Game design, "balance", "fun" and how they interact

[HeadlessCross]

6 hours ago, Antarius said:

Or it leads to samey lists because people just take the units currently perceived as "best".
FOC or lack thereof doesn't create or solve the problem of samey lists - people choosing to/not to build samey lists do.

Which is (obviously) not to say that army construction rules don't do anything at all for the army building process.

There's only so many "best units" though. Theoretically every army is gonna have 1500 or so points dedicated to that, so what's done with the last 500? Old FOC says your list is the same as everyone else's. Freedom of construction allows tools you might not be able to use otherwise, like Flamer Rubrics in my Renegade Raiders list since I'm not forced into taking a tax. 

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

On 5/2/2025 at 11:14 AM, HeadlessCross said:

There's only so many "best units" though. Theoretically every army is gonna have 1500 or so points dedicated to that, so what's done with the last 500? Old FOC says your list is the same as everyone else's. Freedom of construction allows tools you might not be able to use otherwise, like Flamer Rubrics in my Renegade Raiders list since I'm not forced into taking a tax. 

The number of options available these days means that there’s little excuse for everyone to have a list that is very similar to each other.

 

for marines you can focus on tacticus and still have quite a few options.

gravis, more limiting but your FA and HS slots will be what sets gravis focused armies apart

or Phobos, again quite a few options.

 

or you could mix and match all armor styles and have 0 reason to have a list similar to the guy at the next table over…

[Rogue]

I wonder if the idea of 'tax' units is amplified in armies that have more datasheets (looking at you, marines).

 

I only really play Genestealer  Cults at the moment, so that's my reference point. If you ignore characters we only have ten units - three battleline, a transport and six others. So our battleline units do things that our other units either don't do as well, don't do as cheaply, or just don't do at all. And perhaps more to the point, the battleline units do things that you almost always want somewhere in your list - they're valuable as utility units, even when you're skewing the rest of the list into something specific.

 

My guess is that, with something like marines, it's always possible to look at tactical squads and say, "Yeah, but unit X does that better" - you have so many units to choose from that there'll always be something better suited to your needs.

[Karhedron]

9 hours ago, Rogue said:

My guess is that, with something like marines, it's always possible to look at tactical squads and say, "Yeah, but unit X does that better" - you have so many units to choose from that there'll always be something better suited to your needs.

 

You have a good point. This was particularly acute in 9th edition where Phobos units were Troops. Infiltrators and Incursors were far more common than Intercessors (of any flavour).

 

This is why I am against a straight return of something like the FOC. If Troops/Battleline are mandatory it provides less incentive for GW to give them good rules since people are forced to take them.

 

I think 10th has been good in giving Battleline units abilities that make them worth taking in their own right but GW could be a bit bolder. I think some units like Intercessors (which are supposed to be a Chapter's most common infantry) could benefit from OC3. It doesn't feel right that 10 Guardsmen hold an Object as securely as 10 genetically engineered superhumans.

[DemonGSides]

7 hours ago, Karhedron said:

 

You have a good point. This was particularly acute in 9th edition where Phobos units were Troops. Infiltrators and Incursors were far more common than Intercessors (of any flavour).

 

This is why I am against a straight return of something like the FOC. If Troops/Battleline are mandatory it provides less incentive for GW to give them good rules since people are forced to take them.

 

I think 10th has been good in giving Battleline units abilities that make them worth taking in their own right but GW could be a bit bolder. I think some units like Intercessors (which are supposed to be a Chapter's most common infantry) could benefit from OC3. It doesn't feel right that 10 Guardsmen hold an Object as securely as 10 genetically engineered superhumans.

 

I agree on everything except for the OC stuff.

Baseline humans do basically nothing very well, so giving them the ability to be best at "Standing still" is probably correct. 

[FirstSonofHorus]

On 5/4/2025 at 8:09 AM, Karhedron said:

 

You have a good point. This was particularly acute in 9th edition where Phobos units were Troops. Infiltrators and Incursors were far more common than Intercessors (of any flavour).

 

This is why I am against a straight return of something like the FOC. If Troops/Battleline are mandatory it provides less incentive for GW to give them good rules since people are forced to take them.

 

I think 10th has been good in giving Battleline units abilities that make them worth taking in their own right but GW could be a bit bolder. I think some units like Intercessors (which are supposed to be a Chapter's most common infantry) could benefit from OC3. It doesn't feel right that 10 Guardsmen hold an Object as securely as 10 genetically engineered superhumans.

 

I think this is really true. Most armies on the table seem to have a good sprinkling of unit options. They seem to have really given purpose and value to a range of unit archetypes to the point where people willingly take battleline. That is the dream. At the moment AOS struggles with that.

 

Personally I don't like the proliferation of characters and them being 'unit upgrades' in many situations, but that's a side point.

[jaxom]

I think tying secondary objectives to FoC would be a good balancing factor. And I mean both your and your opponents. So a Tank Brigade FoC has secondaries for you that make sense for deploying a lot of tanks, and secondaries for your opponent that make sense for fighting a lot of tanks. Meanwhile your opponent brought a Recon FoC and ends up with some secondaries related to scouting so you end up additional secondaries about keeping them from doing recon.

[Dr. Clock]

5 hours ago, jaxom said:

I think tying secondary objectives to FoC would be a good balancing factor. And I mean both your and your opponents. So a Tank Brigade FoC has secondaries for you that make sense for deploying a lot of tanks, and secondaries for your opponent that make sense for fighting a lot of tanks. Meanwhile your opponent brought a Recon FoC and ends up with some secondaries related to scouting so you end up additional secondaries about keeping them from doing recon.

A noble aim, but experience from last edition suggests this is an easy way for the game get weird and unbalanced as and when the different secondaries aren't really balanced against each other, and the 'distinct secondaries' become either a crutch or a cudgel for each different faction/detachment. It's one thing to build an edge case, stat check, or spam army, it's quite another to build the whole game around an expectation that people will do that, and indeed a reward structure incentivizing it. 

 

It's also just... so much more complicated! It would make casual play a bit of a nightmare, and seems likely to result in either so many more decks of cards that I'll never bother to buy them, or just trying to flip your way through a d66 chart cobbled together from 3 sources. Nah - we are playing the same game and our mission is Only War!

 

I'd suggest that connecting detachment more strongly to mission play could be as easy as just giving some detachments rules, strats or enhancements that improve the scoring potential of a list without directly altering the missions. The recent changes to the Marine characters are the kind of thing I'd look for in this vein, but it could be as simple as a strat to allow a certain unit to take an action and still shoot, or take an action and achieve it in engagement range etc.

 

Cheers,

 

The Good Doctor.

[jaxom]

Yah, 100% agree. It's more like a "if I had control of where the game went starting at the end of 3rd edition" thought. In some ways, as I get older, I wish the game wasn't quite so busy and missions were more straightforward. I just don't have the time and mental energy to memorize all the things.

[Antarius]

3 hours ago, jaxom said:

Yah, 100% agree. It's more like a "if I had control of where the game went starting at the end of 3rd edition" thought. In some ways, as I get older, I wish the game wasn't quite so busy and missions were more straightforward. I just don't have the time and mental energy to memorize all the things.

I think I’ve said this before, but there were 17 official publications for 4th (although admittedly, there were probably a few codices that carried over from 3rd), whereas there were 108 for 9th, so it’s not just that we’re getting older - although I am afraid that is a factor too.

[Kallas]

3 hours ago, Antarius said:

I think I’ve said this before, but there were 17 official publications for 4th (although admittedly, there were probably a few codices that carried over from 3rd), whereas there were 108 for 9th, so it’s not just that we’re getting older - although I am afraid that is a factor too.

Yeah, the amount of stuff to remember is certainly a factor for game burnout. I recall when Warmachine got the CID (Community playtesting basically) and it became exhausting to keep up with all of the various things that people wanted to try out. It had other problems at the time as well, but that was a big factor in my leaving the game, it was simply too much effort to enjoy.

 

I'm certainly for active balancing, definitely not saying GW should go back to 4th Ed levels of balancing, but there is a point where it can become overwhelming.

[HeadlessCross]

10 hours ago, Antarius said:

I think I’ve said this before, but there were 17 official publications for 4th (although admittedly, there were probably a few codices that carried over from 3rd), whereas there were 108 for 9th, so it’s not just that we’re getting older - although I am afraid that is a factor too.

That's the fault of GW not understanding how to efficiently release rules/erratas online on top of new armies being released. 

[DemonGSides]

Not to mention folding in a lot of White Dwarf stuff that ended up being either mostly useless or perhaps the best way to play your army.

 

9th was a mess for a lot of reasons.

[Antarius]

I am usually very much not on the “GW ruins the game on purpose”- conspiracy train, but there’s a very clear uptick in publications per edition. Whatever else it is (and regardless of whether it’s good or bad) it is a business model. More products to sell means a lot more potential sales (and, in this case, a lot more actual sales).

 

In many ways it’s probably about giving customers what they (both GW and the customers) think they want, but there’s no denying that there are many, many more releases these days (both rules and minis). 

 

The figure I mentioned didn’t include FAQs, rules updates, White Dwarf articles etc., by the way. Just official publications that you could buy.

[Valkyrion]

On 5/6/2025 at 6:53 AM, Antarius said:

I think I’ve said this before, but there were 17 official publications for 4th (although admittedly, there were probably a few codices that carried over from 3rd), whereas there were 108 for 9th, so it’s not just that we’re getting older - although I am afraid that is a factor too.

 

I'm sure you're correct about the 108, but I can only count 53; https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Codices_(List)

 

There's the rulebook of course, but what else is missing? 

4th had 18 by my count, including the rulebook and 3 Imperial Armour books. 

[Antarius]

1 hour ago, Valkyrion said:

 

I'm sure you're correct about the 108, but I can only count 53; https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Codices_(List)

 

There's the rulebook of course, but what else is missing? 

4th had 18 by my count, including the rulebook and 3 Imperial Armour books. 

I think the rest were mostly for-pay datasheets and similar online-only publications.

 

Oh yeah, I might have missed the Imperial Armour books and any other FW publications, I'm not sure if those were included in the count I made.

Edited May 7 by Antarius

[Dr. Clock]

7 hours ago, Antarius said:

Just official publications that you could buy.

Credit where credit is due; this edition has been the best ever in terms of the free publications and ongoing support of the whole game IMO, though admittedly all of those technically 'free' bits are best used within the paid WH+ service/app, which again has markedly improved since last edition IMO.

 

Honestly the information ecosystem that 4th was operating in was decidedly 20th century, and GW was clearly no early adopter of digital game aids, but I flippin love the way that I never have to remember to pack ANY rules to go for a game any more. I remember my phone, I remember the game. I haven't bought the codexes for some of my more fringe armies, and it's pretty annoying to have to bring something as substantial as a laptop for pirated rules lol. We're also in the shadow of the next edition enough that I become tentative on new rules purchases until I can confirm whether everything is about to be reindexed.

 

All that's to say that comparing across time like this can really become apples and oranges, and the difference in scale of GW as a business compared to 4th days is approximately... 1 order of magnitude? For all that it's super surprising that the core offerings have remained so similar even if the pace has increased.

 

At a certain point, it's bound to be worth more money to GW to offer 'game rules as a service' rather than as a 'series of physical products'. The fact that approximately half of a Codex's value is just the app code suggests that there is a clear market for 'just the rules please', and GW is already in the process of cannibalizing its print production value to drive the app. Put another way, the price of a codex book is now half of what it was as long as you can sell someone the code. The next obvious step is a) make the codexes 'more boutique', probably by including things like bespoke objective markers or whatever and also increasing the cost 50-75%, while b) offering premium app subscriptions containing all current faction rules, also increasing cost 100-200%, and c) continuing to offer 'in-app codexes' a la carte for like 50% of current codex price. I'd pay twice as much for the app if I never had to buy a book again or use a lower quality pirate option...

 

This is becoming more of a business model discussion than a rules/game one, but I think the game has been freed up substantially by the extent to which a) the rules for anything can 'just be changed' every couple of months if a release performs above or below expectations and b) there may be more rules floating around but if they all land in the same digital place, everything is just more useable, and more fun because it easier to use.

 

Cheers,

 

The Good Doctor.

[Antarius]

Oh GW are pretty good about giving out free stuff, no question about it. And I'm very happy that they moved away from the era of "buy a dataslate/similar download for a quid", because that definitely didn't do anything good for the game.

[HeadlessCross]

1 hour ago, Antarius said:

Oh GW are pretty good about giving out free stuff, no question about it. And I'm very happy that they moved away from the era of "buy a dataslate/similar download for a quid", because that definitely didn't do anything good for the game.

MAN those mini Codices were the worst. Remember the Legion Of The Damned "codex"? I don't think I had ever been more mad about a release than that. 

[Antarius]

Another thing about game design that I've been thinking about lately and which might or might not be interesting to talk about, is the distinction between things that happen "on the table" and things that happen "off the table". It's a slightly wonky, "fuzzy" distinction, but it's one I've found myself going back to over the last couple of years and I think it holds some sort of significance for games and what we like/dislike in them.
My overall idea is that some mechanics are more directly tied to what happens/the choices you make that emphasise the action "on the table" and some mechanics (often more abstract ones) happen "off the table" and often draw importance away from the actions taking place.


The prime example of "on the table" is when you move a unit and that opens up some new possibility or causes a direct effect in the game. It could be mechanics such as overwatch, booby traps or simply the change in position giving you new options for selecting targets.

On the other hand, we have "off the table" mechanics which could be things like army construction (I guess) and generally things that are not tied directly to how models, terrain etc. operate on the tabletop (when actually playing the game). The danger of these are that they can detract from the immersive feel of the game and/or make tactical decisions "on the table" less meaningful.

 

As you can probably tell, I find myself holding a strong bias towards preferring "on the table" mechanics, but I'm trying to remain somewhat objective in my description, because I guess at the end of the day it's a matter of taste and/or balance between the two in terms of game mechanics, so I'm not trying to say "off the table" mechanics are bad in and of themselves, so much as they're a type of mechanic that can easily detract from the fun (and balance) of the game if it dominates the overall game design or is used in the wrong places.

An example of bad "off the table" mechanics would be the wound allocation rules in 5th ed. which, while ostensibly tied to the actions of units, seemed more like a mini-game where you stopped looking at the action on the tabletop and instead went off to some abstract place and did math homework, rather than something that emphasised units shooting/fighting each other (I mean, sometimes you would even have to stop shooting at a unit or not use your most powerful melee weapon, if you wanted to kill specific models).
An example of good "off the table" mechanics would be the campaign system in Necromunda, where all the things happening between scenarios contribute to the feeling of your gang and add to the immersiveness of the setting, even though they're not actually part of the "on the table" scenario being played.

I realise this is a little abstract at present, but I think it's a distinction that makes sense on a fundamental level.

[Dr. Clock]

3 hours ago, Antarius said:

easily detract from the fun (and balance) of the game if it dominates the overall game design or is used in the wrong places.

Certainly! I think 'off the table' rules are harder to balance in large part because they lack reference to any specific/contingent 'game units'. This sounds like the rules that kinda create the framework within which the units interact? Like, the easiest way to tilt the playing field is to just actually tilt the field...

 

This is related to my argument against things like strict army construction rules as an 'unlock' for missions. Even though it's technically a feature that's added on to guide 'who arrives' on the field, it's a layer of crud that ultimately means the two sides aren't playing the same game because one has identified or lucked into a way to tilt things before the dice start rolling.

 

The terrain part is also huge. It really seems like this edition they've finally found a place where it's relatively balanced and good for the game, but the preponderance of LOS blockers in official layouts doesn't seem right to us, so we play with about a third of buildings/ruins (gantries basically) providing cover but not blocking LOS. We also let vehicles see through ruins as long as they tap in, as it's just tremendously silly and awkward for lots of vehicles to get 'fully inside' a ruin in order to shoot out. All of this together means that there are more shooting lanes for long range stuff (though cover is still easy to get), and vehicles can just move and shoot with more flexibility without kinda irrationally losing so much LOS. In fairness I have literally never even tried to institute a 'recommended layout' on my home board, although my layouts are definitely close to symmetrical, and do have enough terrain (4x ~8" barricade sections, 4x large ruin, 2x small ruin, 2x small bunker, 4x 2-storey gantry installations).

 

On the board vs off the board seems a bit like the difference between tactics and strategy? Both are needed, but the strategic stuff happens 'outside' and 'goes before' the tactical...

 

Cheers,

 

The Good Doctor.