What should 11th look like?

[ThaneOfTas]

2 hours ago, Evil Eye said:

At most, there should be dedicated rules specifically for tournaments with big red letters saying they are not intended for regular play which provide basic guidelines, scenarios etc for such an environment. Hell, if certain units are overperforming by an unwanted amount in tournaments? Restrict them from tournament play. Banlists in competitive games are nothing new, and they don't affect regular play.

Honestly if it were up to me id go even further, borrow from how MTG are handling their competitive scene, wherein each faction has a set, limited number of units that are legal for tournament play, keep those numbers roughly equal across factions and thus make it easier to balance, and then have the standard rules which gives full support to the entire range, with the caveat that it may not be as balanced as the competitive mode.

 

Then they can rotate the allowed units in the factions every few years as new stuff get released and the meta gets stale. 

[Scribe]

Chapter House was the beginning of the problems, yes.

 

Then we had Formations, points reduction, recommended points increase, and strats. 

 

I don't blame tournaments at all. Nobody with sense wants 3 hour tournament games.

 

Tournaments didn't release an alpha build.

[Evil Eye]

1 hour ago, Karhedron said:

 

How then do you define an enjoyable game? For me it is one where neither side has an inbuilt advantage and each victory comes down to the skill of the players and the luck of the dice. This is exactly what a tournament setting seeks to create. You are arguing that balance for tournaments and balance for fun are somehow different. They are not, they are exactly the same.

The thing is, for such an environment to exist, your only real option for a game is two identical armies on a perfectly symmetrical board. The "no items, Fox only, Final Destination" of wargaming, which at least in my opinion is just boring. For a lot of people half the fun of wargaming is trying out interesting scenarios in different theatres of war, with thematic armies. Asymmetrical warfare, attacker/defender, desperate last stands, sabotage missions etc. A lot of these sorts of scenarios are intrinsically incompatible with the "perfect balance" model of tournament play. Even at the army building level, you often have options that you'll choose because they fit the theme of your force rather than because they're necessarily "meta" or whatever.

 

The simulationist/"recreating fictional history" aspect is IMO at least one of the most important and enjoyable parts of the game. Ignoring that for the sake of balance at a level of play most won't even engage with just doesn't sit right with me.

[DuskRaider]

1 hour ago, HeadlessCross said:

Chapter house IS the primary reason. You really think it was because of tournament balance reasons that Skitarii can't triple up on the same gun anymore, and it was balance reasons why the Captain on a bike doesn't exist yet the Chaplain on a bike does?

Chapterhouse Studios was a third party company that was making models for 40K that had rules but no actual model. GW sued them into oblivion and only half won the lawsuit, so in return they stripped all options from armies that didn’t have any model representation and is a big reason why so much of the old customization is now gone. 

[ThaneOfTas]

17 minutes ago, DuskRaider said:

Chapterhouse Studios was a third party company that was making models for 40K that had rules but no actual model. GW sued them into oblivion and only half won the lawsuit, so in return they stripped all options from armies that didn’t have any model representation and is a big reason why so much of the old customization is now gone. 

Which is made worse by the fact that that same customisation still exists in 30k and ToW, so clearly they are willing to allow it to happen at least some of the time.

[phandaal]

4 hours ago, Karhedron said:

 

The whole point of Narrative campaigns is that the players create the narrative themselves, you don't need GW to provide it. But GW do need to provide a balanced game both for competitive and pickup games. It is not fair on players who have just met to agree on a set of house rules to balance an unbalanced game. 

 

Couple of things here:

 

Narrative gaming is not necessarily the same thing as campaign gaming. It is more like "playing a story on the table." That can be anything from pickup to campaign. People do want a good structure within which to play those games though. It's not like we are all playing Calvinball just because we are not at a tournament.

 

Also, I think we should get away from the idea that balancing for tournaments is the same thing as balancing for all game modes. Tournament balance is done for a very specific set of game conditions and player types, and it is then applied across the board to all game types. That does not mean it is the best way to provide a balanced framework for all game types. People can want a balanced game without wanting a game that is balanced around tournaments.

 

Edited July 15 by phandaal

[tychobi]

6 hours ago, Evil Eye said:

On the "tournaments create better balance" debate, the issue is that whilst drawing from tournament data gives insight into balancing for a tournament, it's useless for balancing any more casual/narrative play. If everyone is using the same few builds for their faction, there won't be any data at all for the options people aren't bringing because they aren't meta/competitive enough. Furthermore, the only data they'll be getting is how strong or weak an option is, which obviously doesn't account for more subjective (but no less important) factors like fun or fluffiness. Combined with GW's apparent inability to actually make use of their data for any credible balance and I'd argue the "trickle-down balance" system just doesn't work.

 

Case in point, if everyone and their dog is taking the same Eldar lists, heavily featuring, for the sake of argument, Fire Prisms and Dire Avengers, then all data will be related to those units. If Swooping Hawks are seeing no use in tournaments, there is no data to balance them with regardless of whether they're actually in a fine spot, pretty powerful in casual but outclassed by other completely broken picks for tournament play or totally unusable at any level. Likewise, Fire Prisms might actually only be super-overpowered in a particular list with a certain combination of other units and stratagems, whilst in the average game they're decent but not busted, provided you don't use them in that particular list. If GW decides to rebalance Fire Prisms around competitive play, most likely with a points hike, they might still be useable in tournaments but will become completely worthless in regular games as they've been nerfed/overcosted to accommodate for an environment most players weren't engaging in.

 

Finally, the crux of the problem is that tournament play is supposed to be an exceptional environment, not something the average game should emulate. The game balance should be focused around making the base game enjoyable. Tournament play, as an extreme "outlier", shouldn't need dedicated balancing to the core game; the whole point of tournaments is seeing who has the most skill with the tools available to them. At most, there should be dedicated rules specifically for tournaments with big red letters saying they are not intended for regular play which provide basic guidelines, scenarios etc for such an environment. Hell, if certain units are overperforming by an unwanted amount in tournaments? Restrict them from tournament play. Banlists in competitive games are nothing new, and they don't affect regular play.

 

TLDR: Balance the game for casual play, let tournaments go however they go.

How pray tell should GW balance for casual play? Casual players don't report. There is no information to balance with. Also what exactly is the difference between tournament balance and casual balance?  How do they differ? The game should be balanced upon release but it is not. Not enjoying the pace of updates is a real thing but blaming those issues on tournaments seems like ire misplaced. 

[Beta galactosidase]

 

 

 

2 hours ago, phandaal said:

 

Narrative gaming is not necessarily the same thing as campaign gaming. It is more like "playing a story on the table."

 

 

Playing it on the table is the most important. Off and on over the years, if your army had the Chapter banner or other relic, the enemy could kill your standard bearer in CC to capture your chapter standard and carry it off to get a victory point.  That's some narrative that happens in any pickup game that includes these chapter banner rules, no campaign required.

 

There are a few people who say they like narrative and to them this means  leveling up their characters in a campaign with crusade-style rules.  That's something that happens off the table and it isn't important for a tabletop wargame.

[chapter master 454]

11th edition should be an evolution of 10th, something that progresses systems that have now been cemented and work.

 

My main issues really lie more in their rather wonky balancing of things. While some armies have been given some good work to help fix them up, my personal stance is that they are yet to fully fix things that are still broken and are being actively called out as stupid.

Notably Imperial Knights and their Bondsman ability is completely broken with how they are balanced currently and lists being built represent this. It will ether being all big knights with only 1-2 warglaives to fill points or it will be Canis Rex walking the dogs, and I will further down on the failure of balance in the Knight codices (both chaos and Imperial) by the fact that chaos knights don't even take a single big knight of any kind. Bondsman was written and pointed based on working on both the armiger and giving knight, but now most knights are walking worthless stat-sticks. Quite sad really and the one change that would help, reverting the bondsman change, is yet to happen over now 2 dataslates.

Another issue that does stand out and people have pointed it out: some actual Q&A would be nice. Get some actual top level players into the studio to playtest codices, put them on NDA (for all that matters with how leaky their ship is!) and have them help out in balancing things a little bit.

 

Heck, biggest change for 11th edition if I had a chance:

Remove battleshock. I know, you likely forgot about it for how much it matters! They ether need to commit with some serious design to this mechanic to include requirements akin to older editions for rallying instead of just automatically passing. Being in combat? can't rally. Below half strength? Can't Rally (makes it so seriously injurying a unit but only leaving one model left doesn't give your opponent a free action monkey). Maybe add some boons to help rallying. Battleline units can attempt to rally if they are on an objective even if in combat with an enemy. Seriously...battleshock (and leadership) is just so underused it means any effects relating to it are just hilariously bad.

[Xenith]

On 7/13/2024 at 9:40 PM, Vassakov said:

every other week, then there's a wide array of other GT level events including Goonhammer, Twisted Dice, Glasshammer... and then all the RTTs. Not to mention GWs own events

 

All those influencers actively make money from attending tournaments, doing well, and selling their blogs/training to others. The explosion of 'professional' 40k players, who either run shops and do tourneys, or run 'academies', like VT, Art of War, Frontline, etc, is bonkers. There's also th feeling that tournaments is the only real way to engage with the game, as that's what GW is pushing, and only seems to care about. 

[Karhedron]

The thing to remember is that the format for Tournaments is also the format for pickup games. I normally play at my local club and we have plenty of new players from time to time. If I am playing an old friend, I am more than happy to mix stuff up, try house rules or anything else. But when playing someone new, it is really important to have an agreed baseline to play to.

[Arikel]

Hopefully, much more than 2 years away. The changes between 5th and 7th, for the most part, were quite minor, and didn’t impact the actual play of the game in any great manner. One can argue about detachments etc but my group pretty much just continued using the base force org chart the whole time.

 

8th sort of killed our group completely for a time. I still detest Primaris and how they changed the lore and playstyle of my army, while simultaneously making obsolete my entire collection of dudes, both built and a substantial pile of shame. I also mourned the loss of entire sections of rules that are still engraved in memory, while newer rules have failed to stick while now dealing with children and lack of time to play. Even our tentative games of 9th at sub 1000 points levels left out CP and stratagem usage as we were trying to relearn the basics.

 

Now came tenth. Honestly, we haven’t even tried a game with the new rules yet, and now y’all are trying to guess what changes will happen with the new edition coming out. I would greatly prefer it simply doesn’t, at least not with the same speed other editions have turned over. Give it a few years once the final codex comes out to stabilize a bit and let the old and slow among us get a chance to learn and play the game again.
 

 

[Deus_Ex_Machina]

Learn from Mortal Kombat. When MK 11´s successor was released it wasn´t Mk 12 but named Mk 1 instead.

 

Use the same logic with 40K. So instead of 11th 40K we will get...ROGUE TRADER AGAIN!

 

Then at last Gee-Dubbs will be forced to manufacture bare-chested, female Custodes, if they want to honour the amalgamation of vintage & modern fluff.

 

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

In regards to the tournament issue, I’d prefer if they left that up to 3rd party organizers and simply did 1 massive narrative event each edition, with the results actually shaping the future of the lore for the next edition. Sorta like they did way back in 2000 or 2001.

 

imagine if the fall of cadia had been a massive event, and CSM players could brag for years that their army brought down the mighty fortress world of cadia.

 

imagine if the 10th Ed release event had bigger stakes than just which of the two factions got their new models released first.

[ThaneOfTas]

24 minutes ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

In regards to the tournament issue, I’d prefer if they left that up to 3rd party organizers and simply did 1 massive narrative event each edition, with the results actually shaping the future of the lore for the next edition. Sorta like they did way back in 2000 or 2001.

 

imagine if the fall of cadia had been a massive event, and CSM players could brag for years that their army brought down the mighty fortress world of cadia.

 

imagine if the 10th Ed release event had bigger stakes than just which of the two factions got their new models released first.

That idea has always seemed cooler in concept than execution tbh. If the Fall of Cadia had been a Narrative event, Odds are that either chaos would have lost to the Imperium (Like what happened in the original 13th Black Crusade event), or the Orks/some other Xenos would have come out of nowhere to win the thing despite it making no narrative sense. There's a reason that they stopped doing it after all, remember Storm of Chaos? Grand battle between the forces of Order and Chaos, when suddenly out of nowhere in comes Grimgore Ironhide off of the top rope to RKO Archaeon, then he wanders off before finishing the job because GW couldn't let Archaeon die.

 

I think that the event from the start of 10th is about as impactful as is sustainable.

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

1 hour ago, ThaneOfTas said:

That idea has always seemed cooler in concept than execution tbh. If the Fall of Cadia had been a Narrative event, Odds are that either chaos would have lost to the Imperium (Like what happened in the original 13th Black Crusade event), or the Orks/some other Xenos would have come out of nowhere to win the thing despite it making no narrative sense. There's a reason that they stopped doing it after all, remember Storm of Chaos? Grand battle between the forces of Order and Chaos, when suddenly out of nowhere in comes Grimgore Ironhide off of the top rope to RKO Archaeon, then he wanders off before finishing the job because GW couldn't let Archaeon die.

 

I think that the event from the start of 10th is about as impactful as is sustainable.

1. I think they had their decision made of the outcome before it even started.

2. They lay the groundwork of a basic narrative that allows for most of the factions to be involved from the start, then spend weeks or months crafting a decent bit of lore about the real outcome. So if dark eldar manage to win somehow that’s fine, off the top rope with a steel chair come the angsty elven pirates for the win! They’re pirates it makes sense, tyranids could have have been drawn in by the biomass present from so many massive armies.

 

sure if you set it up as an X vs Y event but allow all factions to take part there’s the risk of a random faction winning.

or you limit participation to only the factions narratively included so you can have some premade endings written up and ready.

[ThaneOfTas]

2 hours ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

you limit participation to only the factions narratively included so you can have some premade endings written up and ready.

Which sounds exactly like what they did at the start of 10th. 

 

The bigger point is that anything that is as important as say Cadia or Armageddon is too important narratively to be left up to chance, but anything less is too inconsequential in the grand scheme.

 

And besides which, i again point to the 13th black crusade narrative event, it went down almost exactly like you are suggesting but the results were unsustainable for the wider narrative and so it got retconned, something which has obviously never been well liked by the community.

 

the problem is that these days at least, the points in the lore that get fans interested, are too important and pivotal to the wider fate of the galaxy to be left in the hands of players. Picking a random system or sector and having the narrative campaign decide its fate seems like the best option. sure they could and should go more in depth with it than they did at the start of 10th (and make it more memorable because I cannot for the life of me remember what the name of that planet/system was), but :cuss: like Cadia, Nachmund or Armadeddon should be left in the hands of actual writers.

[Antarius]

I see both your points, but I think it’s actually a really good idea to have players impact the direction of the lore, if a) the lore is going to move forward and b) you are going to run big narrative events.
The only real problem I had with the storyline never truly moving forward back in the day, was that every time there was a big narrative event or supplement, the status quo always ended up the same.
 

I think something like the fate of Cadia would have been an awesome thing for players to be part of and since they were clearly ready and willing to let Cadia go, why not let players participate? If Cadia stood it would feel real unlike the many previous “the Imperium somehow just managed to scrape by but it was, like, super close -so please be really excited that nothing will ever change” campaign endings.
Otoh, if they absolutely wanted it to fall, it could do so eventually anyway, but the initial results would feel extremely meaningful (and really, have they done anything narratively, that could not have been accomplished without Cadia falling? The Cadians are all still around in the model range too, so it’s not like it was impactful in that sense.

 

At the end of the day, changes in the storyline vs the product line vs the players feeling that things are “realistic” will always be a difficult needle to thread, but I think it’s an area where there is a lot of room for them to do interesting things.

Edited July 16 by Antarius

[Kallas]

5 hours ago, ThaneOfTas said:

And besides which, i again point to the 13th black crusade narrative event, it went down almost exactly like you are suggesting but the results were unsustainable for the wider narrative and so it got retconned, something which has obviously never been well liked by the community.

This is also what happened with the Storm of Chaos in Fantasy: Chaos got its ass handed to it, but GW wanted Chaos to win, so it got retconned and we got the End Times.

[Bouargh]

I guess there are 2 or 3 levels for answering the initial question.

 

1. As far as Rules are concerned, I guess 11th can eventually be predicted as being a reboot of 10th, reprinting the Rules by including all the erratas and adjustments/changes introduced by the Dataslates. No debate to have about if the game is better or poorer than it used to be: I guess we should have seen 10th as an attempt to introduce a new game but set in the same universe and not as an edition in continuity to the previous ones up to 9th inc. ...

2. As far as Lore is concerned, but as a background running engine for promoting miniature release, I would bet that the story will keep on advancing slowly on an arc already launched (Vashtorr Probably). But I would not expect important push forward or changes.

3. As far as Rule process Design/philosophy is concerned, I foresee no change (including how the competitive scene is used as a data gathering media and independently of any consideration about the validity of the methodology (we could debate hours on the topic... but whatever we (I) like it or not, it is a reality as selected by whom designs the game and we have to live with it (or leave it)).

 

Ohh, and a 4thlevel: First born will keep on disapearing while Primaris will suffer a range schock a la Stromcast Eternals at 12th lauch.

 

So, basically, 11th will probably bring no change vs. ultimate version of patched 10th beyond a cleaned-up reimpression that will probably be adjusted a few months afeter because of a new Dataslate (Am I sarcastic or is it acceptable level of irony?).   

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

8 hours ago, ThaneOfTas said:

Which sounds exactly like what they did at the start of 10th. 

 

The bigger point is that anything that is as important as say Cadia or Armageddon is too important narratively to be left up to chance, but anything less is too inconsequential in the grand scheme.

 

And besides which, i again point to the 13th black crusade narrative event, it went down almost exactly like you are suggesting but the results were unsustainable for the wider narrative and so it got retconned, something which has obviously never been well liked by the community.

 

the problem is that these days at least, the points in the lore that get fans interested, are too important and pivotal to the wider fate of the galaxy to be left in the hands of players. Picking a random system or sector and having the narrative campaign decide its fate seems like the best option. sure they could and should go more in depth with it than they did at the start of 10th (and make it more memorable because I cannot for the life of me remember what the name of that planet/system was), but like Cadia, Nachmund or Armadeddon should be left in the hands of actual writers.

The beginning of 10th wasnt narrative. It was a contest to see who would get their new models first.

[DemonGSides]

18 minutes ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

The beginning of 10th wasnt narrative. It was a contest to see who would get their new models first.

 

It was absolutely pitched as a narrative campaign. The winner of which got their models revealed first. 

[Jscarlos18]

My wishlist:

*Update all ranges so no unit is old enough to drink.

*Longer editions. There's too many factions for them only being for 3 years each.

*Expand factions with limited ranges. LoV, mono-God CSM, etc.

*Return psychic phase.

*More Crusade books and campaigns outside end of edition to transition to new one like Psychic Awakening and Arks of Omen.

**Due to Tyrannic War and Pariah Nexus I thought GW was going to release one Crusade book for each faction release pairing but there's been nothing since.

 

Edited July 17 by Jscarlos18

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

1 hour ago, DemonGSides said:

 

It was absolutely pitched as a narrative campaign. The winner of which got their models revealed first. 

They already had the narrative set and ready to go.

the only stakes were who would get models first.

[Tyran]

They have mostly avoided codex creep so hopefully 11th is just a continuation of 10th with rules errata and balance patches included. 

 

While at it just abandon the entire concept of printed rules and move to online rules because no one that I know uses codexes anymore. Codexes should be just collectionist stuff with lore and pretty pictures.