10th edition wishlisting/"How do we fix this mess?" thread

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

Looking back to older editions Preferred Enemy was a thing back in the day.

[Scribe]

1 hour ago, Triszin said:

I think out right rerolls should be rarer.

 

 

 

Funny you mention this, as I was looking at the AdMech Codex, and the Skitarri Marshal in particular. His whole purpose is to just provide a Reroll on wounds.

 

The amount of rerolling got excessive several editions ago, and it was never corrected only made worse.

[Valkyrion]

Rerolling completely skews stats and makes deliberately inferior unit types (e.g guardsman or termagants) comparatively overpowered (I'm not saying Guardsmen are overpowered, I'm saying a reroll benefits BS4+ more than it does BS3+).

 

it also makes for some completely over the top dice rolls - like 500 or something to complete one full squad of shooting, wounding and saving.  When you are rolling that many dice you might as well just work out the averages mathematically and save all that time.

 

There are so few rerolls in 30k that they feel very powerful - like twin linked one shot weapons - which is how it should be. 

 

[sarabando]

On 9/29/2022 at 4:26 PM, Mandragola said:

My understanding from the article is that they only tested the LoV against other new books, Tyrannids and Eldar, which also came out with awful balance issues on release. If they did indeed test those books in a sort of bubble (perhaps to keep the LoV secret?) that would explain how they were all such a mess. It would also be incredibly stupid.

I'd be cross about this but I'm already checked out of 40k. I get to be cross about the FAQs for 30k instead, which are arguably worse.

The one thing I don't and have never agreed with is the idea that GW does this on purpose for sales. They wouldn't have nerfed the book before it got released if that was the case - they'd have let everyone buy three land fortresses before raising their price by 70 points each and nerfing their guns.

so this is the problem. How do you not test the rules against EVERY army you make.  its like a couple of weeks worth of work. 

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

They do test but obviously it’s not thorough enough. I do remember seeing they had an internal position open for a play tester… I’m sure the developers will love that person.

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

I would do away with random shot numbers for weapons with explosive rounds, I’d literally just give them exploding 6s to hit, with the extra shots hitting at half strength and half (rounding up) AP D1 

[Evil Eye]

Not a bad idea, though myself I'd argue good ol' fashioned blast templates are the way to go.

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

Just now, Evil Eye said:

Not a bad idea, though myself I'd argue good ol' fashioned blast templates are the way to go.

I agree, but they’re probably never going to come back.

[WrathOfTheLion]

For testing, even if not against every army, they could definitely find some subset of armies that testing against covers a lot of ground vs just the ones adjacent in development.

 

For example, they may not need to test against both Knights and Chaos Knights, but having one of those in rotation for playtesting would've very quickly caught issues with autowounding.

[Special Officer Doofy]

What are "competitive rules"? Is that a fancy way of saying "balanced"? Cause if so that also benefits the casual players. 

[DesuVult]

27 minutes ago, Special Officer Doofy said:

What are "competitive rules"? Is that a fancy way of saying "balanced"? Cause if so that also benefits the casual players. 

Votann getting rules like you are playing abilities from a deck, where the user feels very safe in triggering abilities and bypassing defenses.

[Scribe]

2 hours ago, Special Officer Doofy said:

What are "competitive rules"? Is that a fancy way of saying "balanced"? Cause if so that also benefits the casual players. 

 

A competitive rule set removes as much random as possible, or it can be mitigated/accounted for.

 

Chess is competitive, you always know what the pieces can do.

Rolling a D20, is not competitive.

 

40K is not a 'competitive' game, but the constant push for re-roll's, makes it more so.

[Inquisitor Eisenhorn]

I've been playing 40k on and off for over 20 years, and I think I've played in that time, exactly two "competitive" games, and that was in 3rd edition.  That's all the time and energy my fairly normal life has allowed me to manage, and I don't think I've missed out on anything, at all. 

 

My perspective about issues of balance and competition have changed quite a lot since I was younger.  I no longer care about balance, and my opinion is that while people are free to play 40k and tabletop miniature games in general in a "competitive" framework, I just don't think that the hobby as a whole supports that framework.  People spend lots of time building and painting armies, and then within a year or so those armies are no longer "meta"?  You're not re-constituting a deck and shuffling cards here, you're spending countless hours re-making your army by hand.  Competitive play is not a solution for people who don't have a gaming group either, because you can't be a good competitive player without a gaming group!  Literally not a single good competitive player walks into tournaments having played no games with friends first and does well. 

 

No one complains about balance in an RPG, and 40k is an RPG.  You put your trust in the hands of a GM, and you experience a story with mechanics to influence the outcome.  While I maybe a big joking the way I said it before, I really think that's what GW should do.  Get rid of the points.  Get rid of army composition rules. 

 

GW should get out of the competitive scene entirely.  Let that scene do it's own thing, figure out the "balance" thing for themeselves and stop wasting the time and energy of GW's company resources chasing this "balance".  GW should be giving us interesting scenarios to play, and interesting profiles to try, and they should make it far far easier to get access to the basic unit stats. 

 

Honestly AOS 1st edition was exactly what the hobby should be--no points and they should have doubled down on that and just made more and more campaigns and scenarios to try with interesting bespoke rules.  They are actually doing a bit of that with Kill Team; points don't even really enter into it since each faction just has lists you pick from and tweak out, and it's easy enough to do custom scenarios because of it. 

 

I'm putting my foot down hard on the "GW can do competitive 40k AND narrative 40k."  No, they can't, and they shouldn't.  GW should let competitive 40k be done by the competitive community and get out of the business of catering to them entirely. 

 

I'm not saying this to throw down a gauntlet on competitive players, I'm just posting my opinion. 

[Valkyrion]

A truly competitive rule set would mean each army has the same choice of units with the same choice of weapons and the same special rules so that it's up to the player to outperform their opponent.

If you play AoD just using the army list and no Legiones Astartes rules, that's about as close to true competitive play as you will get.

 

Folk don't really want a competitive game, they want a balanced game. GW want that too, and whilst it's a fine goal (to be sure) it's never going to be achievable.

The release schedule doesn't allow for we, the players, to go OTT with army list building to find broken combos and auto win lists, which is what a good playtest needs. I'm reasonably sure that GW don't go to that sort of extreme when playtesting because thats not how they want their games to be played. 

All codexes released together (as in, within 12 months or something) followed by a gamewide balance patch 12 months later would eliminate a big chunk of problematic issues because the players themselves would almost self regulate by finding the worst offending lists and getting them neutered. 

 

Part of the reason for that issue is that there are too many possible rules interactions that making something balanced is impossible.  If A then B unless C then its D, or E if its F and C together, or G if its B and H together, finally your opponent can save on X unless Y or Z.  Don't forget to rerolls your H's but only if L was a 1. 

 

GW recently said that they want a 45-55% win rate to be considered balanced, which is fine. But if say, Tau have a 50% win rate in general, but a 80% win rate against T4, 3+ saves then you've got about 15 factions that are being hammered by them and only a few albeit popular factions which can compete. That doesn't equal balanced. 

 

This feels fair to post on a wishlisting thread, but it would also be fair to post on a 'are you out of your mind, this is never going to happen, are you a moron?!' thread, because it's never going to happen, so my true wish for 10th edition is just a bit of internal restraint when it comes to designing the mid-late edition codexes.

[Evil Eye]

24 minutes ago, Inquisitor Eisenhorn said:

I've been playing 40k on and off for over 20 years, and I think I've played in that time, exactly two "competitive" games, and that was in 3rd edition.  That's all the time and energy my fairly normal life has allowed me to manage, and I don't think I've missed out on anything, at all. 

 

My perspective about issues of balance and competition have changed quite a lot since I was younger.  I no longer care about balance, and my opinion is that while people are free to play 40k and tabletop miniature games in general in a "competitive" framework, I just don't think that the hobby as a whole supports that framework.  People spend lots of time building and painting armies, and then within a year or so those armies are no longer "meta"?  You're not re-constituting a deck and shuffling cards here, you're spending countless hours re-making your army by hand.  Competitive play is not a solution for people who don't have a gaming group either, because you can't be a good competitive player without a gaming group!  Literally not a single good competitive player walks into tournaments having played no games with friends first and does well. 

 

No one complains about balance in an RPG, and 40k is an RPG.  You put your trust in the hands of a GM, and you experience a story with mechanics to influence the outcome.  While I maybe a big joking the way I said it before, I really think that's what GW should do.  Get rid of the points.  Get rid of army composition rules. 

 

GW should get out of the competitive scene entirely.  Let that scene do it's own thing, figure out the "balance" thing for themeselves and stop wasting the time and energy of GW's company resources chasing this "balance".  GW should be giving us interesting scenarios to play, and interesting profiles to try, and they should make it far far easier to get access to the basic unit stats. 

 

Honestly AOS 1st edition was exactly what the hobby should be--no points and they should have doubled down on that and just made more and more campaigns and scenarios to try with interesting bespoke rules.  They are actually doing a bit of that with Kill Team; points don't even really enter into it since each faction just has lists you pick from and tweak out, and it's easy enough to do custom scenarios because of it. 

 

I'm putting my foot down hard on the "GW can do competitive 40k AND narrative 40k."  No, they can't, and they shouldn't.  GW should let competitive 40k be done by the competitive community and get out of the business of catering to them entirely. 

 

I'm not saying this to throw down a gauntlet on competitive players, I'm just posting my opinion. 

This is pretty much my stance. I feel some balancing is needed just from a basic game design perspective, but I totally agree that trying to balance the game for a competitive audience is a fool's errand and at the root of a lot of problems with the game.

[Razblood]

Reject "new" 40k, return to 4th.

 

With better vehicle rules obviously.

[phandaal]

4 hours ago, Inquisitor Eisenhorn said:

Honestly AOS 1st edition was exactly what the hobby should be--no points and they should have doubled down on that and just made more and more campaigns and scenarios to try with interesting bespoke rules.

 

AoS 1st edition was an embarrassment. It was disrespectful to everyone who supported WFB, and whoever greenlit that should be ashamed of themselves.

 

Balance absolutely does matter, even in an RPG. If a book comes out with some builds that are far above the rest, people will find out about them and the munchkins will use them. Modern D&D has this problem with every other Warlock using Eldritch Blast from their Great Old One patron, or every other Fighter having a rapid fire crossbow.

 

Technically the GM can introduce some jank to counter that kind of play, but essentially it amounts to different group members having different rulesets for the same encounters. Regardless, something has to be done to "balance" their games.

 

"Competitive" play means more than just using your models in a tournament. When one army blasts the other one from the table because of imbalanced rules, there is not a whole lot of narrative to be had. "Competitive" in this sense does not mean both players are attempting to ride the cutting edge and win at all costs. It means that both armies can play on relatively even footing.

[Pacific81]

@Inquisitor Eisenhorn - I get what you are saying, but it really shouldn't be an 'either/or', and we know this from other games that are available that it is possible, its not game designers trying to reach some holy grail that exists beyond the clouds. A Song of Ice and Fire, for example, has got a *brutal* tournament scene, and yet you could equally set up 2 forces and re-create the Battle of Blackwater if I wanted to.

 

Infinity is the same, its superbly balanced and has a massive tournament scene. Again, nothing to stop you playing narrative games, and people do.

 

Both of those games listed above are known for their exhaustive play testing by both the creators and involving testing teams, where they are close-knit with their gaming communities. So perhaps that's part of the problem, along with GW's games having such a rapid-cycle release schedule, that you're trying to balance a system with many moving parts.

[Inquisitor Eisenhorn]

@Pacific81 I used to feel as you do, but I’ve shifted.  People have been saying “if only they’d REALLY play test properly” for decades and yet somehow no one has ever agreed that they have succeeded.   I’m very familiar with both those games, but 40k and warhammer generally is just a different beast altogether due to the setting and diversity of factions and lore.  
 

But what I’m mainly getting at is that I don’t want the rules to lend themselves to competition anymore.  People should have to work together to figure out what sort of scenario that are playing, or have a GM do it, and I want GW to make rules that are a robust toolbox for doing this, like a proper RPG.  That’s my wishlist.  

I totally agree that the release cycle GW has is a massive problem, regardless of how you play.

 

[Inquisitor Eisenhorn]

4 hours ago, phandaal said:

 

AoS 1st edition was an embarrassment. It was disrespectful to everyone who supported WFB, and whoever greenlit that should be ashamed of themselves.

 

Balance absolutely does matter, even in an RPG. If a book comes out with some builds that are far above the rest, people will find out about them and the munchkins will use them. Modern D&D has this problem with every other Warlock using Eldritch Blast from their Great Old One patron, or every other Fighter having a rapid fire crossbow.

 

Technically the GM can introduce some jank to counter that kind of play, but essentially it amounts to different group members having different rulesets for the same encounters. Regardless, something has to be done to "balance" their games.

 

"Competitive" play means more than just using your models in a tournament. When one army blasts the other one from the table because of imbalanced rules, there is not a whole lot of narrative to be had. "Competitive" in this sense does not mean both players are attempting to ride the cutting edge and win at all costs. It means that both armies can play on relatively even footing.

AOS 1st edition was great.  People were  rightfully upset about the lore being redone but from a rules perspective it was ahead of its time in the freedom it gave to players.  I think they should have brought back a GM that edition, would be my biggest critique.  
 

What you’re describing with exploiting crossbows and eldrich blasts in dnd isn’t a problem of balance, it’s a problem of player mentality, and that is exactly why a GM is useful, to slap down power gaming in an activity that is not about that.  
 

Having one player blasted off the table isn’t a problem of balance, it’s again a problem of not setting proper expectations about what the players want out of a gaming session.  If that happens, the players weren’t on the same page about why they are playing.  Yet again why a GM is useful.

Edited October 17, 2022 by Inquisitor Eisenhorn

[Scribe]

6 minutes ago, Inquisitor Eisenhorn said:

AOS 1st edition was great.  People we’re rightfully upset about the lore being redone but from a rules perspective it was ahead of its time in the freedom it gave to players.

 

Whoa whoa whoa.

 

The initial release of AoS was hardly even defined enough to call it a game. Considering the customers (us, 40K and WHFB players) at the time, it was not remotely close to be good enough.

 

I'm fine with your perspective on an "RPG-ish" take on 40K, bring in a GM, sure. Conceptually I can get on board with that, but we cannot call AoS 1st Edition, 'great'. It cant even be called good. :D

[Inquisitor Eisenhorn]

2 minutes ago, Scribe said:

 

Whoa whoa whoa.

 

The initial release of AoS was hardly even defined enough to call it a game. Considering the customers (us, 40K and WHFB players) at the time, it was not remotely close to be good enough.

 

I'm fine with your perspective on an "RPG-ish" take on 40K, bring in a GM, sure. Conceptually I can get on board with that, but we cannot call AoS 1st Edition, 'great'. It cant even be called good. :D

I’m happy to disagree on AOS 1st Ed since you get what I’m saying about 40k.

[phandaal]

7 minutes ago, Inquisitor Eisenhorn said:

AOS 1st edition was great.  People we’re rightfully upset about the lore being redone but from a rules perspective it was ahead of its time in the freedom it gave to players.  I think they should have brought back a GM that edition, would be my biggest critique.  

 

A ruleset that gives you extra points for having a mustache or yelling at your opponent and says "YOLO, just bring whatever you want" is not ahead of its time. To each their own though - clearly we view this very differently.

 

9 minutes ago, Inquisitor Eisenhorn said:

What you’re describing with exploiting crossbows and eldrich blasts in dnd isn’t a problem of balance, it’s a problem of player mentality, and that is exactly why a GM is useful, to slap down power gaming in an activity that is not about that.  
 

Having one player blasted off the table isn’t a problem of balance, it’s again a problem of not setting proper expectations about what the players want out of a gaming session.  If that happens, the players weren’t on the same page about why they are playing.  Yet again why a GM is useful.

 

Yes, if players all have the same mentality and goals then they will find harmony in their games.

 

We all know that this is not how the real world works though. People want different things, often even when they say they want the same things. That is why a structured and balanced ruleset is essential, because it stands in for the impossible task of mind-reading your gaming partners.

 

I think a successful game system works within the framework of how people actually are, rather than how it wishes people would be.

[Inquisitor Eisenhorn]

5 minutes ago, phandaal said:

 

 

Yes, if players all have the same mentality and goals then they will find harmony in their games.

 

We all know that this is not how the real world works though. People want different things, often even when they say they want the same things. That is why a structured and balanced ruleset is essential, because it stands in for the impossible task of mind-reading your gaming partners.

 

I think a successful game system works within the framework of how people actually are, rather than how it wishes people would be.

But that is how game groups work; that’s how any RPG group works, and why GMs exist, to make sure a gaming group is on the same page.  If you want to play against strangers I can agree with you, but I don’t think a game like 40k should be designed to play with strangers primarily.  If you don’t have friends to play with that’s a problem, but it’s not on GW to solve that for anyone.  

Edited October 17, 2022 by Inquisitor Eisenhorn

[phandaal]

1 minute ago, Inquisitor Eisenhorn said:

But that is how game groups work; that’s how any RPG group works, and why GMs exist, to make sure a gaming group is on the same page.

 

True, but I thought you had already acknowledged that most people do not have a regular group. Is that not what you meant by this:

  

10 hours ago, Inquisitor Eisenhorn said:

Competitive play is not a solution for people who don't have a gaming group either, because you can't be a good competitive player without a gaming group!  Literally not a single good competitive player walks into tournaments having played no games with friends first and does well.

 

Maybe I misunderstood.

 

3 minutes ago, Inquisitor Eisenhorn said:

If you want to play against strangers I can agree with you, but I don’t think a game like 40k should be designed to play with strangers primarily.  If you don’t have friends to play with that’s a problem, but it’s not on GW to solve that for anyone.

 

If GW wants those players as customers, it is on GW to offer something those players can enjoy.