General Chat Thread

[Ejecutor]

33 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

I would not hate an edition with slim battletomes, but lots of narrative add-ons. I wonder if that is the plan, given that a narrative book has already been announced and we are even getting new weekly short stories. It would be a great place for weird variant game modes and extra artefacts, traits and spell lores to live, IMO.

I would just need to convince people to actually play narrative games with me. I feel like the missing piece here is something like a "map based" play mode that connects individual battles together into an overarching campaign.

Something like the original Season of War?

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

5 minutes ago, Ejecutor said:

Something like the original Season of War?

Yes, but actually commit to it this time.

I think one of the weaknesses of Path to Glory and other narrative/campaign supplements has been that they try to do a campaign without any defined map. I don't complain a lot about the lack of maps in AoS (although I know that really chafes with some people) but if you want to play a persistent campaign, I feel it is kind of necessary to get a little bit more concrete with the environment in which the campaign takes place.

[Sarouan]

Something like Firestorm or Mighty Empires.

Thing is, GW communication for 4th edition so far is all about competitive play and focus on balance. So of course people would rather play "Matched Play" instead of Path to Glory : it's the one that's being put at the front of the scene for 2 editions now. Trouble with balance is that it's the reason why options are so scarce and feel "small" in the new Path to Glory. First Anvil of Apotheosis didn't care so much about balance : that's what made it possible to build something interesting and distinct. And that's why people remembered it.

Once you go with armies / characters that evolve depending on what happened in the previous games, if you want it to matter, it has to be unbalanced (an experienced successful warlord will end up being better than an inexperienced one or one who keeps losing / being hurt). It has to have units with changes that do matter and reflect how many times they won or lost. If you don't, you'll end up with changes that have barely any meaning, impact and, thus, pointless.

[MitGas]

Should anvil of apotheosis even be balanced perfectly? Frankly it‘s not going to be part of skill-based tournaments I reckon, so why bother? If players want to play matched but with homebrewn characters it doesn‘t have to be perfectly balanced. They want herohammer with their awesome leader and I‘m here for it!
 

… and frankly I don‘t see GW ever creating truly balanced rules either. They had two decades to do it, never pulled it off in their main systems (it‘s hella difficult in their defense, especially if new stuff regularly gets introduced), so I think a good balance with simple rules and lots of fun is where GW games should land ideally. 
 

And fix Killteam‘s rules. Playing Space Marine 2 just makes me long for painting my Imperial ruins but the current KT rules with weird symbols etc. are the worst game rules I‘ve possibly seen. Make it fun, make it simple, it‘s not rocket science! Systems like Mordheim managed to pull it off and that had more complicated stat lines. 
 

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

8 minutes ago, MitGas said:

Should anvil of apotheosis even be balanced perfectly? Frankly it‘s not going to be part of skill-based tournaments I reckon, so why bother? If players want to play matched but with homebrewn characters it doesn‘t have to be perfectly balanced. They want herohammer with their awesome leader and I‘m here for it!
 

… and frankly I don‘t see GW ever creating truly balanced rules either. They had two decades to do it, never pulled it off in their main systems (it‘s hella difficult in their defense, especially if new stuff regularly gets introduced), so I think a good balance with simple rules and lots of fun is where GW games should land ideally. 
 

And fix Killteam‘s rules. Playing Space Marine 2 just makes me long for painting my Imperial ruins but the current KT rules with weird symbols etc. are the worst game rules I‘ve possibly seen. Make it fun, make it simple, it‘s not rocket science! Systems like Mordheim managed to pull it off and that had more complicated stat lines. 
 

It needs to be balanced enough that it doesn't make people go: "Oh, those are those weird rules that allow you to make overpowered homebrew characters. I'd rather not bother with that". I think that is always a concern even when people correctly identify that they are not interested primarily in a balanced game.

[PraetorDragoon]

While narrative campaigns don't have to be balanced, it is nice to have some catchup mechancis to make sure the people at the bottom can still have fun. Being in a death spiral is no fun at all.

14 minutes ago, MitGas said:

And fix Killteam‘s rules. Playing Space Marine 2 just makes me long for painting my Imperial ruins but the current KT rules with weird symbols etc. are the worst game rules I‘ve possibly seen. Make it fun, make it simple, it‘s not rocket science! Systems like Mordheim managed to pull it off and that had more complicated stat lines. 
 

New KT ditches the symbols afaik.

[ScionOfOssia]

28 minutes ago, MitGas said:

Should anvil of apotheosis even be balanced perfectly? Frankly it‘s not going to be part of skill-based tournaments I reckon, so why bother? If players want to play matched but with homebrewn characters it doesn‘t have to be perfectly balanced. They want herohammer with their awesome leader and I‘m here for it!
 

… and frankly I don‘t see GW ever creating truly balanced rules either. They had two decades to do it, never pulled it off in their main systems (it‘s hella difficult in their defense, especially if new stuff regularly gets introduced), so I think a good balance with simple rules and lots of fun is where GW games should land ideally. 
 

And fix Killteam‘s rules. Playing Space Marine 2 just makes me long for painting my Imperial ruins but the current KT rules with weird symbols etc. are the worst game rules I‘ve possibly seen. Make it fun, make it simple, it‘s not rocket science! Systems like Mordheim managed to pull it off and that had more complicated stat lines. 
 

Yes, it should be balanced. Getting annihilated because someone has an obscenely overpowered combo that you just can’t do anything about isn’t fun anywhere. If it becomes jank vs jank, then the entire thing becomes an exercise in who can get something infuriating online first. 

[Tonhel]

29 minutes ago, ScionOfOssia said:

Yes, it should be balanced. Getting annihilated because someone has an obscenely overpowered combo that you just can’t do anything about isn’t fun anywhere. If it becomes jank vs jank, then the entire thing becomes an exercise in who can get something infuriating online first. 

The easiest way to balance magic items, traits and etc.. is giving it points. Imo, the reason AoS so few items/heroic traits is that everything has to be the same power level as it's free to take.

If GW adds point costs to artefacts/traits and manifestations a lot would be possible. They can add more flavour and more stuff to it and can balance it if necessary in increasing/decreasing the point costs as they are doing now with the units.

Now it is boring.

[MitGas]

1 hour ago, ScionOfOssia said:

Yes, it should be balanced. Getting annihilated because someone has an obscenely overpowered combo that you just can’t do anything about isn’t fun anywhere. If it becomes jank vs jank, then the entire thing becomes an exercise in who can get something infuriating online first. 

There‘s a huge margin between totally broken and slightly imbalanced though. I‘m advocating for the latter - frankly GW couldn‘t ever go beyond slightly imbalanced anyways as some forces are always quite a bit better than others. 
 

And what are tournament lists if not people finding the most broken combos (that aren’t total one-trick lists) possible? 🤷🏻‍♂️ That‘s always going to be a problem in any game that isn‘t perfectly balanced (e.g. giving both players the same pieces… and even then the player who starts is in theory ahead (see white in chess)). 

[MitGas]

1 hour ago, PraetorDragoon said:

While narrative campaigns don't have to be balanced, it is nice to have some catchup mechancis to make sure the people at the bottom can still have fun. Being in a death spiral is no fun at all.

New KT ditches the symbols afaik.

Yeah, the mind-numbingly stupid symbols are thankfully gone (seriously, who the heck ever allowed that to happen) but that wasn‘t the only thing that made KT horrible to play. I really hope they reworked quite a bit more. KT would be a goldmine for GW if it had great rules. Every video gamer that likes the universe would be willing to buy a squad… and we all know, that‘s how you lure them in! 😇

[PraetorDragoon]

7 minutes ago, MitGas said:

Yeah, the mind-numbingly stupid symbols are thankfully gone (seriously, who the heck ever allowed that to happen) but that wasn‘t the only thing that made KT horrible to play. I really hope they reworked quite a bit more. KT would be a goldmine for GW if it had great rules. Every video gamer that likes the universe would be willing to buy a squad… and we all know, that‘s how you lure them in! 😇

If I remember correctly, the first few tutorials and articles didn't refer to shapes but to colours.

[MitGas]

6 hours ago, PraetorDragoon said:

If I remember correctly, the first few tutorials and articles didn't refer to shapes but to colours.

Yeah, to annoy the colorblind as well! 🥴

Edited September 11 by MitGas

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

17 hours ago, MitGas said:

Yeah, the mind-numbingly stupid symbols are thankfully gone (seriously, who the heck ever allowed that to happen) but that wasn‘t the only thing that made KT horrible to play. I really hope they reworked quite a bit more. KT would be a goldmine for GW if it had great rules. Every video gamer that likes the universe would be willing to buy a squad… and we all know, that‘s how you lure them in! 😇

I thought I heard somewhere that the symbols were an attempt to avoid having to print data sheets in a bunch of different languages. It's one of those decisions that doesn't actually benefit ease of play (hurts it, really), but makes it so that GW can put out the same box for every Killteam world wide without having to worry about over-/under-producing for certain countries and languages.

[Sarouan]

19 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

It needs to be balanced enough that it doesn't make people go: "Oh, those are those weird rules that allow you to make overpowered homebrew characters. I'd rather not bother with that". I think that is always a concern even when people correctly identify that they are not interested primarily in a balanced game.

That's why GW needs to advertise more about others ways to play than competitive / Matched Play. This kind of reflection is typically because people fear their opponent will automatically abuse the system to crush you. In reality, that's far from being automatic.

See the example of Necromunda. The fear is the same from players who don't already play : because they see the huge amount of rules that could be abused so that the game is completely one-sided. But often that comes from players who can't think of playing without equal points / "balanced" systems. In Necromunda, it's purely a narrative experience, often with arbitrators acting as basically game masters. When a gang is being the underdog, there are others ways so that its player can keep having fun : having a scenario when he gets some advantage or free hired guns who comes to help to even the numbers, and so on.

Don't see why Age of Sigmar can't use something similar, that doesn't have to involve points or balance as the only answer to be sure to have fun.

Edited September 12 by Sarouan

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

14 minutes ago, Sarouan said:

That's why GW needs to advertise more about others ways to play than competitive / Matched Play. This kind of reflection is typically because people fear their opponent will automatically abuse the system to crush you. In reality, that's far from being automatic.

See the example of Necromunda. The fear is the same from players who don't already play : because they see the huge amount of rules that could be abused so that the game is completely one-sided. But often that comes from players who can't think of playing without equal points / "balanced" systems. In Necromunda, it's purely a narrative experience, often with arbitrators acting as basically game masters. When a gang is being the underdog, there are others ways so that its player can keep having fun : having a scenario when he gets some advantage or free hired guns who comes to help to even the numbers, and so on.

Don't see why Age of Sigmar can't use something similar, that doesn't have to involve points or balance as the only answer to be sure to have fun.

I agree to an extent here, which is that I think most players don't engage with rules by trying to find the number 1 most broken thing to abuse right away.

But I also don't think it's necessarily fair to lay the lower popularity of narrative or more casual play at the feet of people playing matched alone. I don't think "players who can't think of playing without equal points" are the source of it. It's a dynamic that is observable across a lot of games, not just warhammer/GW games, but also other wargames and role playing games, and even card games like Magic. Everyone always says they prefer narrative/flavourful/casual play (and I believe that is actually how most people feel, too), but the vast majority of engagement with the games is not about that. Rather, people who strongly engage with the mechanics are the ones who are most invested in the game and talk about it the most.

You can see it on this forum, as well: In order of popularity, people engage with the subforums about:

1. News
2. Mechanics
3. Painting
4. Narrative play

With the narrative section barely getting posts at all.

In my mind, if we believe people when they talk about their preferences regarding narrative/matched play, I think a lot of people who currently play matched are open to playing narrative instead. But there just does not seem to be any kind of structure there to really allow people to do it, and there also does not seem to be a lot of outreach and advocacy from people in the narrative community, either. Say what you will about tournament players, but they do actually go out there, self-organize, play and promote their play style.

[Sarouan]

4 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

 But there just does not seem to be any kind of structure there to really allow people to do it, and there also does not seem to be a lot of outreach and advocacy from people in the narrative community, either. Say what you will about tournament players, but they do actually go out there, self-organize, play and promote their play style.

That's because narrative players play with groups they know and don't especially go on this forum for that because it is honestly mainly about Matched Play / competitive centered. It is a snake eating its own tail : they're not encouraged to stay / interact about narrative because of discussions mainly focusing on Matched Play, and since it's the main topic it keeps attracting more Matched Play players / threads to it.

And to me, it's also a responsibility from GW. They need to push more articles about narrative play, ways to keep the game fun and interesting while playing "unbalanced" games / lists that are not equal in points, and so on. That's why I see the cooperative game system from the next Kill Team with interest, even so I sadly believe there won't be many articles about it in comparison to competitive Kill Team games.

Narrative players do promote their play style. They just tend to do it at a smaller scale (there are some youtube channels devoted to that, but they're usually not the ones popping up in your feed if you consume a lot of Matched Play content TBH). And they usually don't bother to do it here, because well...balance obsessed players tend to be really dismissive when someone tells them balance doesn't really matter to have fun in games.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

3 minutes ago, Sarouan said:

That's because narrative players play with groups they know and don't especially go on this forum for that because it is honestly mainly about Matched Play / competitive centered. It is a snake eating its own tail : they're not encouraged to stay / interact about narrative because of discussions mainly focusing on Matched Play, and since it's the main topic it keeps attracting more Matched Play players / threads to it.

And to me, it's also a responsibility from GW. They need to push more articles about narrative play, ways to keep the game fun and interesting while playing "unbalanced" games / lists that are not equal in points, and so on. That's why I see the cooperative game system from the next Kill Team with interest, even so I sadly believe there won't be many articles about it in comparison to competitive Kill Team games.

Narrative players do promote their play style. They just tend to do it at a smaller scale (there are some youtube channels devoted to that, but they're usually not the ones popping up in your feed if you consume a lot of Matched Play content TBH). And they usually don't bother to do it here, because well...balance obsessed players tend to be really dismissive when someone tells them balance doesn't really matter to have fun in games.

I guess those are the stereotypes:

Tournament players are toxic WAAC sweat lords who monopolize all the online discussions.

Narrative players are hyper-casual basement kings who never engage with the community at all.

 

I think a cooperative mode would do a lot to help promote more flavour-focussed play, though. I hope Poorhammer puts out an AoS version of their Horde Mode rules some time.

[Tonhel]

I don't do tournaments, but the lists I see in tournaments are not my kind of game.

I will use TOW as an example. The armylist that won Nova is imo a pure example of WAAC and I can't imagine that we would build such a list.

Which is all fine, solong as the different design studio's don't use those tournaments results for balancing. Which sadly they do for AoS. Hopefully they will not do this for TOW.

Because it has an impact on all the players and not only those tournament players that min-max their armylists to the extreme.

 

 

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

3 minutes ago, Tonhel said:

I don't do tournaments, but the lists I see in tournaments are not my kind of game.

I will use TOW as an example. The armylist that won Nova is imo a pure example of WAAC and I can't imagine that we would build such a list.

Which is all fine, solong as the different design studio's don't use those tournaments results for balancing. Which sadly they do for AoS. Hopefully they will not do this for TOW.

Because it has an impact on all the players and not only those tournament players that min-max their armylists to the extreme.

Balancing is a tricky subject in relation to tournament play.

I think fundamentally it makes sense to have tournament data inform balancing decisions, simply because it is the only data that exists most of the time and if you don't balance around people trying to build the best lists with the aim to win, what do you even balance around? The WAAC lists that you dislike at least tell us something: This is what lists look like if players only look at the mechanical incentives as the game currently presents them. And players, even casual ones, will definitely tend to follow the mechanical incentives.

That said, I think tournament stats are not the whole answer to the question of how to make the game the most enjoyable to all players. Personally, I don't think casual players of average skill who build lists partially to win and partially for flavour will be able to really feel the difference between a 45/55 match up and a 40/60 match up. But I think they will be able to feel if a big centerpiece model like Nagash or Lord Kroak is out of whack power-wise, even if it doesn't play well in tournaments (maybe because it is not consistent enough to give you 4-1s or 5-0s). You don't have to be a WAAC player to want to put the coolest model in your army on the table, and it will ruin casual play if they are unfun to face. We are kind of seeing this as a problem in TOW at the moment, as I understand it, where the Timmy choice of putting a cool dragon into your list and putting the most obviously good items on it is actually really hard to beat.

[Beliman]

1 hour ago, Tonhel said:

Which sadly they do for AoS. Hopefully they will not do this for TOW.

Nighthaunt player detected XD (/joke).

Edited September 12 by Beliman

[Tonhel]

40 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Balancing is a tricky subject in relation to tournament play.

I think fundamentally it makes sense to have tournament data inform balancing decisions, simply because it is the only data that exists most of the time and if you don't balance around people trying to build the best lists with the aim to win, what do you even balance around? The WAAC lists that you dislike at least tell us something: This is what lists look like if players only look at the mechanical incentives as the game currently presents them. And players, even casual ones, will definitely tend to follow the mechanical incentives.

That said, I think tournament stats are not the whole answer to the question of how to make the game the most enjoyable to all players. Personally, I don't think casual players of average skill who build lists partially to win and partially for flavour will be able to really feel the difference between a 45/55 match up and a 40/60 match up. But I think they will be able to feel if a big centerpiece model like Nagash or Lord Kroak is out of whack power-wise, even if it doesn't play well in tournaments (maybe because it is not consistent enough to give you 4-1s or 5-0s). You don't have to be a WAAC player to want to put the coolest model in your army on the table, and it will ruin casual play if they are unfun to face. We are kind of seeing this as a problem in TOW at the moment, as I understand it, where the Timmy choice of putting a cool dragon into your list and putting the most obviously good items on it is actually really hard to beat.

Dragons are strong and are what they should be (imo). I would hate to see it made weaker because of it is dominating tournaments (which I don't think it does). It's strong, but when watching the Square based vids from Rob about the tournaments he organizes it does not seem such a big problem.(They should fix Infantry instead)

I would personally prefer that for AoS and TOW there is just a tournament pack that balances tournament play instead of applying it to all players. Nobody from our group does tournaments, but still matched play is what is used in our group and none of us have lists that really resembles some of the lists in the tournament scene.

It's not fun to see point changes to units or have lesser options just because a certain build was abused in tournaments.

Edited September 12 by Tonhel

[Ejecutor]

How feasible is having narrative tournaments in the big events?

[Sarouan]

4 minutes ago, Tonhel said:

It's not fun to see point changes to units or have lesser options just because a certain build was abused in tournaments.

Especially when it ultimately applies to only one format, the standard Matched Play one, and has not the same impact if it's bigger or smaller.

Honestly, when I see the constant point updates that go -10 points here or +15 points there, in the end, it's a small detail that doesn't really matter. It's just a question of optimizing your list and gain/lose a few points when you spam the same units at 2000 points.

And now the consequence of that is we don't have points anymore in the Skaven Battletome book. Not worth it, IMHO.

Edited September 12 by Sarouan

[PraetorDragoon]

17 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Balancing is a tricky subject in relation to tournament play.

I think fundamentally it makes sense to have tournament data inform balancing decisions, simply because it is the only data that exists most of the time and if you don't balance around people trying to build the best lists with the aim to win, what do you even balance around? The WAAC lists that you dislike at least tell us something: This is what lists look like if players only look at the mechanical incentives as the game currently presents them. And players, even casual ones, will definitely tend to follow the mechanical incentives.

That said, I think tournament stats are not the whole answer to the question of how to make the game the most enjoyable to all players. Personally, I don't think casual players of average skill who build lists partially to win and partially for flavour will be able to really feel the difference between a 45/55 match up and a 40/60 match up. But I think they will be able to feel if a big centerpiece model like Nagash or Lord Kroak is out of whack power-wise, even if it doesn't play well in tournaments (maybe because it is not consistent enough to give you 4-1s or 5-0s). You don't have to be a WAAC player to want to put the coolest model in your army on the table, and it will ruin casual play if they are unfun to face. We are kind of seeing this as a problem in TOW at the moment, as I understand it, where the Timmy choice of putting a cool dragon into your list and putting the most obviously good items on it is actually really hard to beat.

One of the issues that balacing has is the skill gap problem. Sometimes, things are fine in high-level play, but a problem in low-level play and things that are fine in low-level play can be a problem in high-level play. We all know that one unit that had to be nerfed because combo xyz.

And as you say, casual players can detect when some things are out of whack. Units that are too weak or too strong are disliked by everyone.

 

[Sarouan]

4 minutes ago, Ejecutor said:

How feasible is having narrative tournaments in the big events?

GW already does that. It is perfectly feasible, it simply has no real interest to register it on the big tournament online websites because it's not about having the best player on top or making a ranking. The datas don't fit the way they are registered on Matched Play tournaments.