chapter approved and point changes

[BitsHammer]

 

 

I do not believe that GW is all that interested in game balance.  Power creep is real.  GW either is clueless or attempting to manipulate balance to gain profit.  I prefer the clueless theory for personal reasons

I disagree. The studio is interested in comp play and even has Pete Foley (the most well known comp player of the studio) in charge of the studio. Chances are that it gets messy once the suits get involved and budget restrictions on release cycles come into play.

 

-

Unfortunately he also had a big hand in the new DA codex which just happens to be his favorite faction and it really shows too.

 

I think it'd be less of an issue if everyone stanned their favorite codex instead of them being passed to people who clearly don't like the faction as much (such as Cruddace's turn as the headwriter for Nids).

[MARK0SIAN]

 

 

The most frustrating thing about the balance issues aren’t the ones that are unforeseen broken combos where someone has managed to work out a way to combine a subfaction trait with three or four other tools and create something godly powerful. It’s the glaring mistakes that should never have even left the drawing board and certainly shouldn’t have survived scrutiny from the other rules writers like enriched rounds or liquifier wracks. These are things you can’t blame corporate or play testers for. They’re the kind of mistakes you’d expect from amateur, inexperienced rules writers, not from a company with the size and experience of GW.

I think people need to remember that most of the old writers we know don't do 40k anymore. Cruddace is the only one we know who is actively part of that team these days so chances are we are looking at much less experienced writers.

 

Additionally, GW has a problem with how they crunch their stuff out in order to get it printed on time. James Hewitt only got 5 months to write and playtest Necromunda for example:

Lupe: [laughs] I imagine it was! It was pretty weird being there honestly.

 

James: I was speaking to the camping or sailing supplies shop and got them to send us some. But anyway, so we had to make a game that would fit into the November release slot. Now, the prices of getting a game manufactured, remember that this is all manufactured in China. Specialist Games stuff was all done, I don’t know if it still is now, but it was all done in China because there was no capacity in the factory at GW.

 

Lupe: So all the plastic sprues and stuff were done in China?

 

James: Yes, it was another company that was kind of seconded and they were really high quality and made really good stuff. They were the one company to do things to GW standard and they were given a contract to do [the specialist games releases]. So the price of doing that, getting on a boat back to the UK, getting it into our warehouses to be distributed across the world in time for release day means that you need a good solid six months between the game being released and the game being manufactured and done.

 

Basically, I was told in December “you’re starting [necromunda] at the end of December, and it needs to be done by April. It needs to go to the manufacturers in April.”

I don’t doubt they’re under time pressure and that’s why I’m saying it’s not surprising or not the most vexing when some unforeseen broken combo gets through. But something like enriched rounds, a strat that originally let a unit that could shoot up to 60 shots auto wound on a 4+, should never even have been suggested let alone printed. It’s like they think of something but don’t consider what would happen if you applied it to a large squad. Even if these guys aren’t as experienced as Cruddace, they shouldn’t be letting that kind of thing slip.

[Dark Shepherd]

 

 

 

External playtesters can and do inform them of issues before and after books go to print but arent always listened to.

 

I've also heard this quite a but. Tabletop tactics has outright said it a few times. Makes one think what is the point? I'm sure there are a myriad of reasons as to why, but I think a big part circles back to not wanting to divest the resources to do it proper. Essentially boiling down to a "it's good enough" and "we'll get it next time" approach.

I think its size of the team, playtesting should be separate from writing, and the rules team being more of a narrative rather than match play mindset shall we say. Last bit is a big one.

Remember when Space Marine doctrines were introduced and then they flat out said they were surprised that people stayed as much as possible in the doctrine that benefitted their army the most?

 

Theres probably some unconscious at least bias of we wrote this and we like or we think its cool, or even last minute ideas

[BitsHammer]

 

 

 

External playtesters can and do inform them of issues before and after books go to print but arent always listened to.

I've also heard this quite a but. Tabletop tactics has outright said it a few times. Makes one think what is the point? I'm sure there are a myriad of reasons as to why, but I think a big part circles back to not wanting to divest the resources to do it proper. Essentially boiling down to a "it's good enough" and "we'll get it next time" approach.

I think its size of the team, playtesting should be separate from writing, and the rules team being more of a narrative rather than match play mindset shall we say. Last bit is a big one.

Remember when Space Marine doctrines were introduced and then they flat out said they were surprised that people stayed as much as possible in the doctrine that benefitted their army the most?

 

Theres probably some unconscious at least bias of we wrote this and we like or we think its cool, or even last minute ideas

 

Cruddace being caught off guard about the 0" charge exploit in 8th, as well as the amount of spam when he went to a tournament backs this up.

[Karhedron]

Remember when Space Marine doctrines were introduced and then they flat out said they were surprised that people stayed as much as possible in the doctrine that benefitted their army the most?

I work in software development and that is a classic rookie development mistake. They (play)test and idea to see if it works but they forget to stress test it. They don't try to see if you can break it. And thus we get horrors like the 8.5ed Iron Hands army.

 

Basically you need some really competitive players to try and cheese the heck out of each codex.

[BitsHammer]

 

Remember when Space Marine doctrines were introduced and then they flat out said they were surprised that people stayed as much as possible in the doctrine that benefitted their army the most?

I work in software development and that is a classic rookie development mistake. They (play)test and idea to see if it works but they forget to stress test it. They don't try to see if you can break it. And thus we get horrors like the 8.5ed Iron Hands army.

 

Basically you need some really competitive players to try and cheese the heck out of each codex.

 

They have those, but they need to have more time to properly go over the completed rules (not rules concepts) and they need to listen to the playtesters.

[phandaal]

 

Remember when Space Marine doctrines were introduced and then they flat out said they were surprised that people stayed as much as possible in the doctrine that benefitted their army the most?

I work in software development and that is a classic rookie development mistake. They (play)test and idea to see if it works but they forget to stress test it. They don't try to see if you can break it. And thus we get horrors like the 8.5ed Iron Hands army.

 

Basically you need some really competitive players to try and cheese the heck out of each codex.

They need to find the cheese before release, but also they have been making this game for the better part of four decades now. One would expect some of that experience to carry over even if people do leave the company.

 

Games Workshop's designers should be the furthest thing from rookies.

[BitsHammer]

 

 

Remember when Space Marine doctrines were introduced and then they flat out said they were surprised that people stayed as much as possible in the doctrine that benefitted their army the most?

I work in software development and that is a classic rookie development mistake. They (play)test and idea to see if it works but they forget to stress test it. They don't try to see if you can break it. And thus we get horrors like the 8.5ed Iron Hands army.

 

Basically you need some really competitive players to try and cheese the heck out of each codex.

They need to find the cheese before release, but also they have been making this game for the better part of four decades now. One would expect some of that experience to carry over even if people do leave the company.

 

Games Workshop's designers should be the furthest thing from rookies.

That logic only works if we're looking at itterstive design, not the massive shifts in mechanica and philosophy the company adopted post-Kirby's era.

 

Additionally, without those veterans around to guide the new people where does the experiance come from? We lost a lot of major contributors up through 5th and the team pushed on through 6th and 7th but most of the ones we knew are doing AoS now. There is a severe lack of experiance guiding them or even looking over their work for obvious nails that need to be hammered down.

[phandaal]

 

They need to find the cheese before release, but also they have been making this game for the better part of four decades now. One would expect some of that experience to carry over even if people do leave the company.

 

Games Workshop's designers should be the furthest thing from rookies.

That logic only works if we're looking at itterstive design, not the massive shifts in mechanica and philosophy the company adopted post-Kirby's era.

 

Additionally, without those veterans around to guide the new people where does the experiance come from? We lost a lot of major contributors up through 5th and the team pushed on through 6th and 7th but most of the ones we knew are doing AoS now. There is a severe lack of experiance guiding them or even looking over their work for obvious nails that need to be hammered down.

The logic works just fine, because the mistakes are not really the kind that need iteration to figure out. Games Workshop just has a bad habit of letting their rules designers write stuff that comes across like a teen making his wishlist power fantasy for a given army.

 

That does speak to a lack of experience, but it is also something that could be solved with a poster at each rules writer's desk saying "just because something sounds cool, that does not mean you should put it into the rules."

[MARK0SIAN]

 

 

They need to find the cheese before release, but also they have been making this game for the better part of four decades now. One would expect some of that experience to carry over even if people do leave the company.

 

Games Workshop's designers should be the furthest thing from rookies.

That logic only works if we're looking at itterstive design, not the massive shifts in mechanica and philosophy the company adopted post-Kirby's era.

 

Additionally, without those veterans around to guide the new people where does the experiance come from? We lost a lot of major contributors up through 5th and the team pushed on through 6th and 7th but most of the ones we knew are doing AoS now. There is a severe lack of experiance guiding them or even looking over their work for obvious nails that need to be hammered down.

The logic works just fine, because the mistakes are not really the kind that need iteration to figure out. Games Workshop just has a bad habit of letting their rules designers write stuff that comes across like a teen making his wishlist power fantasy for a given army.

 

That does speak to a lack of experience, but it is also something that could be solved with a poster at each rules writer's desk saying "just because something sounds cool, that does not mean you should put it into the rules."

I’d add a second poster that says:

 

“Remember, there’s someone on the receiving end of every rule you write and buff you give.”

[Rik Lightstar]

The Necromunda anecdote from James Hewitt is an interesting one..............

 

Given that he worked on the 2016 Bloodbowl update and essentially they took the existing community rules and polished a few rough edges (quite possibly single figures for the number of changes). Whoever was heading up the studio at that point would've ad good reason to expect the same for/from a Necromunda project. When you add in that Shadow War: Armageddon came out only a few months prior and had essentially reprinted the previous Necromunda rules, it's easy to suspect that a ground up re-write was something of a curveball on his part.

 

 

 

Part of the issue with 40k balance is we often see a counter to the latest hot hotness come out pretty soon after in a Rock > Paper > Scissors style release cycle. The studio aren't just working on ONE faction at a time, they're working on a few so they know there's a solution in the pipeline for a lot of the issues that crop up in the early days after a Codex release.

 

The other issue is that no number of play-testers could ever expect to subject a ruleset to the same level of "stress-testing" as a rampant fanbase dissecting each rule word by word online the moment it comes out.

 

Just my 0.02 of you local currency.

 

Rik

[phandaal]

Part of the issue with 40k balance is we often see a counter to the latest hot hotness come out pretty soon after in a Rock > Paper > Scissors style release cycle. The studio aren't just working on ONE faction at a time, they're working on a few so they know there's a solution in the pipeline for a lot of the issues that crop up in the early days after a Codex release.

 

That is an issue for more reasons than one, but the first thing that comes to mind is that most people are not swapping armies like you swap characters in a MOBA. So GW delivering a strong Grey Knights codex, for example, is not worth much to someone whose Imperial Guard army just got tabled in 1.5 rounds by Dark Eldar.

 

 

The other issue is that no number of play-testers could ever expect to subject a ruleset to the same level of "stress-testing" as a rampant fanbase dissecting each rule word by word online the moment it comes out.

 

Just my 0.02 of you local currency.

 

Rik

This is another place where the apparent rookie design comes in. A bit of thought would tell Games Workshop that since they cannot stress test 50 new rules for a faction, maybe cutting back to 20 new rules would be a good idea.

[Rik Lightstar]

 

Part of the issue with 40k balance is we often see a counter to the latest hot hotness come out pretty soon after in a Rock > Paper > Scissors style release cycle. The studio aren't just working on ONE faction at a time, they're working on a few so they know there's a solution in the pipeline for a lot of the issues that crop up in the early days after a Codex release.

 

That is an issue for more reasons than one, but the first thing that comes to mind is that most people are not swapping armies like you swap characters in a MOBA. So GW delivering a strong Grey Knights codex, for example, is not worth much to someone whose Imperial Guard army just got tabled in 1.5 rounds by Dark Eldar.

 

 

The other issue is that no number of play-testers could ever expect to subject a ruleset to the same level of "stress-testing" as a rampant fanbase dissecting each rule word by word online the moment it comes out.

 

Just my 0.02 of you local currency.

 

Rik

This is another place where the apparent rookie design comes in. A bit of thought would tell Games Workshop that since they cannot stress test 50 new rules for a faction, maybe cutting back to 20 new rules would be a good idea.

 

 

Your first point is fair (except when talking about the really serious tournament players who do indeed do exactly that). It's also a large part of why my local group and I play a few different games, that way if my White Scars are consistently thrashing my buddy's Imperial Guard (real world example) then we've resorted to playing Kill Teams, Titanicus, Underworlds, Bloodbowl and non-GW stuff until he gets a new book or just some fun new rules through a campaign book. 

 

 

Your second point is an interesting one, for a while it seemed like they were using the Campaign Supplements as a way to test out "Beta Rules" with the option to make that rule part of the next codex or not. Their timelines and release schedule over the last 18 months have been royally screwed so it's rather hard to say how much they intended to carry that on.

 

Ideally they'd distribute "Beta Rules" for free via Chapter Approved and WarCom with a guaranteed review after 6 months. 

 

They could of course then tweak rules that were generally good and balanced to make them somewhat different in the codex.

 

Rik

[BitsHammer]

The Necromunda anecdote from James Hewitt is an interesting one..............

 

Given that he worked on the 2016 Bloodbowl update and essentially they took the existing community rules and polished a few rough edges (quite possibly single figures for the number of changes). Whoever was heading up the studio at that point would've ad good reason to expect the same for/from a Necromunda project. When you add in that Shadow War: Armageddon came out only a few months prior and had essentially reprinted the previous Necromunda rules, it's easy to suspect that a ground up re-write was something of a curveball on his part.

 

 

 

Part of the issue with 40k balance is we often see a counter to the latest hot hotness come out pretty soon after in a Rock > Paper > Scissors style release cycle. The studio aren't just working on ONE faction at a time, they're working on a few so they know there's a solution in the pipeline for a lot of the issues that crop up in the early days after a Codex release.

 

The other issue is that no number of play-testers could ever expect to subject a ruleset to the same level of "stress-testing" as a rampant fanbase dissecting each rule word by word online the moment it comes out.

 

Just my 0.02 of you local currency.

 

Rik

From what he's said the Ad Mech/Skitarri became two seperate books to satisfy the WD release cycle so tomfoolery in the studio is common.

[Noserenda]

They were writing books a lot quicker in 8th edtoo which I suspect meant more problems snuck through

[Rik Lightstar]

They were writing books a lot quicker in 8th edtoo which I suspect meant more problems snuck through

 

We don't really have any idea how fast they're writing them now.

 

We just know that global pandemics and global shipping issues impact how fast they get released.

 

They could have the next 10 written but not able to get them printed and back yet along with accompanying models etc.

 

Rik

[Noserenda]

That still gives them time to tweak them if they havent gone mad, i very much doubt they arent having rules writers sit on their hands right now, especially since they expanded the team.