More Dakka! detachment had too much dakka and has been changed by GW

[01RTB01]

34 minutes ago, Deus_Ex_Machina said:

Nobody can claim that he didn´t see this coming from a mile away.

I saw a nerf coming, I didn't see it being annihilated.

 

I'd like to have seen the Strat changes they've made. The main rule dropped to sustained 1 and see how that played out. If after time it was still outrageous, then sure, hit it with the bat.

 

I appreciate others will disagree,.I personally feel that restraining sustained 1 to waaagh as too harsh. 

Edited Thursday at 08:18 PM by 01RTB01

[DemonGSides]

3 minutes ago, 01RTB01 said:

I saw a nerf coming, I didn't see it being annihilated.

 

It wasn't annihilated though. 

[HeadlessCross]

23 minutes ago, 01RTB01 said:

I saw a nerf coming, I didn't see it being annihilated.

 

I'd like to have seen the Strat changes they've made. The main rule dropped to sustained 1 and see how that played out. If after time it was still outrageous, then sure, hit it with the bat.

 

I appreciate others will disagree,.I personally feel that restraining sustained 1 to waaagh as too harsh. 

1. The detachment wasn't annihilated, it was nerfed. It still has good rules and Strats. 

2. It doesn't matter what you "personally feel". The math is there for how Sustained works on an army like Orks. 

[Evil Eye]

>"Too much dakka"

[SkimaskMohawk]

The sad truth is usually the most fun factions/subfactions tend to have that fun premised on having better/more rules. Those rules can also be framed to support a faction or sub factions theme fairly well, really adding to the fun using the rules since the ludonarrative is so strong. Stuff like 8th sisters of battle, 8.5 Marines, 9th DE, admech, orks, etc...Super thematic, super fun to pilot, super busted.

 

So when the nerfs roll in but also hit something that's also centrally tied to the theme, it feels extra worse. Its just really occasional dakka now 

 

 

[DemonGSides]

If the fun comes at the expense of other people having fun, I don't care how thematic it is.  It leads to the game dying for anyone who's not playing that "fun".

Better to have slightly less fun while everyone gets to have fun than the extremely selfish "Well I'm having fun, who cares about you?" that lopsided matches present.

[Jukkiz]

GW really loves to make use nerfbat with gusto, everytime.

Has there been good balancing that involved nerfs lately?

[Karhedron]

14 minutes ago, Jukkiz said:

Has there been good balancing that involved nerfs lately?

 

Some of the BA Enhancements are very good and GW has judiciously increased the points to reflect that. But it is a lot easier to apply a balancing nerf to a single enhancement than to the core rules of an entire detachment.

[HeadlessCross]

41 minutes ago, DemonGSides said:

If the fun comes at the expense of other people having fun, I don't care how thematic it is.  It leads to the game dying for anyone who's not playing that "fun".

Better to have slightly less fun while everyone gets to have fun than the extremely selfish "Well I'm having fun, who cares about you?" that lopsided matches present.

It's the same exact people that cry about balance patches too. "Leave rules alone, balqnce patches are bad! Why yes, how did you know I play Eldar, a hard faction to play?"

[SkimaskMohawk]

1 hour ago, DemonGSides said:

If the fun comes at the expense of other people having fun, I don't care how thematic it is.  It leads to the game dying for anyone who's not playing that "fun".

Better to have slightly less fun while everyone gets to have fun than the extremely selfish "Well I'm having fun, who cares about you?" that lopsided matches present.

 

I don't disagree; the power/fun/theme level should be consistent across the board, so no one loses out because they're a fan of the "wrong" faction. I was just pointing out the balance whiplash and resulting subtraction of fun and theme can feel terrible (not even mentioning GWs propensity to over do it). 

 

 

[HeadlessCross]

32 minutes ago, SkimaskMohawk said:

 

I don't disagree; the power/fun/theme level should be consistent across the board, so no one loses out because they're a fan of the "wrong" faction. I was just pointing out the balance whiplash and resulting subtraction of fun and theme can feel terrible (not even mentioning GWs propensity to over do it). 

 

 

GW has done too hard of nerfs many times, but this is one of those rare cases where it is justified. 

[Deus_Ex_Machina]

2 hours ago, Jukkiz said:

GW really loves to make use nerfbat with gusto, everytime.

Has there been good balancing that involved nerfs lately?

GW releases messy rules and the tournament crowd exploits them ruthlessly. Then GW changes the rules and thus makes an army composition less attractive. Rinse and repeat. The first time I noticed this was the Las/Plas with Razorback spam in 3rd. Apparently each edition has it´s black sheep. 

[Evil Eye]

29 minutes ago, Deus_Ex_Machina said:

GW releases messy rules and the tournament crowd exploits them ruthlessly. Then GW changes the rules and thus makes an army composition less attractive. Rinse and repeat. The first time I noticed this was the Las/Plas with Razorback spam in 3rd. Apparently each edition has it´s black sheep. 

Pretty much. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the game would be better if GW abandoned all pretense of making a competitive/tournament-oriented ruleset and just made a fun game. Tournament organizers can make their own restrictions, banlists and adjustments etc, but for the love of god, GW, stop messing with the game for the rest of us to satiate the whims of a minority of the playerbase.

[SkimaskMohawk]

1 hour ago, HeadlessCross said:

GW has done too hard of nerfs many times, but this is one of those rare cases where it is justified. 

 

Sure? Don't think I said whether the nerfs unjustified or missed the mark. At most I said there was less dakka now lol.

[Dr_Ruminahui]

I think that comment was likely directed elsewhere, as there certainly have been those who have suggested that changes were too heavy handed, myself included.

 

I find myself in this kind of wierd spot where I think the detachment was too powerful and a power reduction was definitely warranted, that I think the reduction went too far and the rules of the detachment no longer fit with the theme (which is important to me, though I recognize not for all), but where I'm not sure what rules would make the detachment balanced while preserving its theme.

[Karhedron]

2 hours ago, Evil Eye said:

Pretty much. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the game would be better if GW abandoned all pretense of making a competitive/tournament-oriented ruleset and just made a fun game.

 

That is a contradiction. There is nothing at all fun about playing with unbalanced rules. Imagine playing chess except that White had 2 extra Rooks and their pawns could move up to 3 squares. Casual players benefit from the playtesting done by the tournament players. One of the earlier posters was correct that it is not fun to be on the receiving end of an overpowered detachment.

 

I only play casually but I know some players who have given up the game for editions at a time because GW has implemented balance fixes in the past. It is incorrect to assume that only tournament players care about balance. Most casual players want a fun game for both side and that is a lot easier with fair detachments and balanced points values. 

[Rain]

7 minutes ago, Karhedron said:

 

That is a contradiction. There is nothing at all fun about playing with unbalanced rules. Imagine playing chess except that White had 2 extra Rooks and their pawns could move up to 3 squares. Casual players benefit from the playtesting done by the tournament players. One of the earlier posters was correct that it is not fun to be on the receiving end of an overpowered detachment.

 

I only play casually but I know some players who have given up the game for editions at a time because GW has implemented balance fixes in the past. It is incorrect to assume that only tournament players care about balance. Most casual players want a fun game for both side and that is a lot easier with fair detachments and balanced points values. 

 

Sort of. An overpowered detachment might be fine if a player doesn't take the best combos with it. A detachment that is very overtuned with a meta list and optimal play might be just "pretty good" and potentially fun and thematic for a player that is not netlisting and learning strats from GT players on YouTube. The comparison to Chess fails in that in Chess the pieces for both sides are identical and preset. In 40k you don't have to take the "best" pieces, and many casual players instead take the pieces that they enjoy the appearance or lore for.

 

On that lore point, having special rules that reflect the particular lore and specializations of "your dudes" is a major part of the fun for casual play. All of that said, sustained 2 on Orks, being on all the time, should never have passed the initial smell test.

[Magos Takatus]

I'm so glad I stuck to Taktical Brigade instead of trying this detachment. As soon as I saw the rules I just knew GW were going to take a sledgehammer to it moments after release. Better to avoid the temptation. Taktikal Brigade was a bit over tuned but once dialed back it's hopefully not as oppressive.

[HeadlessCross]

5 hours ago, Evil Eye said:

Pretty much. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the game would be better if GW abandoned all pretense of making a competitive/tournament-oriented ruleset and just made a fun game. Tournament organizers can make their own restrictions, banlists and adjustments etc, but for the love of god, GW, stop messing with the game for the rest of us to satiate the whims of a minority of the playerbase.

Yeah, Sustained 2 on Ork shooting is super fun when you refuse to look at the math behind it!

[01RTB01]

5 hours ago, HeadlessCross said:

Yeah, Sustained 2 on Ork shooting is super fun when you refuse to look at the math behind it!

They never said it was...

 

The point is that the tournament scene drives the game even down to having pre set terrain. Going back to what the game was supposed to be - fun, would be great to see. Balance is great but it shouldn't be driven by tournament meta which is skewed. Hence my earlier point about kult of speed. They're keen to nerf over tweaked stuff - more dakka, yet they do insufficient for things like kult of speed which really is a poor detachment. 

[Antarius]

10 hours ago, Karhedron said:

 

That is a contradiction. There is nothing at all fun about playing with unbalanced rules. Imagine playing chess except that White had 2 extra Rooks and their pawns could move up to 3 squares. Casual players benefit from the playtesting done by the tournament players. One of the earlier posters was correct that it is not fun to be on the receiving end of an overpowered detachment.

 

I only play casually but I know some players who have given up the game for editions at a time because GW has implemented balance fixes in the past. It is incorrect to assume that only tournament players care about balance. Most casual players want a fun game for both side and that is a lot easier with fair detachments and balanced points values. 

I see where you're coming from, but I suspect there's a disconnect between the way you two think of (and possibly play) the game, rather than any of you being wrong 

Because yeah, assuming there was some ideal world, where the game was perfectly balanced no matter what units each player took, as well as the more abstract combination of units, enhancements and detachments, plus what terrain and objectives were chosen, it would be great for both tournament and casual players.

I mean, we've all had the game where one army just trounced the other army right out of the gate and it was no fun - something which might even be worse for casual players, assuming they tend to play fewer games.

However, as balancing doesn't happen in a vacuum but directly influences not just the individual unit (or even army) being adjusted but also the way the game is set up and played, it is quite possible to feel (without being wrong or contradicting yourself) that the game does become less fun for casual players the more it moves towards a certain sort of playstyle on the design level.

I mean, I'd love for the game to be balanced in such a way that we could just throw whatever models we felt like on the table, then put together some terrain that looked cool and set it up in a way that seemed narratively appropriate without impacting the baseline 50% chance of victory of either player.
It's just never going to happen, so it does matter to casual players what balancing looks like in the real world - and if it looks like tournaments, it's not necessarily good for everybody. Even more so because something that is a move towards balance in a certain environment might actually be a move towards imbalance in another environment.
I guess the prime example here would be the eternal shooting/melee divide, where terrain makes a massive impact on the relative balance between shooting and melee heavy armies - the obvious solution (to a designer with a tournament-based view of the game) is to have pregenerated terrain, because then you can control and adjust the specifics of that particular part of the game and adjust it until you find something "balanced" (using the scare quotes here, because balance is more of a platonic ideal than a real thing; even chess isn't truly balanced).

The problem is, of course, that e.g. pregenerated terrain is absolute hell for a big chunk of the player base, but if it's hardwired into the design and balancing of the game it becomes a bigger issue to navigate around than "just don't play with it". This might sound a bit strange, but let's assume that units are balanced around a general idea of their capabilities and playtested in different environments and against different opponents (rather than mathhammered out, although there's probably a relatively happy medium somewhere). This would give us a points value for the unit that might not accurately reflect their power in every environment but would be more of an average.
Now contrast this with a balancing philosophy where units are balanced according to their (statistical) perfomance in one specific environment and it becomes easier to see why the tournamentification of game design doesn't necessarily provide better - or even more balanced - games for players who do not play in that specific environment.

And we haven't even touched the issue of units that have more situational abilities, which are by their very nature almost impossible (if not actually impossible) to balance, but whose inclusion makes the units (and game) much more flavourful.
Please don't take all this to mean that I'm against any sort of balancing moves or that I find that maths have no place in figuring out the relative capabilities of units - it's just that many people tend to think they're the be-all, end-all of balance, but they very much aren't.

 

tl;dr: if the game is designed with more of a sandbox approach, it will be more difficult to balance and imbalanced interactions will occur more often. However, the more the game is designed for balance under specific parameters, in a specific environment, the less balanced (not to mention fun) it will be if you change those parameters as casual players are wont to do.

Edited Saturday at 06:43 AM by Antarius

[Xenith]

^^

 

Agree with this. Half A thought might be for GW to design the game for the general playerbase ("casuals") and then enforce more strict rules on tournaments, like "only detachment A is legal in tournaments", or having ban lists for tourneys. 

 

Ultimately, the quest for balance requires the removal of variables and options, and we end up with noughts and crosses or chess: A true test to find the best player would be to force everyone to play the same faction in a tournament, and remove all variables like army balance etc. 

[Antarius]

33 minutes ago, Xenith said:

Ultimately, the quest for balance requires the removal of variables and options, and we end up with noughts and crosses or chess: A true test to find the best player would be to force everyone to play the same faction in a tournament, and remove all variables like army balance etc. 

And, even then, it would still only determine the best player according to those specific parameters (not that I think you don't realise that, I hasten to add) 

To me, the true horror of the "Rifleman Dread" era of the game was not so much the ridiculous lack of balance (although that was very annoying, for casuals and tournament players alike), it was the idea that building an army and playing the game was just about finding the statistically optimal damage output and then brute-forcing every scenario, to the point where you could basically just compare Excel sheets at the beginning of the game to see who "won". At the time, people dismissed it as "tournament-" or "WAAC"-mindsets, but I think most tournament players don't really find that sort of game very enjoyable either.

I find the most interesting test of generalship to be about the ability to think on your feet and adapt to the scenario, not to think out the optimal army in advance, according to specific, unchanging parameters. It's obviously a matter of taste, but I find that the former is much more fun and challenging and it's part of why I hate to see units with more situational abilities dismissed as "bad" (or disappear from the game altogether).
Luckily, I think that GW tend to design their games (at least Warhammer 40.000) with more of a "casual" mindset - what worries me is how they then change/"balance" the game afterwards, because updating solely on the basis of tournaments has lots of drawbacks as well as advantages. Like 01RTB01 said, what does that mean for the detachments (and units; potentially entire factions - although that is more of a worst case scenario than a real thing at present) that are deemed subpar for tournament play?

[Evil Eye]

Antarius hit the nail on the head; tournament environments and more casual, fluff-driven environments are such completely different beasts that trying to get the same game to work for both is borderline impossible. You allow all the cool and fun purely thematic features (vehicle design rules, Tyranid mutable genus, 3E Lootas etc) and the game becomes a nightmare to balance. You try and hone the game to be perfectly balanced for a competitive setting and you have to cut out a huge amount of options (and flavour). The opposite ends of the spectrum have such irreconcilably different desires out of the game that you genuinely cannot cater to both crowds with the same system, and attempts to do so have resulted in this awkward halfway-house system that pleases nobody. I don't think tournaments shouldn't exist or anything like that, but what works for one doesn't necessarily work for the other, and I do think the "tourney trickle-down" balance model is inherently flawed.

 

Realistically, the best solution I can see is doing what other games (tabletop AND electronic) do for competitive play, and have separate additional regulations and restrictions on tournament play (which are imposed depending on the organizer), whilst the base game- that is, what is actually sold to the player- remains the same, and is much more open-ended and freeform. Basically, leave it up to the players to balance the games for their needs, be it personal preferences between friends in a friendly setting or fixed restrictions in a tournament. Again, this isn't a new concept, if you look at TCGs they often have banlists for tournament play.

 

I'll also say, I think part of the problem is the idea of there being a "one true way" to play the game. As I said prior, different people enjoy playing 40K very differently, and trying to get the same ruleset to please everyone is, ironically, going to please no-one. I don't think the answer is 8th style "3 ways to play" but rather just creating a solid but flexible base system that can be built upon as needed and restricted (or expanded!) at the community level to suit local preference, rather than GW trying (and failing) to balance everything for everyone. Decentralized balance, basically.

[HeadlessCross]

10 hours ago, 01RTB01 said:

They never said it was...

 

The point is that the tournament scene drives the game even down to having pre set terrain. Going back to what the game was supposed to be - fun, would be great to see. Balance is great but it shouldn't be driven by tournament meta which is skewed. Hence my earlier point about kult of speed. They're keen to nerf over tweaked stuff - more dakka, yet they do insufficient for things like kult of speed which really is a poor detachment. 

Yet y'all aren't doing the math for why Sustained 1 isn't a good idea either and claim the detachment is not good or playable anymore (which is oddly the terms casuals complain about when more serious players use them).

 

And there's absolutely nothing wrong with preset terrain, especially for getting some basic pick up games going, which helps ensure less lopsided outcomes.