.

It's such a shame, because honestly most of my best Wargaming memories come from moments playing Warmahordes.

PP couldn't afford to gak all over the place like GW can.

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:

ccs wrote:
I'm sure that GW knows how to run their business better than you think you know how to run their business.

That table of win rates at the start of this thread says they don't. Do you have anything to add here besides asserting that GW must know what they're doing because GW is doing it?

Table shows there's imbalance in game.

Imbalance leads to profit.

It's feature. Not bug.

Removed.

Dudeface wrote:

The salary or competence of the staff is not the only factor at play, nor will hiring more help necessarily. The Indexes were previously written very quickly without due time, releasing them as full codex rules with ~6-7 times the number of detachments, relics and Enhancements wouldn't have stood any better chance.

Yeah it would, if you hire more people and pay them better they'll do better work. It's not rocket surgery.

Dudeface wrote:
The business driven decisions and timescales are more of a problem than the salary. Also they won't hire a 6 figure salary in GBP because that'd be ridiculous by any metric.

Well, doesn't have to be GBP. Rountree's compensation is like $1.3 mil, so they can afford 100k for a few design lead types.

Dudeface wrote:
What I think you mean to say is "hire more staff, pay better, give them more time and allow more community input" which simply isn't on the agenda right now.

That's not what I "meant" to say, it's very much implied by what I said, so this condescending nonsense about "what I think you mean" should stop if you were actually parsing what I put in my post. But I don't think you'll apologize for being rude, it's not in your temperament.

And it not being on the agenda is a problem, a problem I'm very much pointing out.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Dudeface wrote:
Again, not relevant, but stop applying US standards to UK job markets. Yes they could upheave their entire development cycle and I think we'd all be for giving them more time, but they're not in a position to do so currently. They'd have to let 10th pan out for 5+ years to get the lead time for 11th.

They're definitely in a position to do so currently. They have almost 3 years until they have to hit 11th for stockholders. They don't need 5 years if they're handling it well, hiring competent people, and letting them do their job.

"Oh, a balanced game is too much trouble" is such BS. Everyone who claims this just flat out doesn't *want* a balanced game, because they enjoy unfair games and getting unearned wins.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

ccs wrote:


I'm sure that GW knows how to run their business better than you think you know how to run their business.
But you know what? You should email them your ideas on these subjects.

That's an appeal to authority, not an argument. Try again chief.

Hecaton wrote:

"Oh, a balanced game is too much trouble" is such BS. Everyone who claims this just flat out doesn't *want* a balanced game, because they enjoy unfair games and getting unearned wins.

It's not too much trouble.

It's too unprofitable.

GW is making their profit from imbalance...Why on earth would GW kill off their best marketing tool? When players allow themselves to be exploited for their cash why on earth would GW stop exploiting?

Exploit, exploit, exploit, exploit. Company isn't about giving good product. It's about transfering money from your wallet to their wallet.

Slipspace wrote:

But why? That makes no business sense in the first place. In the UK, if you wanted to outbid the competition you'd be able to do it for around £50-60k, so you're already going in too high. The main problem is what your expected ROI is here. You're talking about doubling (or more) the salaries of your designers, along with the one-off costs of getting rid of the current team. Does better balance lead to a significant enough increase in profit to justify the extra spend? Does the extra spend actually guarantee you get people in capable of balancing a tabletop wargame? There are similarities between video game design and TTG design, but there are also massive differences that mean the skills are not necessarily the same between the two groups.

There are tabletop game designers out there with consummate resumes and lots of experience. Even people who bridge the gap, like Sandy Petersen. Now, of course, the suits wouldn't like it because when the get their bs going on about how the game needs to be a certain way they'd get told to their face they're wrong... and they'd have to have people who don't follow the anti-gameplay corporate culture that GW has.

Slipspace wrote:
Paying lots more money to a bunch of people is not the answer to getting better balance, IMO. What's needed is a corporate shift to make balance a priority. You can have the best experts working for you, paid top salaries, but if the company doesn't value the job they do it doesn't matter.

If the company is paying them money then by definition it's valuing the work they do.

Slipspace wrote:

It depends on the company. Obviously massive multinationals based in the UK will pay internationally competitive salaries easily in the 7 or 8-figure range plus bonuses. But most companies are smallish organisations. The UK average CEO salary is apparently around £200k according to Glassdoor. Bear in mind that includes everything from corporate giants to mid-size companies with fairly small turnovers.

Right, we're talking about GW though. Rountree's compensation is like $1.3 million.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

winrates don't matter for the company tho, its all about profit. So even if the balance is terrible, if 40l keeps selling more than the last quarter, from the company's point of view, its working properly

Sure, but if the game was better they'd have more retention, and it'd be easier to get casuals involved. Dunno about larger trends, but where I'm at a lot of people played 10e a few times, stopped buying stuff, and are playing ASOIAF, Infinity, or Legion instead.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

ccs wrote:

I'm sure there's more involved in running a multi-billion $ earning, global, multi-faceted, publicly traded company that's an (if not the) industry leader than the mere tourney rankings for 1 of its games.
That you disagree proves my point.

You're trying to say that the tourney rankings for 40k, their flagship game, are not a problem. That's different from the claim you're making here, which is a wildly unreasonable appeal to authority.

When a new player tries 40k and finds out that they can't have fun games with their friends because it's wildly unbalanced, that's lost sales. And that's basically how 10th works right now.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

ccs wrote:

Exactly. You need to write good enough rules. And that is the general state of 40k RT - present.

No, they're not "good enough" for anyone with a sense of sportsmanship. Part of the reason the 40k tournament scene is so toxic is anyone who likes fair games and sportsmanship leaves for greener pastures - so you're left with the cheaters, toxic CAAC types, etc.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Karol wrote:

Wasn't the problem with warmachine the fact that it got very popular, people still remember it fondly here, but they couldn't produce enough models. So stores were ordering and not getting merch to sell. People wanted to play, so they were ordering online, slowly killing the stores, to which the store reaction was to not allow warmachine to be played. Thing is GW is slowly moving in to the same spot. They are under printing stuff, and their policy towards or against stores outside of UK, US and west europe is not gaining them many friends around the world. Recasting was always popular here. But in 8th people weren't killing themselfs to straight up rip off GW box designs and start selling them, before the stores can even get their hands on the boxes.

No, that's not the reason. The reason was that PP did the MK 3 rollout and didn't do a playtest like for MK 2, and took the advice of various big retailers in the US (like the guy who runs Black Diamond Games, who *hated* PP and was a GW shill and was giving them advice to fail) instead of making a good, well-playtested game. It's not unlike the bad edition rollouts for 40k, honestly.

There was also Brian Wilson's general contempt for the gaming space, and a few own goals with his idiocy.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

tneva82 wrote:

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:

ccs wrote:
I'm sure that GW knows how to run their business better than you think you know how to run their business.

That table of win rates at the start of this thread says they don't. Do you have anything to add here besides asserting that GW must know what they're doing because GW is doing it?

Table shows there's imbalance in game.

Imbalance leads to profit.

It's feature. Not bug.

Sergeantbob you should know that by now after being years here.

Balance leads to more profit.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

tneva82 wrote:


It's not too much trouble.

It's too unprofitable.

GW is making their profit from imbalance...Why on earth would GW kill off their best marketing tool? When players allow themselves to be exploited for their cash why on earth would GW stop exploiting?

Exploit, exploit, exploit, exploit. Company isn't about giving good product. It's about transfering money from your wallet to their wallet.

The whales who metachase are overwhelmed in number by the people who play the game, realize it's not balanced, and don't engage with it.

Why are you saying that their exploitation is a good thing?

Hecaton wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

The salary or competence of the staff is not the only factor at play, nor will hiring more help necessarily. The Indexes were previously written very quickly without due time, releasing them as full codex rules with ~6-7 times the number of detachments, relics and Enhancements wouldn't have stood any better chance.

Yeah it would, if you hire more people and pay them better they'll do better work. It's not rocket surgery.

You hire someone to do a 25 day task in 10 days, doesn't matter how much you pay them.

Dudeface wrote:
The business driven decisions and timescales are more of a problem than the salary. Also they won't hire a 6 figure salary in GBP because that'd be ridiculous by any metric.

Well, doesn't have to be GBP. Rountree's compensation is like $1.3 mil, so they can afford 100k for a few design lead

An annual CEO bonus is not comparable to a salary.

Dudeface wrote:
What I think you mean to say is "hire more staff, pay better, give them more time and allow more community input" which simply isn't on the agenda right now.

That's not what I "meant" to say, it's very much implied by what I said, so this condescending nonsense about "what I think you mean" should stop if you were actually parsing what I put in my post. But I don't think you'll apologize for being rude, it's not in your temperament.

Well, perhaps we're similar in some regards.

And it not being on the agenda is a problem, a problem I'm very much pointing out.

Yuuup.

Dudeface wrote:
Again, not relevant, but stop applying US standards to UK job markets. Yes they could upheave their entire development cycle and I think we'd all be for giving them more time, but they're not in a position to do so currently. They'd have to let 10th pan out for 5+ years to get the lead time for 11th.

They're definitely in a position to do so currently. They have almost 3 years until they have to hit 11th for stockholders. They don't need 5 years if they're handling it well, hiring competent people, and letting them do their job.

"Oh, a balanced game is too much trouble" is such BS. Everyone who claims this just flat out doesn't *want* a balanced game, because they enjoy unfair games and getting unearned wins.

Yes, you're assuming those staff only have 40k to work on. It's a fair assumption 10th books aren't done. Do you suggest they stop work on 10th now to make 11th?

Dudeface wrote:
You hire someone to do a 25 day task in 10 days, doesn't matter how much you pay them.

Well, it does - you just hire 2.5 people for 2.5 times the price.

Dudeface wrote:
An annual CEO bonus is not comparable to a salary.

For this purpose it is.

Dudeface wrote:

Well, perhaps we're similar in some regards.

It might look that way on the outside, but our mirror neurons fundamentally work differently - I find fair games to be sporting, you don't.

Dudeface wrote:

Yes, you're assuming those staff only have 40k to work on. It's a fair assumption 10th books aren't done. Do you suggest they stop work on 10th now to make 11th?

There are multiple teams involved. Getting good work done requires hiring good people. Who cares what the current crop of clowns do with 10th while it's being developed?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
winrates don't matter for the company tho, its all about profit.

I'd actually argue that they think they're important, but that they don't understand them.

They see a flat 50% and immediately think "Job's a good 'un!" and move onto the army that's at 43% or 62% to "fix" them. It might never occur to them that the reason Army X is at a flat 50% is because it's abusing a combo of two or three units, and completely ignoring almost the rest of the entire Codex, meaning that the army is fundamentally broken but the high-level 50% win rate isn't showing the problems and is, in fact, masking them.

Strangely enough, Stu Black mentioned all those things in the latest Meta Watch podcast. He is aware that Win Rates are a crude instrument that can hide other issues that also need to be looked at and addressed.

Now maybe he just talks a good game, but maybe they are actually trying to improve the balance of the game in multiple ways.

Hecaton wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
You hire someone to do a 25 day task in 10 days, doesn't matter how much you pay them.

Well, it does - you just hire 2.5 people for 2.5 times the price.

Dudeface wrote:
An annual CEO bonus is not comparable to a salary.

For this purpose it is.

Dudeface wrote:

Well, perhaps we're similar in some regards.

It might look that way on the outside, but our mirror neurons fundamentally work differently - I find fair games to be sporting, you don't.

Dudeface wrote:

Yes, you're assuming those staff only have 40k to work on. It's a fair assumption 10th books aren't done. Do you suggest they stop work on 10th now to make 11th?

There are multiple teams involved. Getting good work done requires hiring good people. Who cares what the current crop of clowns do with 10th while it's being developed?

They have 3 years to get it right from June just gone for the imaginary team they haven't hired yet?

I value a fair game, I do find them sporting. Beyond taking random swipes at my character, do you have any substance to add?

Beyond "GW dumb, throw money at it" there isn't much to work with.