10th edition tournament results - it doesn't look good

[Emperor Ming]

Power levels being disguised as points and the silly fixed unit sizes are defiantly an issue for a lot of people

[Special Officer Doofy]

46 minutes ago, DemonGSides said:

I haven't seen anyone defend the current balance. Just that there's not much benefit in screaming at other posters about it like there's anything we can do.

 

Of course that's easy to mistake as a defense when someone is worked up over it. But it'll get fixed in time.

 

I'm assuming your post was in reference to mine because it came directly after and is talking about what I said.

 

No mistakes. Nobody has screamed at each other? I have seen fraters post on here they don't even think the game can be balanced, they don't see the importance of balance, that balance doesn't matter compared to "lore" being reflected in the game, I've seen fraters blame it on solely tournament players for some reason, I've seen people say it's not bad and the codexes will fix it (yeah, all 9 in 12 months...) Someone on the forum even said this to me in July:

 

"I have literally no interest in balance as my interaction with 40k is via rpg and the lord"

 

Still not sure if that frater was serious or low key trolling. Either way I laughed way too hard at it haha.

[DemonGSides]

44 minutes ago, Special Officer Doofy said:

 

I'm assuming your post was in reference to mine because it came directly after and is talking about what I said.

 

No mistakes. Nobody has screamed at each other? I have seen fraters post on here they don't even think the game can be balanced, they don't see the importance of balance, that balance doesn't matter compared to "lore" being reflected in the game, I've seen fraters blame it on solely tournament players for some reason, I've seen people say it's not bad and the codexes will fix it (yeah, all 9 in 12 months...) Someone on the forum even said this to me in July:

 

"I have literally no interest in balance as my interaction with 40k is via rpg and the lord"

 

Still not sure if that frater was serious or low key trolling. Either way I laughed way too hard at it haha.

 

People are allowed to interact with 40k however they want. Someone saying they don't care about balance isn't the same as someone saying that the balance is fine.

 

This is exactly the attitude I'm talking about in my previous post. You're getting worked up at other posters. There's just no need. 

[gideon stargreave]

49 minutes ago, Special Officer Doofy said:

"I have literally no interest in balance as my interaction with 40k is via rpg and the lord"

 

This wasn't me, but it's close to my opinion. I play extremely rarely, collect for the sake of converting and painting, and prefer narrative games and special scenarios (sometimes with massive points imbalances) and have done since 2d ed. (for the record, fantasy was my competitive game, 40k has usuallly been for sillliness). I have basically zero interest in 40k as a "fair" match, I play chess for that. Instead I want to play the epic battles of doomed heroes, and focus on tiny moments in the gamee. (like when my commisar took the last wound off a hive tyrant, or when my space marine mega badass doom captain was brought down by a million necron scarabs). The actual result of the game isn't really interesting for me at all except when playing in a campaign (which I haven't since 1999). 

MUCH more important to me than a balanced game would be for my opponent to have a beautifully painted army and to play on a table packed with well crafted terrain

[Akerkoke]

19 minutes ago, gideon stargreave said:

 

This wasn't me, but it's close to my opinion. I play extremely rarely, collect for the sake of converting and painting, and prefer narrative games and special scenarios (sometimes with massive points imbalances) and have done since 2d ed. (for the record, fantasy was my competitive game, 40k has usuallly been for sillliness). I have basically zero interest in 40k as a "fair" match, I play chess for that. Instead I want to play the epic battles of doomed heroes, and focus on tiny moments in the gamee. (like when my commisar took the last wound off a hive tyrant, or when my space marine mega badass doom captain was brought down by a million necron scarabs). The actual result of the game isn't really interesting for me at all except when playing in a campaign (which I haven't since 1999). 

MUCH more important to me than a balanced game would be for my opponent to have a beautifully painted army and to play on a table packed with well crafted terrain

Ok but not everybody plays super narrative like this or even super competitive, yet they want a functional set of rules to play with expensive miniature that also take them time and effort to paint and put on terrain bases. You can play narrative games with balanced or imbalanced rules because you can adapt the game to your needs (you even siad that some games that you played are with points imbalance) and that is fine, but if I want to drink a beer and play with my friend or if I want to go to a tournament, I must have a set of rules that tries to create some balance between me and my opponent's armies, I don't want a faction that has to suffer hard and have luck to bring home a victory while another can table you in 2 turns with minimal losses. The game is not intended to be like that, and for some factions, the game right now is exactly this

[DemonGSides]

46 minutes ago, Akerkoke said:

Ok but not everybody plays super narrative like this or even super competitive, yet they want a functional set of rules to play with expensive miniature that also take them time and effort to paint and put on terrain bases. You can play narrative games with balanced or imbalanced rules because you can adapt the game to your needs (you even siad that some games that you played are with points imbalance) and that is fine, but if I want to drink a beer and play with my friend or if I want to go to a tournament, I must have a set of rules that tries to create some balance between me and my opponent's armies, I don't want a faction that has to suffer hard and have luck to bring home a victory while another can table you in 2 turns with minimal losses. The game is not intended to be like that, and for some factions, the game right now is exactly this

 

If your beer and pretzels buddy is bringing a competitive style eldar list... He's a bad friend lmao

[phandaal]

1 hour ago, gideon stargreave said:

The actual result of the game isn't really interesting for me at all except when playing in a campaign (which I haven't since 1999). 

MUCH more important to me than a balanced game would be for my opponent to have a beautifully painted army and to play on a table packed with well crafted terrain

 

Gonna preface this by saying that there really is no wrong way to play 40k. At the end of the day, we are all just hobby fans.

 

That said, if your main concern is purely narrative and visual, then you should be happy if people who like better rules can also get what they want, yeah?

 

Think of the inverse - a (hypothetical) thread discussing how bad the narrative state of things are, and how bad the models look. If I come in and offer the opinion that I do not care at all and would play with rocks as long as the rules are good, then fair play but not really adding much. I would in theory still be happy playing with great looking models that also have great rules.

[Karhedron]

To no real surprise, Eldar continue to dominate the top tables with a supporting cast of Knights, Custodes and smattering of others.

 

https://www.goonhammer.com/competitive-innovations-in-10th-20230823/

 

Is the imminent overreaction going to nerf Eldar into oblivion come September?

[Special Officer Doofy]

14 hours ago, DemonGSides said:

You're getting worked up at other posters.

 

I'm not getting worked up? All I said is I didn't understand that point of view. It's a forum for Warhammer. I make a like 1 post every few days. It's a thread about the state of the balance of 40k and I made an observation and commented on it. You have some weird takes and do a lot of projecting. The original post is 12 hours old and has 5 likes/agree, apperently I'm not the only one with that thought. And if someone says they don't think the balance can get better or the game can't be balanced and this is as good as it gets, that is defending the current imbalance cause the balance can be and was better even at the end of 9th with the crazy codexes.

Edited August 24, 2023 by Special Officer Doofy

[Emperor Ming]

1 hour ago, Karhedron said:

Is the imminent overreaction going to nerf Eldar into oblivion come September?

I totally expect nuking to oblivion in September

 

That head studio guy mentioned eldar in two videos, then mentioned points hikes and rules changes for the worst offenders, then combined with the constant high win rates.

[ArielRSA]

I think we’re at the point where we can say the problem is:

 

a) Stu Black and his team don’t actually know what they’re doing; or

 

b) don’t have the budget to properly hire people/manage/design the game;

 

c) a combination of the above

[Karhedron]

I gather that 'b' is apart of the problem. According to a friend, there was no actual methodical playtesting of the new army lists with time set aside to balance things. There was just whatever games people played in their lunch breaks.

[MegaVolt87]

I think CSM will dip hard once loyalists get points reductions for their melee units, expanded mechanics/ rules as SM shooting kinda took a hit overall with AP nerfs and loss of ranged varients weapon types (eg- hellblasters). 

[Plaguecaster]

September and these attempted fixes can’t come soon enough 

want to find out if DG will be made even somewhat playable or if I should just give up on them and 40K for another few months as don’t really have high hopes considering what they’ve done so far with this edition 

[Kallas]

19 hours ago, gideon stargreave said:

MUCH more important to me than a balanced game would be for my opponent to have a beautifully painted army and to play on a table packed with well crafted terrain

These are things affected by two massively distinct groups though: one (painted models and nice terrain) is affected by you and your opponent making them that way; the other (balanced rules) are affected by the rules writing team making terrible balance decisions. You don't affect overall games balance - you can change things if you're in a small local group and everybody agrees, but on the wider scale you don't.

 

Wanting good game balance isn't mutually exclusive with wanting nicely painted models and good looking terrain.

[Remain_Indoors]

33 minutes ago, Kallas said:

These are things affected by two massively distinct groups though: one (painted models and nice terrain) is affected by you and your opponent making them that way; the other (balanced rules) are affected by the rules writing team making terrible balance decisions. You don't affect overall games balance - you can change things if you're in a small local group and everybody agrees, but on the wider scale you don't.

 

Wanting good game balance isn't mutually exclusive with wanting nicely painted models and good looking terrain.

 

I think part of the reason why some taking a more dismissive view of "Balance" is GW's approach to it. I'm not a competitive player, zero interest in tournaments but my gameplay is negatively affected by the actions of tournament players. It's become quite a source of irritation in my gaming group that restrictions and changes are lumped onto our games, because some random players across the world can't use self control making a list for an event. It doesnt really matter to us that an Eldar list of min maxed Fireprisms is too strong against a min-maxed Astra Militarum army, because we would never field thost lists. What we do now care about is that we can't take four squads of Ogryns, or our Harliquin armies can no longer be effectively fielded.

 

GW's attempts at fixing are too broad and sweeping. Instead of addressing specific issues and making focused changes they do half assed patches to the game. "Six squads of Dark Reapers too powerful? Well we could restrict that one unit, but nah we will just make all units limited to 3", "Space Marines dont seem to be tough enough. Should we address their specific issues? Nah just slap everyone with a nerf to AP"

 

That exasperation with how changes are being implemented, and why, does push us towards the direction of "i don't care if its balanced" because our games are negatively impacted either way.
 

Sorry for whats turned into a rant. I'm not saying balance is unimportant, or that competive 40k is "wrong". Just trying to express why some of us are apathetic to the issue these days.

[Emperor Ming]

Hopefully these changes are gonna be early September rather then late

[Redcomet]

3 hours ago, ArielRSA said:

I think we’re at the point where we can say the problem is:

 

a) Stu Black and his team don’t actually know what they’re doing; or

 

b) don’t have the budget to properly hire people/manage/design the game;

 

c) a combination of the above

I don’t think they get enough time to make the editions. 3 years is just too short a cycle. It is the same like AAA video games getting pushed out by management, instead of listening to the devs needing more time.

[Kallas]

39 minutes ago, Remain_Indoors said:

I think part of the reason why some taking a more dismissive view of "Balance" is GW's approach to it.

GW's approach to balance is wild, unpredictable and usually bad, no disagreement there - that said, end of 9th had generally pretty good balance (still some issues, especially on the low-end units, but still in a mostly healthy place overall), and then GW just threw out all balance and released 10th.

 

40 minutes ago, Remain_Indoors said:

I'm not a competitive player, zero interest in tournaments but my gameplay is negatively affected by the actions of tournament players. It's become quite a source of irritation in my gaming group that restrictions and changes are lumped onto our games, because some random players across the world can't use self control making a list for an event. It doesnt really matter to us that an Eldar list of min maxed Fireprisms is too strong against a min-maxed Astra Militarum army, because we would never field thost lists. What we do now care about is that we can't take four squads of Ogryns, or our Harliquin armies can no longer be effectively fielded.

Well, to ask the obvious question: your group is casual and doesn't care about tournament balance...so why are you following all of the rules that you dislike? Why don't you ignore the Rule of Three, and ignore the Harlequin restrictions that you dislike? You said that your group is not bringing min-maxed lists, so balance is not the concern...so why not ignore those limitations? You literally do not have to abide by those rules if you don't want to, casual play does not have Casual Police kicking down your door to stop you (nor does tournament play, but you do have rules to follow to participate in a tournament itself: breaking those rules does result in some form of repercussion, usually disqualification or some penalty).

 

This is the problem I have: Casual Players want the rules to enforce their way of playing, yet they cry out against Competitive Players wanting the same thing - except, balance requires a central pillar for people to play fair games around (ie, a core balance of the game from a single source), whereas casual play you can make up whatever the hell you want regardless of how balanced or unbalanced it is and that in no way requires that central balance to be present.

 

Ultimately, it comes down to things being "official", but one style of play does not actually require this because it revolves around communication with the opponent about what kind of experience they're going for - if you want to run an ambush scenario, you aren't going to get that at a tournament, you need to be crafting that with your opponent before models hit the table, and this is something that the core rules aren't going to enable: you might get an ambush scenario layout, but you still can't really get a properly crafted ambush narrative experience from a simple scenario sheet without further effort to balance the forces and positioning, and that requires more communication and human-to-human discussion than a tournament player who wants to play a simple scenario to test themselves against their opponent in who can win in a particular game.

 

Neither of those modes of play are wrong, they are just wildly different with one innately needing much more coordination from the participants to come to an agreement on what they want to experience. Having a global system for narrative and casual play is not really feasible: you'd need the most advanced computer simulation possible to acheive that; whereas a balance system for tournament play is...incredibly difficult, nigh impossible even, but far more attainable.

 

51 minutes ago, Remain_Indoors said:

GW's attempts at fixing are too broad and sweeping. Instead of addressing specific issues and making focused changes they do half assed patches to the game. "Six squads of Dark Reapers too powerful? Well we could restrict that one unit, but nah we will just make all units limited to 3", "Space Marines dont seem to be tough enough. Should we address their specific issues? Nah just slap everyone with a nerf to AP"

I definitely agree that GW's approaches to balancing are wild, messy and downright terribly thought through way too often.

 

But I disagree that this is the fault of Competitive Players: the blame lies firmly at the feet of the corporate entity of GW, and their drive to acheive unattainable endless growth. Taking the example of 9th and 10th: 9th was pretty well balanced towards the end, most of the rough edges were dealt with and it was pretty much time to bring up the underperforming stuff more...oops, time to throw all of that in the bin for 10th, so that the sales can spike again.

 

Some of your points I would disagree with: "Space Marines (and other stuff, like vehicles) dont seem to be tough enough. Should we address their specific issues? Nah just slap everyone with a nerf to AP"

Yes, Marines (and vehicles) felt awful in 8th and some of 9th, and AP creep was absolutely an issue. 10th's approach has kind of worked, a fair amount of stuff is less deadly...but some stuff really isn't, and that's kind of the problem: AP did need to come down, there was a mass proliferation of it that lead to Saves being much less valuable than they should have been; but while they acheived their goal in some places, they failed in others with some factions still being incredibly hard hitting. One of the problems comes in the form of how GW is going to balance going forward: we know that they've said they don't want to touch datasheets if they can avoid it, so it remains to be seen how skittish they are going to be come September and January - because some factions definitely need help (or nerfs) on the datasheet level that points just can't address in a satisfying way.

 

57 minutes ago, Remain_Indoors said:

That exasperation with how changes are being implemented, and why, does push us towards the direction of "i don't care if its balanced" because our games are negatively impacted either way.

Ultimately, I do sort of agree with this, I guess I have a problem with this kind of sentiment getting twisted into blaming Competitive Players who just want a more balanced game, when it's GW pushing sales over any kind of consumer satisfaction that are to blame.

[Remain_Indoors]

1 minute ago, Kallas said:

GW's approach to balance is wild, unpredictable and usually bad, no disagreement there - that said, end of 9th had generally pretty good balance (still some issues, especially on the low-end units, but still in a mostly healthy place overall), and then GW just threw out all balance and released 10th.

 

Well, to ask the obvious question: your group is casual and doesn't care about tournament balance...so why are you following all of the rules that you dislike? Why don't you ignore the Rule of Three, and ignore the Harlequin restrictions that you dislike? You said that your group is not bringing min-maxed lists, so balance is not the concern...so why not ignore those limitations? You literally do not have to abide by those rules if you don't want to, casual play does not have Casual Police kicking down your door to stop you (nor does tournament play, but you do have rules to follow to participate in a tournament itself: breaking those rules does result in some form of repercussion, usually disqualification or some penalty).

 

 

You've answered your own question there with your first point. We can ignore and alter rules, and do, but then comes the sweeping change of 10th that jumbles everything up again. Now we have issues with Battleline keywords and entire armies having massive rules changes. Taken to the extreme, does it reach the point where we are effectively creating our own ruleset?

Our issue isn't that we can't change rules, or that its one section of the Playerbase providing the data for those changes. It's that the changes are made poorly and to the detriment of some players.

 

1 minute ago, Kallas said:

 

This is the problem I have: Casual Players want the rules to enforce their way of playing, yet they cry out against Competitive Players wanting the same thing - except, balance requires a central pillar for people to play fair games around (ie, a core balance of the game from a single source), whereas casual play you can make up whatever the hell you want regardless of how balanced or unbalanced it is and that in no way requires that central balance to be present.

 

Can you please highlight where i said Competitive players must play my way? It was not my intention to do so, so if i did make it appear i wanted to enforce things on others i apologise. My attempted point was that some players perceive we are being penalised for the choices of others.

 

1 minute ago, Kallas said:

 

Ultimately, it comes down to things being "official", but one style of play does not actually require this because it revolves around communication with the opponent about what kind of experience they're going for - if you want to run an ambush scenario, you aren't going to get that at a tournament, you need to be crafting that with your opponent before models hit the table, and this is something that the core rules aren't going to enable: you might get an ambush scenario layout, but you still can't really get a properly crafted ambush narrative experience from a simple scenario sheet without further effort to balance the forces and positioning, and that requires more communication and human-to-human discussion than a tournament player who wants to play a simple scenario to test themselves against their opponent in who can win in a particular game.

 

Agreed. It's something that really came up when Age of Sigmar launched with no points. Some people were truly adverse to the notion of discussing with opponents what they actually wanted in a game.

1 minute ago, Kallas said:

 

Neither of those modes of play are wrong, they are just wildly different with one innately needing much more coordination from the participants to come to an agreement on what they want to experience. Having a global system for narrative and casual play is not really feasible: you'd need the most advanced computer simulation possible to acheive that; whereas a balance system for tournament play is...incredibly difficult, nigh impossible even, but far more attainable.

 

I definitely agree that GW's approaches to balancing are wild, messy and downright terribly thought through way too often.

 

But I disagree that this is the fault of Competitive Players: the blame lies firmly at the feet of the corporate entity of GW, and their drive to acheive unattainable endless growth. Taking the example of 9th and 10th: 9th was pretty well balanced towards the end, most of the rough edges were dealt with and it was pretty much time to bring up the underperforming stuff more...oops, time to throw all of that in the bin for 10th, so that the sales can spike again.

 

Again it's not my intention to place blame on Competitve Players. It's a problem entirely of GWs making. Changes get made, haphazardly, we begin to adjust and then the whole ruleset is overturned and we are back at square one trying to adapt. That creates the apathy i mentioned.

1 minute ago, Kallas said:

 

 One of the problems comes in the form of how GW is going to balance going forward: we know that they've said they don't want to touch datasheets if they can avoid it, so it remains to be seen how skittish they are going to be come September and January - because some factions definitely need help (or nerfs) on the datasheet level that points just can't address in a satisfying way.

 

This is one of our concerns. We're expecting Eldar to see big changes because of how dominant they are in results. And those nerfs have a knock on effect on non-competitive tailored lists. The Casual player gets "punished" to correct the state of the Competition. Not to harp on about it, but nerfing AP works with competitive lists, but its affects are far too negative on the non-competitive lists. My Rogue Trader crew struggled even more, because armies with one or two AP-X were penalised to fix armies with dozens. It was a broad change, when a more focused approach was needed.

The same is likely to happen this edition. If Competitive build A makes LETHAL HITS super effective, we'll see a broad change to LETHAL HITS that will negatively impact Casual Build B, rather than changing the particular Dasheets in Build A causing the specific issue.

 

To not be entirely negative, i do give some credit to GW that they have done some positive things this edition. The way Crusade packs alter the Core Rules is something i appreciate and would like to see more of - for example the Leviathan Crusade Pack changing Deep Strike.

 

1 minute ago, Kallas said:

 

Ultimately, I do sort of agree with this, I guess I have a problem with this kind of sentiment getting twisted into blaming Competitive Players who just want a more balanced game, when it's GW pushing sales over any kind of consumer satisfaction that are to blame.

 

Again i want to stress my post was not to blame Competitive Players, it was to express why some of use feel apathetic to balance, which was something i saw cropping up several times in this thread.

 

[Valkyrion]

3 years is far too short a cycle, especially given real world issues that vary from local inconvenience to globally problematic. 

The first two years should be pretty much live beta testing - all codexes released within the first 18 months and a final balance patch six months later and then the rules aren't touched for 2 more years. No more codexes, no more balance updates, just 2 years of everyone playing with a ruleset they know won't change. 

Use these remaining two years to bring out campaign books, new mission packs, updated versions of existing models, advance the storylines. 

 

I can't remember AOS releases, but if we imagine something like 2021 AOS, 2022 HH, 2023 40k, 2024 major specialist game (e.g Lord of the Rings, Blood Bowl, Necromunda), then the sequence starts again. It gives everyone, players and devs, much more time to do everything. I'm sure the 40k devs would be quite happy to have 2 years no longer having to worry about making 40k rules beyond new missions so as to better launch 11th without it seeming rushed, unfinished and poorly balanced.

 

 

[phandaal]

4 hours ago, ArielRSA said:

I think we’re at the point where we can say the problem is:

 

a) Stu Black and his team don’t actually know what they’re doing; or

 

b) don’t have the budget to properly hire people/manage/design the game;

 

c) a combination of the above

 

Probably Option C.

 

They certainly needed more time to work on 10th, which equates on some level to budget/staffing. Even without getting into balance, the errors and broken rules in the Indexes are proof enough of that.

 

Regarding Option A, many testers have said that their feedback about obvious issues that became big problems once rules went live was not only ignored (which could just be due to time constraints) but actively dismissed. That points to aggressive incompetence. It also explains why we see the same issues pop up time and time again. If the designers do not actually think their core design choices are wrong, they will keep trying it because "this time it will be different."

 

One "great" example was from a recent guest on the Winters SEO YouTube channel. The guest was a former tester for GW, and he told Winters that the first iteration of Termagant Fleshborers in 9th edition had come with AP -3. He had to spend a good amount of time explaining to the GW rules team why this would be a very bad thing to include on cheap line infantry that are spammed en masse. In other words, the weapon that became the poster child for how busted 9th Edition's Codexes were was originally even worse.

 

So yeah, there is definitely some Option A in there. What makes it more disappointing is that apparently the oversight is still not there to check the work done by whoever is the problem designer, and that falls squarely on Stu as the leader. If you know there is a problem, you should be paying more attention. That is part of being in charge.

[Kallas]

6 minutes ago, Remain_Indoors said:

Can you please highlight where i said Competitive players must play my way? It was not my intention to do so, so if i did make it appear i wanted to enforce things on others i apologise. My attempted point was that some players perceive we are being penalised for the choices of others.

To be clear, I'm not saying that you or any one specific person are lobbying for that specific circumstance - but the general principle is what is pushing for this. Casual players pushing for changes to be less and less frequent (eg, those on Facebook comments saying there are too many/too frequent changes for their casual games) is the inverse of calling for more balance changes, and while there is a middle ground where the changes are fast enough to keep up with without being overwhelmingly frequent, the end of the spectrum that's opposite to extreme competitiveness is the extreme casual, where changes aren't made because people don't want to consider them.

 

The reason I bring it up at all is because casual players already don't have to obey the rules, casual players have the most freedom to just play whatever the hell they want - they can choose to ignore the rule of three, or deep striking turn one, or give Ork Warbosses T12 if you want to; because casual play is inherently a lot more about the discussion between two players on what they want to do with a given game.

 

Conversely, competitive play is about playing the same game, by the same rules as a comparison of sorts - even if a competitive game is done in a friendly, fun manner, it's still got the underlying basis of operating on an even field; win or lose, you're still testing yours and your opponents' skills against one another, even if you are not WAAC, and this kind of play asks for a sturdier set of rules than casual does - because it is asking for a balanced set of circumstances.

 

So my point is that casual players that are asking for fewer changes are, in effect, asking for competitive players to play in their manner (ie, less balanced, more freeform) because casual doesn't need that permission, whereas competitive does require that centralised structure to operate effectively. It's not saying that you, specifically, are demanding that competitive players need to play by one set of casual rules, but that the mindset of the casual player is already unshackled from those restrictions and can choose to freeform their games at their own whims whereas competitive players (ie, those that want that kind of structure) can't build a balanced system on the fly for their differing opponents each time they approach the table, because this is far more complex and detailed than just agreeing to ignore Rule of Three because you don't like it, or agreeing to an ambush style battle, or similar.

 

16 minutes ago, Remain_Indoors said:

Agreed. It's something that really came up when Age of Sigmar launched with no points. Some people were truly adverse to the notion of discussing with opponents what they actually wanted in a game.

Yeah, and functionally this is why I have issues with the 'desired enforcement' (for lack of a better term to explain my position) of casual desires in 40k: casual desires can be expressed easily on an individual level much more easily than coming to an agreement about what's balanced. Like the AoS example, how do you balance Archaon on Dhorgar vs an Empire Captain when there are no points? Well now you and your opponent are going to need to discuss what's a fair amount of Empire stuff to bring, or if you're going to go into a quick (or long) debate about what kind of battle you're going to play - are the Empire in a last stand, so Chaos just has more stuff, for example?

 

To bring it back to 40k, Power Level-points are bad, because casual players used to be able to use this approach in 8th with both Power Levels and Points, so they could choose to use the one they preferred, while the competitive players used the one that they deemed to be more appropriate for the competitive scene. In 10th, GW has harmed both sides by removing the option and moving to try to semi-balance thing with their 'Points Level' system, which is not as good as either.

 

8th PL was useful: for those who wanted to ignore the updates and just play with their Index, they could just keep using PL which never changed since they obviously didn't care about the balance; and those who did care could use the updated Points - and now in 10th, those PL players can still choose to ignore all updates, but the Points-using players are penalised and forced to use PL. This is pretty much exactly an instance of the above 'desired casual enforcement' - this is a casual-principle (ie, PL) being enforced on the competitive side of players.

 

30 minutes ago, Remain_Indoors said:

Our issue isn't that we can't change rules, or that its one section of the Playerbase providing the data for those changes. It's that the changes are made poorly and to the detriment of some players.

I kind of get your point, but I'd argue that that's not actually unique to casual players - everyone gets hurt by GW's wild and poor balancing.

 

23 minutes ago, Remain_Indoors said:

This is one of our concerns. We're expecting Eldar to see big changes because of how dominant they are in results. And those nerfs have a knock on effect on non-competitive tailored lists. The Casual player gets "punished" to correct the state of the Competition. Not to harp on about it, but nerfing AP works with competitive lists, but its affects are far too negative on the non-competitive lists.

I mean, I can see this issue coming up with Eldar for sure.

 

I've seen many posited 'solutions' for Eldar: "just make the Wraithknight 600pts!"; or split into two datasheets (despite there being more than two weapon combos); or nerf Devastating Wounds (which has many more knock on effects); or nerf Fate Dice by making them modified dice/by reducing the number/by whatever method.

 

All of these options will have their own knock on effects and disruptions - and if GW goes for the heavier competitive-focused changes (eg, if they change Devastating Wounds in the core rules), then casual players will probably complain that they now have to keep up with changes because of competitive players; but if GW goes for the casual kind of changes (eg, massive points increases) then we see the issue that affects both casual and competitive players, in that the Ghostglaive/Suncannon loadout, for example, is nowhere near worth, say, 600pts and now in the competitive scene if you want to run a Wraithknight you must run the 2x Heavy Wraithcannons, or else you're definitely not going to get good value out of your model.

 

Ultimately, GW is just going to continue on with their wild lurches from one ruleset to the next, because as long as people keep buying the new Box Of The Week they just don't care about anyone. Once we're in the hobby door, they will pay lip service to our comments and then tell us to buy more stuff, and nothing changes; they've already moved on to trying to get some other poor sap to spend money on their hobby meat money grinder.

[Karhedron]

3 hours ago, Remain_Indoors said:

I think part of the reason why some taking a more dismissive view of "Balance" is GW's approach to it. I'm not a competitive player, zero interest in tournaments but my gameplay is negatively affected by the actions of tournament players. It's become quite a source of irritation in my gaming group that restrictions and changes are lumped onto our games, because some random players across the world can't use self control making a list for an event.

 

You are looking at it the wrong way around. Tournament players are not causing the problems, they are simply highlighting them. I work in software and one of the important aspects of development is stress testing. It is fine if your code works well on a good day but what happens when you try and overload it. It is not the fault of the tester if a system fails stress testing.

 

Right now we are in a situation where a friendly Death Guard list will normally get pounded by a similarly friendly Eldar list in most games (given similar levels of skill and luck on both sides). An unbalanced game is not fun for either casual or competitive players because it quickly becomes clear if one side consistently has a significant advantage over the other.

 

Balance updates benefit everyone as they make casual games more fun too. My real complaint is that more testing should have been done before the launch of 10th edition. We players should not be beta-testing GWs rules and points values.

[Rain]

14 minutes ago, Karhedron said:

 

You are looking at it the wrong way around. Tournament players are not causing the problems, they are simply highlighting them. I work in software and one of the important aspects of development is stress testing. It is fine if your code works well on a good day but what happens when you try and overload it. It is not the fault of the tester if a system fails stress testing.

 

Right now we are in a situation where a friendly Death Guard list will normally get pounded by a similarly friendly Eldar list in most games (given similar levels of skill and luck on both sides). An unbalanced game is not fun for either casual or competitive players because it quickly becomes clear if one side consistently has a significant advantage over the other.

 

Balance updates benefit everyone as they make casual games more fun too. My real complaint is that more testing should have been done before the launch of 10th edition. We players should not be beta-testing GWs rules and points values.

This is a good analogy. And it would be one thing if the abuses were weird obscure combos, but come on. Fire Prisms were obviously undercosted for what you get, and they get better as you spam them because of their prism fire thing. That doesn’t take 100’s of games to catch.