Game Stability, Balance, and Health Over Time

[Mandragola]

40K has never been balanced. I played every edition before 10h and won tournaments in most of them and there have always been better and worse armies. 
 

The game recruits new players and sells models by the ton. But nowadays I enjoy other games more so I play them instead, and that’s fine. 
 

It’s hard to pinpoint one thing that moved me away from the game. It’s probably just that I found I couldn’t keep up with the churn required for tournaments nowadays, especially now I have a family. Actually getting better at painting didn’t help as now I want my models to look good, not just be acceptable battle ready. That takes so long that their rules often won’t be the same any more by the time I’ve finished. 
 

Totally irrationally, the reduced board size really impacted things for me. There’s just something a tiny bit heartbreaking about knowing that the board is that size because it fits efficiently in a packing box.

[Scribe]

6 hours ago, Interrogator Stobz said:

8 hours ago, No Foes Remain said:

Expand  

And you remember it because it was fun and unexpected. 

 

Exactly.

 

Some of you haven't played a good game of 40K, and it shows. ;)

[HeadlessCross]

10 hours ago, Emurian said:

Name an army outside grey knights in 4th that was not viable?

 

I played Dark Eldar

I was able to stop reading right there. Hardly anyone would call them balanced for the edition that codex was released in (3rd) and everyone was desperate for them to get their eventual update they deserved. 

[Antarius]

On 7/1/2024 at 12:15 PM, Chaplain Killmer said:

 

Actually I read this frequently and I ask myself why I don't have that good memories about the 3rd edition, but maybe it was just me. The first things that come into my mind as DA player  were

 

Marine Chars sucked - especially coming from 2nd

Terminators were just sad

Marines infantry overall was as far away from the lore as they could be

 

There was almost no customization left in the game apart from maybe a handful of wargear items

 

My most favourite unit in the game were the attack bikes because of the armor 2 which was funny and sad at the same time when the multi melta attack bikes annihilate a unit of Reman Russ tanks from the front without losing a single bike because of the save.

 

I don't want to say the good old things were better (again to me as a marine player). Rules were much less precise, marines were the base line that all other armies were measured on - this the reason the Eldar are still so good because that was such a fundamental flaw that GW can't fix. Fixing issues was in reality not happening. The existence of the DA 3.5 codes was if i remember that correctly because of the initiative of this very board. 

 

 

Ups forgot the point, I don't think balance or stability was better on any given time or edition. The seasons and balance passes are simply something that resembles an e-sport and are probably here to stay. To me thats not that big of a problem - I just wish GW would move on with Warhammer+ and publishes all relevant books in updated form there.

 

Terminators sucked for sure, but they actually did “patch” them in WD/Chapter Approved, so they did sometimes do stuff like that even back then. But yeah, you were pretty much stuck with your codex for an edition or two, back then.

 I maintain that balance was probably best at the launch of 3rd before codexes, but balance isn’t everything and I did prefer the 3.5 codexes.

[Emurian]

2 hours ago, HeadlessCross said:

I was able to stop reading right there. Hardly anyone would call them balanced for the edition that codex was released in (3rd) and everyone was desperate for them to get their eventual update they deserved. 

How about coming with arguments rather then bland statements? The only words I am missing in your text are: I feel. The army was OK not OP. If you are one of those that can only stare at their 10x Warriors w/2 DL = 100 pts versus your 5 SM w/lascannon being 75 points and scream OP then just say it and il debunk that illusion for you. 

[phandaal]

8 hours ago, HeadlessCross said:

I was able to stop reading right there. Hardly anyone would call them balanced for the edition that codex was released in (3rd) and everyone was desperate for them to get their eventual update they deserved. 

 

Both of your posts on your brand-new account have been very combative and dismissive. Maybe take a look around the forum before you continue posting, until you understand that this is not reddit or Twitter.

[tychobi]

Youthful nostalgia aside, is there any evidence of strong balance in previous editions? My experiences of older editions was not what I would call balanced.  Best memories for me speak of company and situation rather than game mechanics. I worry fond memories and appreciation eclipse rigorous fact based balance analysis and cloud the discussion of present and future balance in 40k.

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

40 minutes ago, tychobi said:

Youthful nostalgia aside, is there any evidence of strong balance in previous editions? My experiences of older editions was not what I would call balanced.  Best memories for me speak of company and situation rather than game mechanics. I worry fond memories and appreciation eclipse rigorous fact based balance analysis and cloud the discussion of present and future balance in 40k.

The game has never been balanced. I’m sure it’s the most balanced it’s ever been, and yet through all those years, the game and hobby grew steadily.

 

personally I find the game to be much less fun, much less engaging now. 

[Scribe]

2 hours ago, tychobi said:

Youthful nostalgia aside, is there any evidence of strong balance in previous editions? My experiences of older editions was not what I would call balanced.  Best memories for me speak of company and situation rather than game mechanics. I worry fond memories and appreciation eclipse rigorous fact based balance analysis and cloud the discussion of present and future balance in 40k.

 

No, but there are versions that had more granularity than 10th, yet had a design that could have been easier balanced.

 

If 5th had even a fraction of the attention 9th and 10th received, it could easily have been polished into a fantastic rule set, Codex books included.

 

People dont want to hear it, hell at this point I bet most 10th edition players never even played it, but 5th was a better design.

[Emurian]

Nostalgia or not, this is the way I see it: Roughly on average an army had like 25 datasheets per codex. That should be easier to balance out then the amount of units we have today.  If you look at the summeray at the back with all the statlines, around 60% of them will be near identical (MEQ or GEQ statlne) its very easy to learn a codex in 4th once you understand your base statline. 

(Going to speak from my perspective in 9th as I did not touch 10th, that one was DOA for me) Go play a 9th edition game and 4th on the same day and observe how many dice you are holding at all times. The lethality of units has gone up drastically. From my point of view, 9th is all about holding objectives, so you either need a unit thats very durable to stick on it, or a glascannon unit that can remove such units from the objectives. In 4th I did not have this feeling as much.

In 4th you had a lot of twin linked weapons, meaning reroll to hit. In 9th that has been translated to x2 shots. And now you have effects that can make you get rerolls on those shots, so the damage goes up. 

I am not saying 4th was the perfect balance, but overall, if you where looking at the dexes, its not like there was a huge difference in power level between factions. I have all the codexes aside WH of 4th. Sure there are units I can point to that I would say give them a points drop or increase, but not with huge margins. Sure every army had 1-2 obvious units that you wanted to include but they where not so dominant that there was no way to deal with them or it came down to: Pick these units or your getting trashed. (The only codex I got this feeling with is the Necron Codex from 5th that came out and it was very clear that you wanted to run a Wraithwing list with the Barges on the background) 

Chaos had tons of ways to play IMO and in our group of 40+ people we had multiple players running the same core but it wasn't a one trick pony list, there was plenty of flavour to see in their list. I will not say that CSM Daemon Prince Lash was a perfectly balanced ability =p. But most factions had something that made them feel good.

Was the Wraithlord correctly priced at start of 4th for 120 pts BL T8 W3? No that thing was friggin cheap, durable and very good due to BS4. Triple Wraithlord was the norm, but they did not break games on themselves because Eldar could not Overload on 3+ of them like a Tyranid player spamming 75-100 pts distraction carnifexes AND having more of those type of units in their codex to go all in on that Axis of playstyle  (MC list)  

A couple of powerfull units/abilities per faction but nothing you couldn't learn to deal with. There was no constant new flow of information you needed to update outside the Chapter Approved which they made one or max two? off throughout the whole edition to give some tweaks. Also, please go take a look at how they tried to balance back then, it wasn't only points drop or increase, they would actually give new abilities to units. (DE Wych Weapons) That kind of balance is what I rather see 1x a year from GW then the balancesleet cycle thats going on atm. 

So I will concede 4th is not perfect, but theres very little I have to tweak on it myself to get it to my liking. Most in my group play for 20+ years together so were open to house ruling pts/ability fixes on units if that stimulates diversity of play. Theres nostalgia in play to a degree, but at the same time I am very confident that if you are going to take this game serious as in endgoal tournaments and you need to know your stuff. .  The rulebloat has become insane with the later editions. 

Edited July 6 by Emurian

[Marshal Mittens]

I started playing at the very tail end of 2nd edition.

 

3rd edition was my most played edition because I was in highschool and college for all of it and so I had a ton of play time. 

 

Thinking back, I think part of it was that a lot of us didn't have access to many places to talk about the META, and most of us had small armies. 

 

I played Sisters, Guard, Black Templars and Space Wolves. 

 

We mostly played 1250pts in my area, and mostly folks took 2-3 squads of infantry, it seemed like, a couple of transports, a tank and a character or 2. Maybe some jump infantry. 

 

Most folks, I feel like, didn't have HUGE armies, and so you kinda played with what you had. 

 

Today the meta changes so swiftly, and there is so much math hammer done on what works and what does not. 

 

I stopped playing in 6th Ed and came back in 8th ed, about halfway through. 

 

I liked a lot of 8th Ed, 9th Ed took AP everywhere multi damage weapons everywhere to the moon. 

 

Personally, as a player, it does feel like I need to hunt down all sorts of rules changes before I can play, and it's a lot more effort than it should be.

 

I think a more balanced approach would rules that did not change between editions, but with "tournament" packs where large tournament organizers have the option to ban units (instead of sending them to legends), and tweak points, without affecting the majority of players, allowing us to play with just our codex and BRB each edition.

Edited July 6 by Marshal Mittens

[Doghouse]

I've finally moved on to other non GW game systems altogether now and it feels like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders to be honest.

 

I'm sculpting, converting, painting, scratch building terrain and building armies again, it's brilliant and I actually get excited about hobbying again (still trying to get used to Discord rather than a genuinely amazing site like this one though.  ).

 

For the first time in over a decade the other day I was sat at work but in the back of my mind I was counting down and planning what I was going to try that evening with my new minis. 

 

I think that at the end of the day if the game doesn't appeal it's ok to look at other options. 

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

1 hour ago, Doghouse said:

I've finally moved on to other non GW game systems altogether now and it feels like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders to be honest.

 

I'm sculpting, converting, painting, scratch building terrain and building armies again, it's brilliant and I actually get excited about hobbying again (still trying to get used to Discord rather than a genuinely amazing site like this one though.  ).

 

For the first time in over a decade the other day I was sat at work but in the back of my mind I was counting down and planning what I was going to try that evening with my new minis. 

 

I think that at the end of the day if the game doesn't appeal it's ok to look at other options. 

That’s awesome to hear.

 

i love the universe of 40K so much, I actually spent a year or so looking for other games before I came back to 40K. The hobbying and coming up with background for my armies is still fun for me, so I don’t know if I’ll ever really leave the hobby completely, but the gaming itself definitely isn’t nearly as fun imho.

[Cenobite Terminator]

I remember Grey Knights, Imperial Guard (leaf blower parking lot lists) and Space Wolves were OP compared to other factions during fifth edotion. Also vehicles could be hard to remove. Towards the end Necrons were very strong. So, to me there wasn’t much external balance between codices.

[Scribe]

9 hours ago, Cenobite Terminator said:

I remember Grey Knights, Imperial Guard (leaf blower parking lot lists) and Space Wolves were OP compared to other factions during fifth edotion. Also vehicles could be hard to remove. Towards the end Necrons were very strong. So, to me there wasn’t much external balance between codices.

 

All of this was overblown. I played in Tournaments in 5th (because it was the best edition) and unless you were in America playing at way above recommended points values, Guard didnt even rate all that well.

 

Again though, this would have taken likely 1 'meta pass' errata, to correct across the whole spectrum.

 

5th was just that much better than the train wreck GW has dumped on the community with 10th.

[Tyran]

At the top, sure, but the bottom of the 5th ed factions needed way more than a "meta pass" errata.

 

Everyone still with a 3rd-4th codex and Tyranids would require a heavier rewrite. 

 

But sure it was possible, but GW didn't had such intentions back then with their "beer and pretzels design".

[Scribe]

On 7/16/2024 at 10:00 AM, Tyran said:

But sure it was possible, but GW didn't had such intentions back then with their "beer and pretzels design".

 

And 10th wasn't/isn't beer and pretzels? It needs a facelift half way through its life. It released utterly broken, and has been 'errata' tuned how many times?

 

Its a live service game, that people are expected to shell out massive amounts of time and money to 'keep up with rotation' when the errata happens. And folks pay for the privilege? lol

[Noserenda]

I really like 5th, probably my second fave edition, but things like leaf blower absolute existed and sucked ass, like, a friend quit 40k forever because my mechanised guard list built for fluff (Like, no artillery parking lot or anything, just all the squishies in behicles) was so awful to play against for his Orks, even when he tailored his list as best he was able. I think that was one of the editions Eldar were disgusting too? Thats one of the things i like about 4th wave 40k (8th onwards) is that at least its pretty rare to just feel helpless in a game, not unknown obviously, codex creep must feed after all lol.

[Special Officer Doofy]

There is issues with 10th, but to act like there wasn't issues with 3rd-7th is hilarious. Balance was all over the place and some factions didn't even get codexes for editions. There was just way less interaction with the hobby on the internet, there wasn't as much keeping track of win rates by factions and the hobby itself was smaller. I played 3rd-6th and in my experience it was far worse than 8th-10th.

[DuskRaider]

I said it over in the 11th Edition thread and I’ll say it here, 40K post-8th was written for a younger audience like DemonGSides who doesn’t want to be bothered with pesky things like immersion, tactics and the hobby side of things. 
 

The elimination of terrain interaction, facing, TLoS, Armor Value and templates has turned 40K into a generic mess. I’m glad to be rid of Formations, but even last I played people were abusing things like Strategems.

 

Balance will never be possible when the rules come a distant second to GW and the main goal is to sell the models. New armies released on a very staggered schedule will be better than the old ones, it’s a money making scheme. They give you time to collect and paint the last OP army just to get you to buy the new shiny one. This has been their strategy since at least 5th Edition. 
 

I won’t stop playing games set in the 40K Universe, but I won’t play 40K in its current incarnation nor will I play with the simplified version that has existed since 8th. I can scratch the itch to play something more immersive and strategic with Titanicus, but even that has essentially been squatted for a streamlined, completely imbalanced game in Legions Imperialis. I refuse to invest in a completely new game system when I’ve put so much time and especially money into Warhammer. Over 20 years. 
 

 

Edited July 18 by DuskRaider

[Tyran]

10 hours ago, Scribe said:

 

And 10th wasn't/isn't beer and pretzels? It needs a facelift half way through its life. It released utterly broken, and has been 'errata' tuned how many times?

 

Its a live service game, that people are expected to shell out massive amounts of time and money to 'keep up with rotation' when the errata happens. And folks pay for the privilege? lol

Beer and pretzels game is a very different thing from a live service game. 

 

To refresh everyone's memories, "beer and pretzels" was GW's response to calls to balance 40k, it was an utter dismissal of the competitive environment of the game.

[phandaal]

11 minutes ago, Tyran said:

Beer and pretzels game is a very different thing from a live service game. 

 

To refresh everyone's memories, "beer and pretzels" was GW's response to calls to balance 40k, it was an utter dismissal of the competitive environment of the game.

 

What does "beer and pretzels" actually mean anyway? For some people it seems to mean non-tournament games for fun, and for others it seems to mean - an amoeba pushing models around and drooling into a bucket.

[Tyran]

Admittedly, I'm not entirely sure it mean anything aside of a "not our problem" from GW.

[Karhedron]

1 hour ago, DuskRaider said:

The elimination of terrain interaction, facing, TLoS, Armor Value and templates has turned 40K into a generic mess.

 

The removal of these features had nothing to do with dumbing down the game. All those features had something in common in that they were subjective and could easily be argued over. I can recall plenty of times when we disagreed over how many models a template hit after it scattered. Measuring vehicle facings on non-square models was also a pain in the proverbial. I never really cared about armour values since it created a weird 2-tier system and led to a situation for several editions where Wraithlords were far more powerful than the Dreadnoughts to which they were supposed to be equivalent.

 

I don't really miss any of those rules as they led to more time spent arguing than actually playing the game. And do you know how we usually resolved these diagreements? We rolled a D6 to decide anything we could not agree on and the loser usually felt bad about it. Now we just cut straight to rolling the dice without any of the aggro.

[DuskRaider]

45 minutes ago, Karhedron said:

 

The removal of these features had nothing to do with dumbing down the game. All those features had something in common in that they were subjective and could easily be argued over. I can recall plenty of times when we disagreed over how many models a template hit after it scattered. Measuring vehicle facings on non-square models was also a pain in the proverbial. I never really cared about armour values since it created a weird 2-tier system and led to a situation for several editions where Wraithlords were far more powerful than the Dreadnoughts to which they were supposed to be equivalent.

 

I don't really miss any of those rules as they led to more time spent arguing than actually playing the game. And do you know how we usually resolved these diagreements? We rolled a D6 to decide anything we could not agree on and the loser usually felt bad about it. Now we just cut straight to rolling the dice without any of the aggro.

I don’t think I could disagree anymore and it sounds like more of a problem with your gaming group than the rules. Worse comes to worse, we always rolled off to decide a disagreement, be it facing or TLoS or a template. The dice decided and that was the end of it. Then again, the group I played with was more interested in the narrative than just the sole purpose of winning, and anyone who wandered into it with that attitude quickly found themselves in search of a new one. 
 

The game is 100% dumbed down. Tanks and walkers with wounds instead of using strategy to take down the enemy. 4th Edition was IMO the golden age of 40K. 5th’s rules were good but the codices themselves were streamlined into a boring mess and 6th brought about Formations as a pathetic attempt at a cash grab to sell models no one wanted (looking at old Spawn and Possessed). 
 

8th was tolerable to a point where at least the codices had some flavor and fun, now it’s all just boring trash. My main army has been stripped of it’s identity and my secondary one has no character.