What with current posts on whether PTG is balanced and the 'Gunkulator'...

[JPjr]

2 hours ago, Kramer said:

In a recent twitch stream they discussed the design process

do you know if this is still available to check out anywhere? YT perhaps, would love to listen to that.

[JPjr]

Not sure which magazine or site I could possibly pitch it too but I've always really wanted to write (or honestly just read) a longform article on the process of getting a model on to the table.

Take however long it takes to follow the entire process from brief to concept to design to manufacture to fluff to mechanics to table. I think it'd be a great story and really help people understand how it happens (and how long it takes) but also why certain things we all assume would be easy for GW to do, don't happen.

[Kramer]

2 hours ago, Ruhraffe said:

If we venture into the world of computer strategy, the blizzard strategy games are quite balanced, even though the 3 (Starcraft) / 4 (Warcraft) factions play immensly different. But I have to admit, patching a virtual game is easier by far; and 3-4 factions are less then the warhammer world provides. But those asymmetrical games exist and have a large fanbase and constant competitive community, that is so large blizzard does bring out a makeover for WC3 as well as SC1

Absolutely! But the balance is mostly achieved by changing power levels by percentages even instead of resource cost, right? 

Addition:

Meaning it’s 1. Easier to manage power levels due to smaller increments. 1/6 or Percentages is a big deal. 2. It would be a bit besides the discussion a bit as the question is about balance through changing points.  

But you are right, those are good examples of asymmetrical games. Maybe GW should do an exchange program with Blizzard  

[paul7926]

I actually really like the comparison to the stock market.  I think there is a definite place for that sort of thinking to be used for balance purposes.  No matter how complex and accurate the points calculator is (either fan made or GW) that is just a starting point.  A look over tournament lists could be used as the 'market force' and small adjustments made to a units 'cost' to bring it more in line with it's current perceived 'value' the players have assigned to it.

So if everyone uses unit X then over time it's points just keep increasing until it's no longer the obvious and only real choice.  

It would need people to embrace the idea of a much more fluid points system.  The biggest hurdles to that, publications being wrong soon after printing for example, we already have and the GHB already handles a yearly re-balancing effort. 

If the points cost was driven by actual tournament usage then, if done correctly, we end up with a self balancing system.

[Sleboda]

On 11/19/2018 at 6:59 PM, FlatTooth said:

Really dude? Just because you or I may not enjoy the game a certain way doesn't mean it isn't a valid way to enjoy the game. Holy moly.

Actually, I love tournaments. I've attended several, even winning some. I'm just realistic about recognizing the illusion points provide.

AoS shines as a game that a group of friends play together in a regular basis, where conversation about what to play and how to play it can be had and lists and rulings can evolve at that level for the enjoyment of that group.

Telling people that some magic points system will create fair matchups across the insane number of variables in the game is pulling wool over their eyes. No amount of tweaking points up or down 10 or 20 here and there is going to lead to the aha moment.

I just acknowledge that and choose to play at events anyway. 

[Ruhraffe]

3 hours ago, Kramer said:

Absolutely! But the balance is mostly achieved by changing power levels by percentages even instead of resource cost, right? 

Addition:

Meaning it’s 1. Easier to manage power levels due to smaller increments. 1/6 or Percentages is a big deal. 2. It would be a bit besides the discussion a bit as the question is about balance through changing points.  

 But you are right, those are good examples of asymmetrical games. Maybe GW should do an exchange program with Blizzard  

Sure, the smaller possible increments are a thing that cannot be achieved with Warhammers system. But games like these manage their balance by changing the cost/effect ratio; meaning how much DPS and life points are worth how much minerals/gold/whatever resource. 

It is quite similar to the point values in Warhammer, only you do not earn the resource ingame but get in before the game starts and you have to deal with it. So, in Warhammer we do not change the damage or rend but change the cost for the unit. This already happens can can be finetuned in small steps. 

Maybe we should stop bringing out point values once a year in a big overhaul, but adapt them on a monthly/bimonthly/... basis online in a list and tools like warscroll builder. This way more finetuning and faster reactions to the meta can be achieved.

[Lemon Knuckles]

18 minutes ago, Sleboda said:

Telling people that some magic points system will create fair matchups across the insane number of variables in the game is pulling wool over their eyes. No amount of tweaking points up or down 10 or 20 here and there is going to lead to the aha moment.

Straw man

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

A straw man is a common form of argument and is an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an argument that was not presented by that opponent.^[1] One who engages in this fallacy is said to be "attacking a straw man."

 

Just to make sure I wasn't crazy, I've gone back and re-read people's post across three different threads where some version of this conversation has taken place.  The claim above has been made exactly zero times by any of the people involved.  Disclaimers that the above is actually not possible, and not what is being talked about, have been made more than a dozen times.

[Lemon Knuckles]

I wonder if part of the reason why we sometimes run into these things that "appear to be disagreements but aren't really disagreements at all" is because of words like "balance" and "fair."

I'm going to switch to an analogy here to try and make the case.

Imagine a game based on a simulated stock market.  Each player is given $2000 to invest, a list of companies to choose how to invest their money, and a range of possible market conditions that are possible during gameplay.  The winner is the one whose portfolio is worth the most after 5 rounds of simulated earnings.

Saying that such a game is balanced and fair would not mean that all investment strategies are equally viable.  It also does not mean that someone who just randomly invests their $2000 should have an equal chance of winning as someone who carefully researches and plans out their investments.  What it does mean, I think, is that each player is actually given $2000 of the same currency, rather than player A getting $2000 USD and player B getting $2000 JMD.

 

  

 

[gjnoronh]

I don't think Sleboda is providing a straw man by any means.  It's trying to clarify the point of the discussion.

If we adjust the points for units what are we trying to achieve?  Do you mean 'balanced' do you mean 'fair' and are those terms actually achievable in this very open ended game system?   

Starcraft is a good example - there are (IIRC I haven't played in close to 20 years I think) only only really one win condition for the online matches, the terrain on the board is fairly standardized  and while there are RPS  (Rock Paper Scissors) elements it's easy for a gamer to address these on the fly given the ability to build units to meet the situation.    That's really not AoS by a long shot for reasons mentioned in my previous post.

It doesn't mean things aren't incorrectly valued in GHB 2019, or that we can't improve accuracy.  But don't over estimate what is achievable and be clear on what you want to try and achieve.  Again see my previous post for issues that make this game very hard to balance.

 

 

[Lemon Knuckles]

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[FlatTooth]

Nevermind. 

[amysrevenge]

"Perfect" - nobody is going for.

Language shortcuts:  when someone says "fair" they probably mean "more fair" or even "the most fair that can be reasonably attained" and not "perfectly fair".  Same for "balance".

The argument "we can't attain perfect balance so F it there's no point trying" is ridiculous.  More fair and more balanced is the goal.  Perfect fairness and perfect balance is a straw man (yes it's being used correctly) - every time someone says "there's too many variables so we'll never be able to balance it" they are arguing against a straw man.  Nobody is claiming to be able to balance it, only to balance it a bit better.

[Lemon Knuckles]

 

59 minutes ago, gjnoronh said:

It's trying to clarify the point of the discussion.

I said this previously about the point, and I don't know if I'm capable of saying it better.

"[It's] about trying to "decode" the points system that already exists and that is currently used....  It is not about trying to create a points system where none exists, and it is not about throwing out the current points system and designing a new one.  It is about trying to understand how the current points system actually "works."  The current points system is a black box to us.  [It's] about lifting the lid off the box and trying to figure out what's inside."

There are three possibilities to how unit costs are determined in the current points system:

1. They are calculated.
   1. Either exclusively from the stat lines/abilities, or
   2. From the stat lines/abilities, with calculated modifiers layered in for variance/complexity according to other variables (faction, keyword, some hidden variables, whatever)
2. They are a base of calculated with a layer of fudge
3. They are all fudge

From what I've seen so far, I think 1.1 and 3 are unlikely, 1.2 possible and 2 probable.

I know that's probably not the kind of "point" you are looking for.  The problem is I don't think anybody can know for sure ahead of time all of the possible implications and applications of undertaking this kind of process.  Better metagame analysis?  Tools for better list building?   New concepts for improved theory crafting?  Complete and utter waste of time?  Any of these and more is possible.

It's a case where you have to get off your ass and do the actual work first and then see where it takes you.

[Fulkes]

12 hours ago, Kramer said:

Can you name some? Because I genuinely know of no game that as versatile in its factions as warhammer that is balanced to the degree that everything you buy is as viable as other buying options  

also in the same manner I would like to hear your thoughts on the following: do you feel the factions are designed to make every option as viable as others? 

I personally doubt it. In a recent twitch stream they discussed the design process and, besides some cross departments inspiration, the basic design process is cool concept first, design the model, making it play and feel as the model and fluff suggests and then balancing. Balance is not goal one, and for that reason it  (close to) impossible to balance in points after the fact. 

Most asymmetric games are computer based, but GW had an asymmetric game mode for playing against a Lord of War in 40k a few editions ago.

And all your point about their design process illustrates to me is that there should be a basic metric they assign points off of to start and then make small adjustments up or down based on how good the unit actually is.

[gjnoronh]

4 hours ago, amysrevenge said:

"Perfect" - nobody is going for.

Language shortcuts:  when someone says "fair" they probably mean "more fair" or even "the most fair that can be reasonably attained" and not "perfectly fair".  Same for "balance".

The argument "we can't attain perfect balance so F it there's no point trying" is ridiculous.  More fair and more balanced is the goal.  Perfect fairness and perfect balance is a straw man (yes it's being used correctly) - every time someone says "there's too many variables so we'll never be able to balance it" they are arguing against a straw man.  Nobody is claiming to be able to balance it, only to balance it a bit better.

Understood - but again how are you going to   balance it better when the biggest variables in table top effectiveness aren't in the data set we are considering?  What scenarios are being used (what's the win conditions), what's the terrain in these tables look like (highly important in the post night haunt era),  what's the skill level of the participants.   They are all pertinent to determining 'what's fair'    

Those change 'balance' as much as minor point value changes do.   We've seen this in various editions of warhammer where some units perceived as 'overpowered' at the newbie level are considered "under powered"   at moderate levels of experience, and 'reasonably balanced' at high levels of experience.  A good example of that is Frenzy in various editions.    If you asked someone to determine the right points value for a frenzied unit of chaos knights a newbie would say raise it, a mid level player would say drop it, and an experienced player might say it was just right.    That's probably just as true for some units in the even more complex set of interactions involved in AoS then it was in the relatively simpler WFB ecosystem.   

Look I get it points values are easy to look at and debate.  But to have a rational discussion you've got to understand the variables involved and I'm arguing AoS is actually amazingly complex in terms of win condition interactions/game play and actually minimally complex in terms of points (where there is almost no granularity.)      

Yes some things are easy to point at and adjust the points (at least mentally) because they really seem off

We can go by instinct and probably be reasonably accurate or we can try to apply math and reasoning to it.  My point is those complicated variables that we can't easily account for make the math no more accurate then instinct.   

LemonKnuckles seems to have a different goal then balance which is great and likely more achievable.  

For that note Lemon Knuckles I think it's mostly rough rule of thumb and comparisons rather then hard math.  2nd Ed WFB had a points value calculation system based on stat lines but having talked to folks in the design process in subsequent eras I get the sense it's more "that's about right"

[amysrevenge]

I'd wager the actual points system starts with "OK, Liberators are 100, point everything else relative to that."

[gjnoronh]

Yes something like that I'd agree.  There's actual a great blood bowl podcast about a year ago where they interviewed Jervis Johnson (who wrote the original Blood Bowl rules) and he talked by the way on the design process for AoS.  His perspective  is very much not the hard core math/data driven model and he was clearly involved in the early design.    There's a reason AoS 1 shipped with no points!

[Lemon Knuckles]

18 minutes ago, gjnoronh said:

Yes something like that I'd agree.  There's actual a great blood bowl podcast about a year ago where they interviewed Jervis Johnson (who wrote the original Blood Bowl rules) and he talked by the way on the design process for AoS.  His perspective  is very much not the hard core math/data driven model and he was clearly involved in the early design.    There's a reason AoS 1 shipped with no points!

Interesting.  Do you remember anything noteworthy about how he described the process?

[Lemon Knuckles]

38 minutes ago, gjnoronh said:

For that note Lemon Knuckles I think it's mostly rough rule of thumb and comparisons rather then hard math.  

Yeah, from playing around with the data, I think it's a mix... a bit of mechanics and a bit of fudge.

I think there's something mechanical to it because I can reverse engineer a whole bunch of units to very high accuracy.

But then I also think there's fudge because there's other units that are significant outliers, and to get them in line I have to tweak things in a way that breaks a bunch of other units.

It could be all fudge though, and they just have a pretty refined rule of thumb that is consistent in a bunch of cases, and thus can be replicated mechanically.

[gjnoronh]

It's probably Both Down or 3Die Block podcast around a year or so ago if you'd like a listen.   He was clearly of the mindset Open Play is what folks want to do and is more of how he envisioned AoS.   Didn't use those words because he was talking about the launch of AoS.  

You have to remember Warhammer was originally  created to give folks a chance to do something with the loads of D and D miniatures Citadel/GW was making.   Jervis was a mail order guy IIRC during that initial era and eventually promoted up into rules writing.  The rules balance weren't as important as it was to give folks a chance to do something fun and large scale with their toy soldiers. 

WFB has had for most of it's existence increasingly complex math based balance systems produced by GW and various add on  highly complex math systems like swiss comp /Warhammer Players Society comp all trying to 'get the math of balance just right.'    In the less complex WFB world it never really was all that accurate whether GW or player produced.  

If I had to guess Jervis looked at this history after 30 years of being involved in rules design and thought - ****** it no one is ever happy with the balance when we include points - let players decide what's right for their tabletop.   I think that "open play is the best way" model depends on people being grown ups in how they approach the game, and underestimates the various difficulties we all had when AoS launched in setting up tournaments, pick up games etc.    But I think it's where his heart is.    

[gjnoronh]

Also I I don't think this was the episode I was thinking of but Heelenhammer episode 165 also interviewed him about AoS

[Lemon Knuckles]

4 minutes ago, gjnoronh said:

If I had to guess Jervis looked at this history after 30 years of being involved in rules design and thought - ****** it no one is ever happy with the balance when we include points - let players decide what's right for their tabletop.   I think that open play is the best way model depends on people being grown ups in how they approach the game, and underestimates the various difficulties we all had when AoS launched in setting up tournaments, p9ick up games etc.  

I like that the game supports all three modes.  But doesn't it seem a bit off to say that, "hey AoS is really an open play style game, so even though we are going to also support matched play, we'll half-ass it on the pointing system."  I mean, if you are going to promote Matched Play as a viable game mode, than you support that mode with a Matched Play mentality.

Here's a different train of thought, on the general idea of using points to help foster more game balance:  I'm a hockey fan, and it occurred to me this morning as I was having my coffee and catching up on the latest news that this concept of a points system and game balance is a lot like the salary cap that the NHL introduced in 2005.  One of the ideas behind the cap was to promote more parity among the various teams.  Prior to, the big market teams could spend as much as they wanted on payroll, and smaller market teams often struggled to remain competitive.  Over the years, the implementation of the salary cap has led to a real evolution in the game, both in the way it is played and in the way people think about, analyze and manage it.  There's been an explosion of new metrics that attempt to better define and value a player's contributions to the game.  Because there was now a limit to dollars available, getting the absolute best return out of each dollar spent became critical.  Teams were forced to become more efficient with their salaries.  There are new positions that have been created in front-offices around the league for analysts and "stats-guys."  There was a cutting edge group of teams that first embraced what the new analytics was telling them and started placing a premium on speed and skill and de-emphasized the value of size, toughness, character and grit.  This was very much against established, conventional hockey wisdom that had been around for 100 years.  This was reflected in their drafting, in their trades, in how they built out their roster, in how they allocated ice-time, in how they utilized their players on the power-play or on the penalty-kill, the break-outs and coverage they used in-game.  And they started winning.  A lot.

Not sure if there's a point to that story, really, but thought I'd share it anyway.

  

[gjnoronh]

Sure like the Moneyball story (book, movie based on analytics coming to Baseball) 

 

Mind you I should have noted Jervis isn't the only person involved in AoS and I'd suspect is almost certainly not the major driver on rules writing.  He was sharing his perspective which isn't the only one on the design team.     It's not my perspective necessarily either as I think matched play is the defacto default given where the wargaming world is now vs 30 years ago.    But he was talking in that interview about the launch of AoS not even where AoS was post GHB 1 much less AoS2.0.  At launch it was Open Play only in design.  

I think we can all agree GW misjudged the backlash they would get when they took away points for AoS.    Min maxing granularity of list design is a hallmark of modern wargaming (as opposed to say old school historicals which are it's roots where it's usually 'here's the forces at this battle you use these and only these')  

[Lemon Knuckles]

45 minutes ago, gjnoronh said:

Sure like the Moneyball story (book, movie based on analytics coming to Baseball) 

Yeah, like that in many ways.  But also different in some important regards.  Baseball has always been a stats sport.  There are stats about stats about stats.  Hockey was very primitive in this regard.  Also, baseball can be broken down into a lot of discrete one on one type interactions that take place in very prescribed ways.  Pitcher versus hitter, etc.  Hockey is much more dynamic, much more fluid, and much more about synergies of lines of players interacting with each other in all kinds of haphazard different ways.  That line of reasoning was used for a long time to ridicule the analytics guys.  The gradual emergence and ultimate acceptance of analytics was very controversial (still is, but the resistors are a dying breed).  Is it the end all, be all?  Nope.  But it has absolutely changed the way the game is played.

[Sleboda]

6 hours ago, Lemon Knuckles said:

But doesn't it seem a bit off to say that, "hey AoS is really an open play style game, so even though we are going to also support matched play, we'll half-ass it on the pointing system."

Speaking of things nobody actually said in this thread ...