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

[Captain Idaho]

Playtesting is desirable of course, but there's a problem that goes further than that. Many of the problems are obvious after seconds of reading the rules, so obvious that GW would have to be completely moronic to have done it by mistake. 

 

And I mean that with sincerity. The old saying "never attribute malice to that which can be explained by stupidity" is surely in reverse - it's got to be deliberately done surely? I mean, how incompetent as a game developer can you be to not know that allowing a faction to determine its dice scores in a game of random chance will create balance issues?

 

It's literally their jobs and the level of incompetence they must have means it just can't be true as to the reason.

 

There's got to be sales needing to be pushed for many of their decisions. Surely. 

[Flaherty]

GW's in a tough spot. They are currently:

 

- Balancing two flagship game lines (40K/AoS)

- A third army game whose proponents are clamoring for more unbalancing elements (HH)

- That third game has a new sub-game attempting to combine two other game systems with ill-fitting rules

- Two Skirmish games lines that tie into the flagship game (WC/KT)

- A third skirmish game that has some overlap with the first flagship property

- A fourth game reviving old rank and flank playstyles is coming soon

- A board game/LCG that ties into the second flagship game

- A sports game

- A series of board games with planned expansions

- A game based on a top 20 entertainment IP 

 

- A line of repackaged versions of the above for sale in Mass Market Retail venues like Target and B&N

 

This is, of course, a prison of their own making, but I'm honestly shocked by the level of quality they deliver given the resources at their disposal. So far as I know, they don't hire world-renowned game designers but rather let enthusiastic fans turned employees pilot the ship.

 

I think this challenge is also complicated by the fact that games of this sort can only ever get so competitively balanced. The imbalance in army forces and decade long release/upgrade schedules makes anything approaching the level of balance of Magic incredibly hard to believe.

 

I don't begrudge anyone their opinions, I've just come to accept that this format is always going to require more of a social contract than truly competitive genres.

 

 

[jaxom]

1 hour ago, Captain Idaho said:

Many of the problems are obvious after seconds of reading the rules, so obvious that GW would have to be completely moronic to have done it by mistake. 

 

And I mean that with sincerity. The old saying "never attribute malice to that which can be explained by stupidity" is surely in reverse - it's got to be deliberately done surely? I mean, how incompetent as a game developer can you be to not know that allowing a faction to determine its dice scores in a game of random chance will create balance issues?

TL;DR: Is there still a gap in power between the haves and have-nots? Oh yes, but it's nowhere near as bad if one is comparing the sort of armies we know are sitting around the GW studio instead of looking at "best-in-show".

 

Longer verion:

I think the example studio armies in each codex and the "inside the GW zone" people's armies can help explain it. Those armies are not built with a tournament mind set and I don't think the ones in the design studio (or their buddies in other areas of the company) approach play testing in the way those who pay attention to the pre-tournament "here's what I'm thinking of bringing because it's broken" internet circles do. At face value, being able to dictate one die roll in your phase and one in your opponent's phase with two extra to use across the game (total of 12) wouldn't be too bad in an army with maybe one Nightspinner or one Support Battery or one Wraithknight, and doled out. We've seen in the past that the design team often launches rules with the soft assumption that everyone understands the context and intent (for example, when Storm Shields made everyone looking for an edge actually apply the save rules as they were written in 9th edition because no one -including the design studio- played AP as written, but always used the easier method of modifying the save, not the roll).

 

The haves and have-nots still show that there's no one guiding vision for the whole of the game's factions... unless is money and pushing certain units. This is, hands down, the cardinal sin of a healthy game. If I knew more than just me would do anything with them, I'd write up my own indices with the idea of actually having that.

[Evil Eye]

2 hours ago, Captain Idaho said:

Playtesting is desirable of course, but there's a problem that goes further than that. Many of the problems are obvious after seconds of reading the rules, so obvious that GW would have to be completely moronic to have done it by mistake. 

 

And I mean that with sincerity. The old saying "never attribute malice to that which can be explained by stupidity" is surely in reverse - it's got to be deliberately done surely? I mean, how incompetent as a game developer can you be to not know that allowing a faction to determine its dice scores in a game of random chance will create balance issues?

 

It's literally their jobs and the level of incompetence they must have means it just can't be true as to the reason.

 

There's got to be sales needing to be pushed for many of their decisions. Surely. 

This is how I feel. The sheer level of harm that GW's decision-making has done to any semblance of balance suggests something much worse than simple idiocy. It can't even be explained away with the 2E Excuse- as GW being more interested in making a fun, fluffy game than it being perfectly balanced- because it's neither. I think GW is doing this on purpose; either because they think "who cares, they'll buy it anyway" and can use the excuse of "the rules are free, what did you expect?" (which does feed into my bias against digital rules) or possibly with the express purpose of chasing away people who might hold a more critical eye to GW's product, such that all that remains are loyal yes-men who will consume anything they make without question.

[Captain Idaho]

I dunno, my gaming group just can't be bothered with 40K. The imbalances are just so pronounced people can't be bothered to do work the developers should do when they work for a living.

 

Besides, there are plenty of examples that are soooo obvious I just can't get on board with the "impossible task" job. Especially with other companies making cleaner jobs.

[Lexington]

2 hours ago, Captain Idaho said:

There's got to be sales needing to be pushed for many of their decisions. Surely. 

I’m quick to attribute a lot of GW’s bad decisions to the fell hand of marketing, but in this case, I just don’t see it - at least not directly. Eldar’s ridiculous dominance doesn’t net them anything much, or at least not more than if the game had been balanced at the outset.

 

Like I said earlier, it really seems like the Studio had the rug pulled out from under them, and had to create an entire Index series in almost no time. Why and how are a mystery - GW’s internal politics are weird, and I’d say the likeliest possibility is that a person or group got installed higher up, and they decided to change the direction of 40K’s development, but it was too late in the cycle to do it very well.

[DemonGSides]

Yeah I can't imagine how anyone can assume this is "Well if we make the game bad, MORE MONEY WILL BE MADE!"  Seems like people are just looking for anything to grab onto to explain why it's bad.

They were rushed.  They didn't do enough playtesting.  They are understaffed.  Malice isn't really even necessary.

[Captain Idaho]

Well this begs to differ:

 

 

Actually found on their website... shameless.

[phandaal]

8 minutes ago, Captain Idaho said:

Well this begs to differ:

 

 

Actually found on their website... shameless.

 

Is that for real?

[DemonGSides]

14 minutes ago, Captain Idaho said:

Well this begs to differ:

 

 

How?

[jaxom]

1 minute ago, DemonGSides said:

 

How?

Actively marketing the OP unit of the best performing faction w/"if you can't beat them, join them" to paraphrase the writing.

[DemonGSides]

That doesn't beg to differ what I wrote though.

[Captain Idaho]

Whether it is correct to do so or not, GW are using poor game design to promote sales as shown by that pic.

 

And yes it is/was really. Not sure if it's still there though.

[DemonGSides]

13 minutes ago, Captain Idaho said:

Whether it is correct to do so or not, GW are using poor game design to promote sales as shown by that pic.

 

And yes it is/was really. Not sure if it's still there though.

 

But that's not what I wrote.  Just you tilting at windmills.

They don't make bad rules on purpose.  If that were the case, every single faction would have overpowered units because they are trying to sell every faction to their customers; they'd make their cheapest to produce unit do the absolute best so they could crank them out and make massive profits.

They're just not great at rules writing because of either: under funding, lack of experience (new team), lack of direction (Bad management), being rushed (Executive's are dumb).  Thinking that "Oh yes, they made eldar strong so people rush out and buy wraithknights" is just like, the most juvenile of takes, because it doesn't pass any sort of business logic.

 

 

[phandaal]

16 minutes ago, Captain Idaho said:

Whether it is correct to do so or not, GW are using poor game design to promote sales as shown by that pic.

 

And yes it is/was really. Not sure if it's still there though.

 

That is wild. "Make hay while the sun shines," apparently.

[Captain Idaho]

@DemonGSides there were other active people participating in the topic, including immediately before you and in a conversation with myself. I wasn't actually talking to you.

 

@Lexington actually I can get behind the idea the studio had the rugs pulled from under them, I do totally agree. Which is why I don't believe they were just incompetent. I think there's someone pulling strings and knocking over plant pots in the management.

Edited August 27, 2023 by Captain Idaho

[Aarik]

3 hours ago, Flaherty said:

GW's in a tough spot. They are currently:

 

- Balancing two flagship game lines (40K/AoS)

- A third army game whose proponents are clamoring for more unbalancing elements (HH)

- That third game has a new sub-game attempting to combine two other game systems with ill-fitting rules

- Two Skirmish games lines that tie into the flagship game (WC/KT)

- A third skirmish game that has some overlap with the first flagship property

- A fourth game reviving old rank and flank playstyles is coming soon

- A board game/LCG that ties into the second flagship game

- A sports game

- A series of board games with planned expansions

- A game based on a top 20 entertainment IP 

 

- A line of repackaged versions of the above for sale in Mass Market Retail venues like Target and B&N

I’d have more sympathy for them if they didn’t completely redo everything and start from scratch every edition, completely throwing away the end-of-edition relative balance rather than iterating on it. The constant “one step forward, two steps back” churn gets old quickly. 

[Brother Captain Arkley]

From the POV of someone that does not play but have friends that do the most common complaint I see is how disjointed the game is now.

 

@Aarik I would agree they try to reinvent the wheel every edition... But then I am a relic of Rogue Trader and 2nd... I flirted with 3rd and 5th.

Edited August 27, 2023 by Brother Captain Arkley

[sonsoftaurus]

Can you imagine if their model quality control was the same as it us for rules?

 

Despoilers would be the good-looking cool marines. 
 

Ten-model squads would ship with six heads. Three of which would be for the wrong faction. 
 

There would be very complicated multi-piece contraptions that would need to be assembled in a specific order. There would be no instructions.
 

In the rare cases where instructions are provided, it is a picture of the included sprues as step one, and a picture if the completed model as step two. In three out of four cases, the pictured model includes parts that are not included in the kit.  
 

 

[jaxom]

25 minutes ago, Aarik said:

I’d have more sympathy for them if they didn’t completely redo everything and start from scratch every edition, completely throwing away the end-of-edition relative balance rather than iterating on it. The constant “one step forward, two steps back” churn gets old quickly. 

I like the bones of tenth edition, but yeah there are some indices where things just didn’t mesh well together. 

[One Paul Murray]

4 hours ago, Captain Idaho said:

Whether it is correct to do so or not, GW are using poor game design to promote sales as shown by that pic.

 

And yes it is/was really. Not sure if it's still there though.

Or, they're using a bit of humour.

 

This is the same type of banter comment that 'James Workshop' made in the LoV codex video. 

 

I think that some of the echo chamber frustration in the forum leads to a loss of perspective and nuance. No big company is ever 'the good guy', but to read some posts on B&C you'd think they verged on the sociopathic.

[Captain Idaho]

Nah, there's no chance that is intended as humour. New customers, casuals who don't use forums nor Facebook groups etc would use their site more than the "Veterans" who MIGHT be in on the terrible joke.

 

Edited August 27, 2023 by Captain Idaho
Uh. Words.

[MegaVolt87]

7 hours ago, One Paul Murray said:

Or, they're using a bit of humour.

 

This is the same type of banter comment that 'James Workshop' made in the LoV codex video. 

 

I think that some of the echo chamber frustration in the forum leads to a loss of perspective and nuance. No big company is ever 'the good guy', but to read some posts on B&C you'd think they verged on the sociopathic.

 

Lets assume its not in malice. Its still in very poor taste to make jokes like that to push sales of obviously broken units so blatantly. This is the wrong way to write a marketing puff piece. If GW was smart, they would have written such a unit as strong using lore instead of real life rules performance. Its become really on the nose at this point. 

[Interrogator Stobz]

Malice or not, it is 100% on purpose. GeeDub have stated they don't playtest.

They have stated they leave that up to tournament results.

 

That is why only Official Armies (Rule of three, no Legends etc) is enforced at reportable tournaments; they don't want to skew the data.... which they obviously barely use anyway lolz.

 

And we've known for decades that they boost power/efficiency to minis they want to sell, then rotate them out of the limelight.

NewVolSquats anyone?

Edited August 28, 2023 by Interrogator Stobz

[Special Officer Doofy]

1 hour ago, Interrogator Stobz said:

And we've known for decades that they boost power/efficiency to minis they want to sell, then rotate them out of the limelight.

NewVolSquats anyone?

 

Kind of like Agressors losing shooting twice just in time for Eradicators to come out... Shooting twice.