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

[HeadlessCross]

8 hours ago, Antarius said:

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.

If the game is badly lopsided when things like preset terrain, what would stop it from being lopsided on Planet Bowlingball or "Have fun trying to shoot any of my units in the giant fortress"? Lopsided games are NOT fun games. 

 

Also the whole "can't balance the game perfectly for throwing down random models and one side has 50% chance of winning" has NEVER been a goal, so I don't know why it gets brought up. Army cohesion is still a thing when list building, and someone throwing down random models will have less of a chance than someone doing a Tank Regiment or Tyranid Swarm, let alone a basic TAC list. 

[Evil Eye]

22 minutes ago, HeadlessCross said:

And there's absolutely nothing wrong with preset terrain

Other than it being dull as ditchwater.

[Antarius]

4 minutes ago, HeadlessCross said:

If the game is badly lopsided when things like preset terrain, what would stop it from being lopsided on Planet Bowlingball or "Have fun trying to shoot any of my units in the giant fortress"? Lopsided games are NOT fun games. 

 

Also the whole "can't balance the game perfectly for throwing down random models and one side has 50% chance of winning" has NEVER been a goal, so I don't know why it gets brought up. Army cohesion is still a thing when list building, and someone throwing down random models will have less of a chance than someone doing a Tank Regiment or Tyranid Swarm, let alone a basic TAC list. 

If you read my post again, you will notice that I do not actually state it as a goal (nor as something I argue for/against), merely as some sort of platonic ideal of balance.

Also, lopsided games can absolutely be fun, assuming both players agree to them - there's been plenty of fun scenarios along those lines. So can games with preset terrain, I guess (although I honestly find it a lot harder to imagine). However, for a huge set of players either, or both, of those things flies very much against what they want out of the game.

[Rain]

Terrain is a major elephant in the room when it comes to balance. That said, I feel like this was better in the past, with less need for preset terrain. Vehicles having AV’s (and therefore being immune to many low str weapons) as well as damage tables with many non-permanent results, being able to pop smoke to convert pen hits to glances for one turn, and no mortal wounds made mechanized melee armies much more able to compete in the olden days, even on relatively sparse terrain. Then they added hull points, and the long march toward homogenization began.

 

The current system has many pluses, such as modifiable saves instead of binary AP, and different movement values, but vehicles having W and T values, and the existence of mortal wounds are both bad.

To be clear, yes I remember Leafblower, GK Psyflemen, etc. but on average things were not *this* terrain dependent in the AV days, as long as you used transports.

 

[Antarius]

10 hours ago, HeadlessCross said:

Lopsided games can only work if the game is balanced to not be lopsided to begin with. 

That may be, but despite your framing of the discussion, no one here is really arguing against balance and I think you know that.

For the last page or so, we've been discussing (well, some of us have, anyway) different ways of balancing the game and how they affect the game experience, so popping in to tell us that imbalance is bad and math exists isn't very productive at this point, nor is it really new information.

Also, no one here is really arguing -again, despite your framing of the discussion and other people's views and math capabilities- that the More Dakka detachment shouldn't have been nerfed; nor are most people discussing the statistical impact of SH1 vs SH2 but whether the nerf has somehow negatively impacted the feel of the detachment.
Because, the thing is, you can have super overpowered, underpowered, or even perfectly balanced rules that just aren't fun or flavourful to play with and how you balance rules actually matters to how fun the game is (and, incidentally, playtesting to see how playing with and against an army feels tends to produce better results in this regard than just mathhammering it out, but that's another story - if anybody's interested, I think it's Filmdeg Miniatures on youtube that has a great interview with Alessio Cavatore where he discusses how Rick Priestley's focus on the feel of the game really opened his eyes to the different aspects of game design).

But if you want it in the snappy one-liner format, I guess I could just post "balanced games can only be fun if the way they're balanced is fun to begin with".

Edited Sunday at 06:21 AM by Antarius

[DemonGSides]

7 hours ago, Antarius said:

the nerf has somehow negatively impacted the feel of the detachment.

 

I don't think this has been adequately supported at all. The feeling of the detatchment is supposed to be "Better shooting ork army" and it's still gonna definitely be that, despite some posters thinking it's ruining the feeling.  It just no longer gets to be the best shooting army in the game, which I think makes more thematic sense than what More Dakka pushed people into playing in its original form.

 

I get some people can think the nerf was egregious, I just don't think there's been enough leg work or evidence to support such an assertion, and it then becomes vibes based.  Which is fine, but isn't really germane to a discussion.

Edited Sunday at 01:06 PM by DemonGSides

[Cenobite Terminator]

10th edition is a result of all the constant complaints about 9th edition and the demand for a reset. In regards to preset terrain you don’t have to use it if the people you play agree to it.

[Evil Eye]

24 minutes ago, Cenobite Terminator said:

10th edition is a result of all the constant complaints about 9th edition and the demand for a reset. In regards to preset terrain you don’t have to use it if the people you play agree to it.

9th edition needed a reset, the problem is they managed to make the system even worse with 10th.

[01RTB01]

29 minutes ago, Cenobite Terminator said:

10th edition is a result of all the constant complaints about 9th edition and the demand for a reset. In regards to preset terrain you don’t have to use it if the people you play agree to it.

That's the issue though, you go to events and it's used as default. 

 

40k was never designed to be a game for tournaments. This is what happened during 8th when GW formed partnership with the tournament crowd. If people want super balanced they should play chess. I'm not saying there shouldn't be a level of balance but when they feel the need to put in preset terrain layouts, it feels weird.

[DemonGSides]

23 minutes ago, 01RTB01 said:

That's the issue though, you go to events and it's used as default. 

 

40k was never designed to be a game for tournaments. This is what happened during 8th when GW formed partnership with the tournament crowd. If people want super balanced they should play chess. I'm not saying there shouldn't be a level of balance but when they feel the need to put in preset terrain layouts, it feels weird.

 

So don't play with pre-set terrain.  I've done it maybe twice so far in 10th edition and have plenty of fun games where I both won and lost.

 

Like the pre-set terrain stuff isn't even in the main rule book.  There was a thread not too long ago of someone complaining that it wasn't.  Can't be both ways lol.

Edited Sunday at 04:26 PM by DemonGSides

[Karhedron]

32 minutes ago, 01RTB01 said:

 I'm not saying there shouldn't be a level of balance but when they feel the need to put in preset terrain layouts, it feels weird.

 

The thing is that terrain density affects balance. Too much and melee armies are playing on easy mode. Too little and shooty armies can Alpha strike enemies off the board T1. I thought that the terrain maps were intended to give an idea of the correct density rather than exact templates to follow. 

[01RTB01]

15 minutes ago, DemonGSides said:

 

So don't play with pre-set terrain.  I've done it maybe twice so far in 10th edition and have plenty of fun games where I both won and lost.

 

Like the pre-set terrain stuff isn't even in the main rule book.  There was a thread not too long ago of someone complaining that it wasn't.  Can't be both ways lol.

I don't personally but when I go to events, they do.

Its not in the rulebook but it is in the pariah nexus tournament pack. 

 

Much like the "minimum" size tables, people take it as fact rather than flexible.

6 minutes ago, Karhedron said:

 

The thing is that terrain density affects balance. Too much and melee armies are playing on easy mode. Too little and shooty armies can Alpha strike enemies off the board T1. I thought that the terrain maps were intended to give an idea of the correct density rather than exact templates to follow. 

I agree. However, too many take them as "must" rather than possible. 

 

There's definitely balance to be had but they seem to try to take the thinking out of it.

[DemonGSides]

8 minutes ago, 01RTB01 said:

I don't personally but when I go to events, they do.

Its not in the rulebook but it is in the pariah nexus tournament pack. 

 

Much like the "minimum" size tables, people take it as fact rather than flexible.

I agree. However, too many take them as "must" rather than possible. 

 

There's definitely balance to be had but they seem to try to take the thinking out of it.

 

Well I would expect tournaments to try to hew towards Tournament Primers, so I'm not sure what the complaint is there.  It makes sense; it's literally the optimum case scenario for "Best Balance Attempt", whereas your personal for fun games can be whatever level of balance you feel in favor of.  Me and my buds mostly just place terrain that sorta looks similar or make bases and fight out of them.  It's a wargame, play the way that lets you have fun.

Edited Sunday at 04:52 PM by DemonGSides

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

On 4/12/2025 at 3:20 PM, Rain said:

Terrain is a major elephant in the room when it comes to balance. That said, I feel like this was better in the past, with less need for preset terrain. Vehicles having AV’s (and therefore being immune to many low str weapons) as well as damage tables with many non-permanent results, being able to pop smoke to convert pen hits to glances for one turn, and no mortal wounds made mechanized melee armies much more able to compete in the olden days, even on relatively sparse terrain. Then they added hull points, and the long march toward homogenization began.

 

The current system has many pluses, such as modifiable saves instead of binary AP, and different movement values, but vehicles having W and T values, and the existence of mortal wounds are both bad.

To be clear, yes I remember Leafblower, GK Psyflemen, etc. but on average things were not *this* terrain dependent in the AV days, as long as you used transports.

 

I don’t think W and T stats for vehicles is inherently bad.

the everything can wound everything is what is bad, especially with the prevalence of +1 to wound rolls and rerolls for wound rolls in the game currently, but they could also help mitigate that completely by saying T more than double S is immune to that weapon.

[HeadlessCross]

3 hours ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

I don’t think W and T stats for vehicles is inherently bad.

the everything can wound everything is what is bad, especially with the prevalence of +1 to wound rolls and rerolls for wound rolls in the game currently, but they could also help mitigate that completely by saying T more than double S is immune to that weapon.

That's more the problem of a game being limited to D6 as well as not taking advantage of stat scaling. 

[Karhedron]

3 hours ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

I don’t think W and T stats for vehicles is inherently bad.

the everything can wound everything is what is bad, especially with the prevalence of +1 to wound rolls and rerolls for wound rolls in the game currently, but they could also help mitigate that completely by saying T more than double S is immune to that weapon.

 

Everything wounding on a 6 is necessary now that players can run armies of Knights. However logical it may be, if you make vehicles immune to low Strength weapons then suddenly you have entire armies that your infantry cannot hurt.

 

It was less of a problem in earlier editions. The force org chart limited the number of tanks most armies could field and it was an incentive to make sure most squads had an anti-tank weapon of some kind.

 

But in a game where Knight armies exist and squads are increasingly mono-loadout, wounding on 6s is just a necessary mechanic.

Edited yesterday at 07:19 AM by Karhedron

[Wormwoods]

18 minutes ago, Karhedron said:

But in a game where Knight armies exist and squads are increasingly mono-loadout, wounding on 6s is just a necessary mechanic.

 

All the more reason those big, dumb models should have stayed at Titanicus scale. 

 

Only kinda making a joke here. 

[DemonGSides]

4 hours ago, Wormwoods said:

 

All the more reason those big, dumb models should have stayed at Titanicus scale. 

 

Only kinda making a joke here. 

 

Not even joking. I'd gladly sacrifice my baneblade if it meant Knights and their like sized brethren also went away. 

[Emperor Ming]

1 minute ago, DemonGSides said:

 

Not even joking. I'd gladly sacrifice my baneblade if it meant Knights and their like sized brethren also went away. 

Ditto!

[Evil Eye]

Yeah, big boys like Knights and Baneblades don't belong outside of Apocalypse. Bringing them into the main game was a mistake that needs to be fixed.