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Made in us
Tzeentch Veteran Marine with Psychic Potential





Yo yo yo! I'm curious if there's ever been any attempt at a community driven rules/balance council type thing for 40k? Kind of similar to what Smogon is to the Pokemon community or fighting game communities deciding on which stages are fit for competitive play. Basically just the community filling in obvious rules gaps, stuff like that. For example, CSM still only having 1 wound - since we already know how much 2 wound plague and rubric marines cost, seems like a pretty simple extrapolation to agree on a fair price for 2 wound berzerkers and noise marines.

Has there ever been anything attempted for 40k like that? Is the scene too small/spread out for anyone to agree on anything? Too "house rule"-y for legit tournaments?

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Decrepit Dakkanaut





There used to be back when GW took a whole edition to FAQ things.

The community would never reach consensus on solutions and without a centralized governing body that people trust you'd just fragment players -- which is exactly what happened when ITC got involved in the past.

We have a 3 month dataslate and 6 month point adjustments now. You won't get much better than that.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/01/19 01:11:47


 
   
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 Daedalus81 wrote:
We have a 3 month dataslate and 6 month point adjustments now. You won't get much better than that.
But we should...

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The easiest way to do this, is to just play: OPEN. Make up your own rules!
   
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 H.B.M.C. wrote:
 Daedalus81 wrote:
We have a 3 month dataslate and 6 month point adjustments now. You won't get much better than that.
But we should...


In terms of timing. GW is going to screw stuff up with their current process, but you don't want to change things so often that heads are spinning. We have enough of that with the pace of book releases.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/01/19 01:35:48


 
   
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Stealthy Warhound Titan Princeps






No two people in this community let alone the wider community agree on what's good or what's bad.

This existed up until 9th edition, with the ITC and ETC and NOVA Open tournament circuits, though. Enough people (begrudgingly or otherwise) followed along that it worked out, but once a lot of the ideas of ITC/NOVA were absorbed in the core rules, people gave up on having their own and just used the official stuff.

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 Daedalus81 wrote:
In terms of timing. GW is going to screw stuff up with their current process, but you don't want to change things so often that heads are spinning. We have enough of that with the pace of book releases.
Fair enough, but double the CA releases per year just means double the chance to screw it up per year.

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"GW really needs to understand 'Less is more' when it comes to AoS." - Wha-Mu-077

 
   
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The best thing that happened to warhammer fantasy was when they put sigmar in with no official point system.

The top community point systems were all head and shoulders more balanced than what gw brings us, because the community isn't making points up for model churn. We had about a solid year where the game was as close to being balanced as it had been twenty years prior in sixth (to a lot of people anyway - it certainly felt like a lot of fun and was a blast for the people i played with and the tournament community I was a part of back in 2015-2016 before official points came out and went back to business as usual with the bad balance).

However, trying to do a community edition is doomed to fail because as I learned as being a part of the community sigmar points systems back in the day - you'll never get people to agree on anything.

You'll have people wanting to use math to balance it, people that swear you can't balance the game with math at all, people who think that their favorite faction needs a few point shaves here and there to make them more optimal, and people that hate the other faction trying to jack their points up to punish them - all in the name of a more fair and equal game.

Just not happening. GW official will be the only way 99.999% of the community will ever go - no matter how rancid the balance they produce decade after decade is.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/01/19 02:40:14


 
   
Made in us
Powerful Pegasus Knight





 Daedalus81 wrote:
There used to be back when GW took a whole edition to FAQ things.

The community would never reach consensus on solutions and without a centralized governing body that people trust you'd just fragment players -- which is exactly what happened when ITC got involved in the past.

We have a 3 month dataslate and 6 month point adjustments now. You won't get much better than that.

exactly. Just look at how the WHFB community fractured along different game philosophy lines.
   
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 auticus wrote:
The best thing that happened to warhammer fantasy was when they put sigmar in with no official point system.

No it wasn't. They killed the old game and crippled the new one. It took a long time for AoS to dig itself out of the hole they dug for it at launch.

I've no idea how you can take the stance that a community system is so much better and also that its a complete failure because no one will agree. Those aren't reconcilable, no matter how much fun you had with a local group.

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Longtime Dakkanaut





It happened once during 7th edition, where the game was so bad that any competitive event was a joke.

What it happened is that the game was split in 3 "versions", canon, ITC and ETC.

Then 8th came, and while the game was a lot better, the players still didn't want to abandon this metod, but the differences between the systems were minimal, mostly the missions.
This board has seen some very heated discussions on ITC vs GW missions.

Then 9th came and incorporated some of the ITC mission design (in particular, the selection of secondaries) into the standard missions, briding the gap and mending the fracture.
Today we have mostly one system, and is the official one. The game is also in a quite decent state, so there is no need for "external help" like during 7th.
   
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Longtime Dakkanaut




I mean, to some extend, the 40K (tournament-) community does just that.

Most tournaments require specific bases, either the LVO base chart or a more/less recent version of the bases miniatures are sold as. A classic houserule with no equivalent in the GW rules.

Most tournaments only allow/use the minimum-size of table-dimensions for the GT mission, though you could vary table-size/shape over that size willy-nilly, RAW.

Chess clock rules, code of conduct. Etc.. plenty of that around.

But it's gotta be stuff where you genuinely get a large consensus on.


You also still have things like "LVO judge ruling" and a fully fledged WTC FAQ, but as in 7th / 8th you can see some fracturing there, as these sometimes disagree on how things are played and people can get very (!!) heated debating these things (e.g. can an Ares/Harridan move turn 1 or not, etc..).

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/01/19 08:48:02


 
   
Made in ie
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Voss wrote:
 auticus wrote:
The best thing that happened to warhammer fantasy was when they put sigmar in with no official point system.

No it wasn't. They killed the old game and crippled the new one. It took a long time for AoS to dig itself out of the hole they dug for it at launch.

I've no idea how you can take the stance that a community system is so much better and also that its a complete failure because no one will agree. Those aren't reconcilable, no matter how much fun you had with a local group.


Did you just not read the rest of the post?


 
   
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Preparing the Invasion of Terra






There is never going to be consensus because as soon as you go one layer beneath "both parties enjoy the Warhammer hobby" you'll find that people are immediately going to disagree. Hell, I would argue that you can't even get that far with some people on forums and social media.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/01/19 10:41:18


 
   
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Cardiff

Didn’t we just have a thread where people tried to fix the rules as “a community” and there was zero consensus and much disagreement?

See that for likely results for such an endeavour.

 Stormonu wrote:
For me, the joy is in putting some good-looking models on the board and playing out a fantasy battle - not arguing over the poorly-made rules of some 3rd party who neither has any power over my play nor will be visiting me (and my opponent) to ensure we are "playing by the rules"
 
   
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Longtime Dakkanaut




The basic issue is how micro you go.

ITC was about creating a better set of objectives than GW did. Because GW's objectives were either highly random - or just kind of bad.

Other versions - for example in WHFB - just chucked a load of extra points to factions whose army books had clearly massively fallen behind the curve. I think there were some attempts to go more micro (i.e. this unit should cost X) - but that proved much less acceptable.

The moment you get into the detail of points and abilities, people disagree.
   
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Decrepit Dakkanaut




UK

The core issue is most people have no clue about balance or maths. Add on top the fact that most people view the game through the lens of their army(ies) that they collect/play and then through the lens of their local playerbase.



Even tournament winners aren't immune to this and some will even outright argue for overpowered stuff because it makes it easier for them to build the army and try for the win. And yes I've seen people argue that extreme imbalance is good, needed and required.







There are so many viewpoints and in the end we don't really have unified gamer groups. ICT and such are about as close as you get and even they have their own issues and aren't used by everyone. There's no league of gamers or such that is run by professional high skill high respect icons of the industry and playerbase.


In short where you've got limited "power" and influence bases to work from and then a sea of opinions and viewpoints; its very hard to bring people to the table to agree upon things.



It can be done sure, but you are looking at a lot of work and effort and marketing and more to both develop a system and then market it so that people are aware of it; might use it and can be convinced to use it. Which is where many home-brew systems fail; at best they might get their local game group to play; but otherwise they often lack the ability to go much further. Even if they've developed perfect rules.


It's a nice idea and I'd love for it to be a thing and if anyone could do it, GW could at least do it. But the will isn't there from GW. For whatever reason(s) there just isn't a clear will to make a tight balanced game system. Even their external game testers don't get the full rules to play with; they get a portion and pre-designed armies to test things with. Heck a few months ago there was a thread talking about how the rules writers are under-funded and often short of money/pay to give them the resources they'd even need to coordinate more structured rules. Not to mention GW's current release mechanism clearly results in battletomes/codex being done one after the other whcih results in steady development creep. Not even intentional power-rising just the fact that design aspects change through the edition; things creep along; good ideas filter down into newer books etc.... Leaving older ones a bit under-powered; less well structured and perhaps with a few rules from the previous edition whilst the most recent might have a few rules from the next edtion.

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the problem in the theory of a group working towards balance is people will always have their own biases no matter what they claim. I still think the best solution is an app like warmachine/hordes. peopel run the games there, submit scores and even go further allowing granular data to voluntarily be added like which unit finished or wounded which unit. compile that data and adjust points or send alerts accordingly. do monthly minor points changes in app then if a unit is obviously broken or needs rules changes then manual override by game designers to change said rules. heck i would even pay a monthly fee for that kind of system.

10000 points 7000
6000
5000
5000
2000
 
   
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The dark behind the eyes.

I think it's possible but you really need a small group to be the ones actually making the decisions, with the rest just providing feedback and suggestions.

As has already been said, you'll never get perfect agreement so you need a smaller group that can step in and make a final decision one way or another.

There is, however, a secondary issue - namely that point costs aren't necessarily the biggest issue with 9th. Instead, most people seem far more concerned about issues like power creep, bloat, removal of options etc. - none of which are addressed by changing point costs.

Hence, I suspect a lot of people wouldn't be all that interested in spending an awful lot of time and effort for an unofficial fix to a problem that's nowhere near top of the priorities list.

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 the_scotsman wrote:
Yeah, when i read the small novel that is the Death Guard unit options and think about resolving the attacks from a melee-oriented min size death guard squad, the thing that springs to mind is "Accessible!"

 Argive wrote:
GW seems to have a crystal ball and just pulls hairbrained ideas out of their backside for the most part.


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 insaniak wrote:

You're not. If you're worried about your opponent using 'fake' rules, you're having fun the wrong way. This hobby isn't about rules. It's about buying Citadel miniatures.

Please report to your nearest GW store for attitude readjustment. Take your wallet.
 
   
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your mind

Rihgu wrote:
No two people in this community let alone the wider community agree on what's good or what's bad.
Spoiler:


This existed up until 9th edition, with the ITC and ETC and NOVA Open tournament circuits, though. Enough people (begrudgingly or otherwise) followed along that it worked out, but once a lot of the ideas of ITC/NOVA were absorbed in the core rules, people gave up on having their own and just used the official stuff.

Do you believe this? Who do you play with? You always arguing? Personally, I think that this is false.

   
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 jeff white wrote:
Rihgu wrote:
No two people in this community let alone the wider community agree on what's good or what's bad.
Spoiler:


This existed up until 9th edition, with the ITC and ETC and NOVA Open tournament circuits, though. Enough people (begrudgingly or otherwise) followed along that it worked out, but once a lot of the ideas of ITC/NOVA were absorbed in the core rules, people gave up on having their own and just used the official stuff.

Do you believe this? Who do you play with? You always arguing? Personally, I think that this is false.


I do not play with any members of the Dakka community. But you're right, I was performing some hyperbole. But you've seen how many threads stretch to 15 pages of "Ork buggies are too good" "No Ork buggies are good enough" "no actually Ork Buggies are bad and if you're losing to them you need to learn to play".

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 jeff white wrote:
Rihgu wrote:
No two people in this community let alone the wider community agree on what's good or what's bad.
Spoiler:


This existed up until 9th edition, with the ITC and ETC and NOVA Open tournament circuits, though. Enough people (begrudgingly or otherwise) followed along that it worked out, but once a lot of the ideas of ITC/NOVA were absorbed in the core rules, people gave up on having their own and just used the official stuff.

Do you believe this? Who do you play with? You always arguing? Personally, I think that this is false.


So you're saying you, a member of the community are disagreeing with another member of the community?

r/Selfaware wolves.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/01/19 16:16:40



 
   
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There used to be widely accepted solutions like the Swedish Comp in 5th/6th (?) Or ETC balancing patches for Warhammer Fantasy Battles. These worked a lot better than anything GW could come up with and as a result they were immensely popular.
   
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 odorofdeath wrote:
Yo yo yo! I'm curious if there's ever been any attempt at a community driven rules/balance council type thing for 40k? Kind of similar to what Smogon is to the Pokemon community or fighting game communities deciding on which stages are fit for competitive play. Basically just the community filling in obvious rules gaps, stuff like that. For example, CSM still only having 1 wound - since we already know how much 2 wound plague and rubric marines cost, seems like a pretty simple extrapolation to agree on a fair price for 2 wound berzerkers and noise marines.

Has there ever been anything attempted for 40k like that? Is the scene too small/spread out for anyone to agree on anything? Too "house rule"-y for legit tournaments?

GW gave up on balance back in the bad old days and then GW tried again in 8th. I think everyone is giving GW a chance to balance the game themselves and acknowledge that the community stepping in splinters the playerbase and makes GW's job more difficult. I think major tournament organizers agreed to play ball in return for GW trying again. 8th and 9th have been better than 7th, so not a total failure.
   
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Cyel wrote:
There used to be widely accepted solutions like the Swedish Comp in 5th/6th (?) Or ETC balancing patches for Warhammer Fantasy Battles. These worked a lot better than anything GW could come up with and as a result they were immensely popular.


I mean...it's not like it was difficult to be better than GW was in those times. As bad as GW is at army balance currently, they've at least made some amount of effort to get things working against each other. That era the only tool that really used to adjust for balance was, 'well, if your opponent agrees you can...'.

GW's current system and updates are FAR from perfect (or even good) but they ARE at the point where the community made system would at best be a moderate improvement.

The thing is though, any system that gets made by the community will get criticized by the community to the exact same degree that GW's system does. Balance patches will result in death threats to the conservators of the system in almost every case, and one round of unpopular updates will likely result in a schism where another group tries to make their own 'superior' version. It'll be the tower of babel but with more cheeto dust.

It happened in 7th edition. Europe used the ETC, The western US used ITC, The eastern US used Nova rules, and the Midwest used Adepticon rules.


 
   
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Second Story Man





Austria

you need something big that the community respects and people are in need to use

ETC comp systems, for Warhammer (starting with 6th) and 40k (started with 5th) worked because the nations that want to play there needed to use the rules for training games at home, hence most tournaments went with that rules

the German speaking tournament scene used the Lore of Akito during 7th Fantasy (replaced with Swedish Comp/ETC in 8th) and the Grundmann FAQ/Errata during 7th 40k
starting with 6th Fantasy and 5th 40k, each large tournament used different comp/scenario systems to keep the meta up

so yes this is possible, but one problem would still be all the new stuff GW is coming up, as it is impossible to make all the units useful with so many duplicates that are around (at least half of the Marine Datasheets would need to go to start)

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Made in us
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Voss wrote:
 auticus wrote:
The best thing that happened to warhammer fantasy was when they put sigmar in with no official point system.

No it wasn't. They killed the old game and crippled the new one. It took a long time for AoS to dig itself out of the hole they dug for it at launch.

I've no idea how you can take the stance that a community system is so much better and also that its a complete failure because no one will agree. Those aren't reconcilable, no matter how much fun you had with a local group.


Simple. It was the only time Sigmar was playable to me. I didn't want the old world to go away, but it did. And that year was the only time I could enjoy Sigmar without my twink powergaming community showing up with Adepticon lists to every game because the balance from GHB 1 and on was as usual... really bad. We had a ton of close games in that first year with Sigmar, and while it wasn't the game i wanted, I was able to at least enjoy myself and look forward to the game.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/01/19 20:37:16


 
   
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 kodos wrote:
...it is impossible to make all the units useful with so many duplicates that are around (at least half of the Marine Datasheets would need to go to start)

You can have two units that have the exact same stats and it wouldn't be a problem outside spam for Ro3. You can have a tanky anti-tank unit and a glasshammer anti-tank unit and both can be balanced with the right pts cost. You can have a fast and a slow anti-tank unit and both can be balanced with the right pts cost. Fewer units will not automatically mean better balance. Similar units are easier to balance against each other, balancing an Assault Squad with jump packs against a Devastator Squad with lascannons is way harder than balancing an Assault Squad with jump packs against Assault Squad without jump packs. In any given meta jump packs or no jump packs might be superior, but most likely not by much assuming pts are balanced around a certain terrain standard.
   
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Second Story Man





Austria

this assumption already caused some problems in the past

you can have 4 different Anti-Tank units, all balanced by points, but still one would be taken as it will do a better job per points

yes fewer units won't mean better balance by default, but have twice as much units as are useful does not help as well

if there are too many units that fulfil the same battle filed roles, you will have some that are better for that role, no matter how well balanced the points are

You can have two units that have the exact same stats and it wouldn't be a problem outside spam for Ro3
in this case you could also just remove one unit

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 auticus wrote:
The best thing that happened to warhammer fantasy was when they put sigmar in with no official point system.

The top community point systems were all head and shoulders more balanced than what gw brings us, because the community isn't making points up for model churn. We had about a solid year where the game was as close to being balanced as it had been twenty years prior in sixth (to a lot of people anyway - it certainly felt like a lot of fun and was a blast for the people i played with and the tournament community I was a part of back in 2015-2016 before official points came out and went back to business as usual with the bad balance).

However, trying to do a community edition is doomed to fail because as I learned as being a part of the community sigmar points systems back in the day - you'll never get people to agree on anything.

You'll have people wanting to use math to balance it, people that swear you can't balance the game with math at all, people who think that their favorite faction needs a few point shaves here and there to make them more optimal, and people that hate the other faction trying to jack their points up to punish them - all in the name of a more fair and equal game.

Just not happening. GW official will be the only way 99.999% of the community will ever go - no matter how rancid the balance they produce decade after decade is.


It can be done. 9th Age is proof of that.
   
 
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