The Rumour Thread

[Chikout]

8 minutes ago, Ganigumo said:

The internal balance chart, that used the number of scrolls that appeared seemed misleading to me.
Kruleboyz were placed at a very healthy spot with 14/16 scrolls (I'm assuming the killaboss and killaboss on gnashtoof were the two not used).
Anyone who's played with/against kruleboyz knows gutrippaz are pretty much only played as a tax, or that the sloggoth is played mostly in gitz and not kruleboyz. The army construction challenges & external balance issues are hiding the internal balance problems.
With the recent changes I wonder if Gobsprakk isn't in trouble as well, his old claim to fame was actually getting to cast spells, but now that swampcallas can I think his use might drop pretty heavily.

Ogors looked like an outlier to me too, as we've known for ages that the gutbuster side, has struggled.

He talks about that in the interview. They have a priority order which is external balance first, internal balance second, universal item balance third. So they are willing to make internal balance worse if they have to, in order to make external balance better but not the other way round. 

[RocketPropelledGrenade]

16 minutes ago, Ganigumo said:

The internal balance chart, that used the number of scrolls that appeared seemed misleading to me.
Kruleboyz were placed at a very healthy spot with 14/16 scrolls (I'm assuming the killaboss and killaboss on gnashtoof were the two not used).
Anyone who's played with/against kruleboyz knows gutrippaz are pretty much only played as a tax, or that the sloggoth is played mostly in gitz and not kruleboyz. The army construction challenges & external balance issues are hiding the internal balance problems.
With the recent changes I wonder if Gobsprakk isn't in trouble as well, his old claim to fame was actually getting to cast spells, but now that swampcallas can I think his use might drop pretty heavily.

Ogors looked like an outlier to me too, as we've known for ages that the gutbuster side, has struggled.

The  Gutrippaz problem is exactly why the talked about qualitative data, though. They know there's more to it than just the raw data.

[Kitsumy]

this is the reason why every points update without reductions in points to idk infuriates me.

every unit outside melle and shotting thralls,sharks and akhelian king is overpricced, i cant even do a propper friendly list( not tourney lvl), since things like a normal 1 cast mage without bonuses cost 150p!!!! with a joke magic lore, when other mages like seraphon or slaves one has same cast and free abilitys for less points. and propper magic lores too.

or eels... they totally destroyed tank version and spear ones with 1"?.... why cant have propper scrolls like slaves knights? with so much better weapons even not charging sooo much tankier and figthing in 2 rows without stupid aos 1 or 2" melee ranges.

or seraphon one, everyone cry about them being broken. when in true they have reallyyy bad scrolls outside maybe 4-5 heros. take a list wihtout slan/kroak, priest,mage,engine,salamander and basti. and will see how they struggle to keep up against any list.

[Ganigumo]

1 hour ago, Chikout said:

He talks about that in the interview. They have a priority order which is external balance first, internal balance second, universal item balance third. So they are willing to make internal balance worse if they have to, in order to make external balance better but not the other way round. 

I'll need to watch the interview at some point.
This is only a good strategy for overperforming armies though. Not working to improve the internal balance of an underperforming book, while trying to improve the external balance, can lead to skew lists being the only thing thats really playable while leaving swaths of the book unplayable.
Gitz is probably the best example of what this looks like.

[Flippy]

The other thing is that the differences between the numbers of scrolls available to factions are wild. If we exclude Orruks, KO are  now obvious candidates for a second wave, followed by FEC and OBR.

[Sahrial]

That chart makes me laugh. Stormcast in dead

last but still have the 3rd highest number of “usable” warscrolls

[Boar]

2 hours ago, Ganigumo said:

This is only a good strategy for overperforming armies though. Not working to improve the internal balance of an underperforming book, while trying to improve the external balance, can lead to skew lists being the only thing thats really playable while leaving swaths of the book unplayable.

What is better one viable list or zero? Options in book could be balanced vs each other but produce horrible performance due to all being bad externally. First external than internal sound like sound strategy generally (ofc  various caveats apply).

[Ganigumo]

51 minutes ago, Sahrial said:

That chart makes me laugh. Stormcast in dead

last but still have the 3rd highest number of “usable” warscrolls

their goal of 60% of warscrolls showing up in 5% of lists might actually be nearly impossible for stormcast. 60% of 79 warscrolls is like 48. Stormcast armies tend to be elite, and run like 7-8 units? so each of the 48 units needs to show up in 1 of 20 lists, or 1 in 1~150 units.
It sounds like it might be theoretically doable, but its probably not in practice, unless you start making warscrolls identical.
I think the only solution to hit their target is to either cut warscrolls or split stormcast into separate armies.

1 minute ago, Boar said:

What is better one viable list or zero? Options in book could be balanced vs each other but produce horrible performance due to all being bad externally. First external than internal sound like sound strategy generally (ofc  various caveats apply).

honestly zero viable options might be better, since then you get to make decisions in listbuilding (for me at least Gitz is way more interesting to listbuild with than kruleboyz partly for that reason I think), but for weaker armies there really isn't an argument not to do both. The main concern is overcorrecting, but making gitz viable won't suddenly make dankhold troggoths or spiderfang good unless you've targeted the buffs at those units to solve the internal balance issue. Plus if its a proper subfaction within the army there's good odds people will continue to play it, which can drag down the overall statistics.

[KingBrodd]

8 hours ago, Draznak said:

More gryphs please !!

Although I think these beasts will remain associated with SE. For COS, I imagine that GW will remain classic to stand out from the faction of other more high fantasy races : horses, griffins... or else a surprise out of the hat.

Id love to see 'Standard' monsters for COS. Imagine a new Gryphon model!?

3 hours ago, Flippy said:

The other thing is that the differences between the numbers of scrolls available to factions are wild. If we exclude Orruks, KO are  now obvious candidates for a second wave, followed by FEC and OBR.

And it just so happens that those Factions have yet to release!! Id love for Kharadron to get another ship or two and another troop choice, for Ossiarchs give them a new monster, the Archers and maybe a new Cavlary option.

Full on Wave 2 for FEC please!!

[Charly2912]

Fyreslayer could also need Some new Units. Heroes are fine though

[MitGas]

2 hours ago, Charly2912 said:

Fyreslayer could also need Some new Units. Heroes are fine though

Edited November 11, 2022 by MitGas

[Malakithe]

12 hours ago, mojojojo101 said:

they don't get too focused on balancing the game around tournament play

The problem is tournaments are the only real source of numbers that they can track. Reliable, sanctioned, monitored games are the only actual source of stats. GW doesnt and cant see when people are disappointed with X faction when your just hanging out at a local GW store. And then theres the people that dont play at GW stores. Their concerns are never heard.  Forums like this, B&C, FB groups are nice and all but dont contribute to trackable stats to balance stuff around.

[JackStreicher]

9 hours ago, KingBrodd said:

Id love to see 'Standard' monsters for COS. Imagine a new Gryphon model!?

And it just so happens that those Factions have yet to release!! Id love for Kharadron to get another ship or two and another troop choice, for Ossiarchs give them a new monster, the Archers and maybe a new Cavlary option.

Full on Wave 2 for FEC please!!

KO could use Gyrocopters: Small ships steered by a single dwarf.

[Flippy]

7 hours ago, Charly2912 said:

Fyreslayer could also need Some new Units. Heroes are fine though

They definitely should and I would gladly put them on the waiting list if not for the fact that they, along the IDK, were already ignored by GW 😔

[willange]

5 hours ago, MitGas said:

I get that it’s a joke (and a good one at that!), but Lumineth WERE one of those smaller armies until they had their second wave. The only anomaly for them was that their second wave came very quickly. It’s weird that we keep picking on them when really we’d just love to have a 2nd wave of fyreslaers/ko/ironjawz/idoneth/bonesplitterz, etc

 

 EDIT: What is that about Financial Education Compensation?

Edited November 11, 2022 by willange

[Maogrim]

1 hour ago, willange said:

I get that it’s a joke (and a good one at that!), but Lumineth WERE one of those smaller armies until they had their second wave. The only anomaly for them was that their second wave came very quickly. It’s weird that we keep picking on them when really we’d just love to have a 2nd wave of fyreslaers/ko/ironjawz/idoneth/bonesplitterz, etc

 

 EDIT: What is that about Financial Education Compensation?

I wish I could spam this comment with all the Thanks Emojis the glorious armies Hysh could muster. 

[Beliman]

1 hour ago, Maogrim said:

I wish I could spam this comment with all the Thanks Emojis the glorious armies Hysh could muster. 

That's exactly why it's fun: A lot of armies waiting since the begining of AoS to recieve a proper  2d wave, but the first one was Lumineth. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think Lumineth was the last "micro-army" released too (ignore Mega-Gargants, that's not an army XD).

[EntMan]

8 minutes ago, Beliman said:

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think Lumineth was the last "micro-army" released too (ignore Mega-Gargants, that's not an army XD).

And definitely not Micro either!

Edited November 11, 2022 by EntMan

[KingBrodd]

12 minutes ago, Beliman said:

That's exactly why it's fun: A lot of armies waiting since the begining of AoS to recieve a proper  2d wave, but the first one was Lumineth. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think Lumineth was the last "micro-army" released too (ignore Mega-Gargants, that's not an army XD).

We are a collection of minis with upgrade sprues thank you!!

[Enoby]

7 hours ago, Malakithe said:

The problem is tournaments are the only real source of numbers that they can track. Reliable, sanctioned, monitored games are the only actual source of stats. GW doesnt and cant see when people are disappointed with X faction when your just hanging out at a local GW store. And then theres the people that dont play at GW stores. Their concerns are never heard.  Forums like this, B&C, FB groups are nice and all but dont contribute to trackable stats to balance stuff around.

While true, I do think they could use qualitative data gathering in the form of quaterly surveys, asking people's opinions.

There are, of course, two downsides to this:

- People answering these surveys are very biased 

- It take a very long time to parse this information, and turn it into anything useful

While there's no answer to the latter, the former can be aided in a few ways. The first is having an honesty statement at the top - just something simple like "Please be honest when answering this questions - just because you play a faction, doesn't mean you should be trying to make it more powerful". It won't stop everyone, but will likely help against good faith participants subconsciously asking for buffs. The second is looking for patterns over specifics - this can be aided with a use of multiple choice questions to go alongside an answer box. So, for example, if one person selects "Squigs are OP" for the most powerful armies tab, they'll likely be on their own so this won't be investigated further, but if a large chunk of people who both have and haven't selected they play Blades of Khorne say they're the worst army for fulfilling narrative, then they can look deeper into the reasons. There are quite a few qualitative statistical tests that could help guide the answer and try to remove as much bias as possible. Finally, qualitative opinions can be assessed with common sense, to a degree. If loads of answers are "I hate Stormcast, they suck", then these can probably be discounted as either people with way too much bias, or people who don't know/don't express they know the game that well.

There may also be an option of different languages other than English getting involved, but I'm not sure what GW's capability is with that. 

Overall fan opinion is likely to be all over the place, but looking at something simple like:

"Check if large percentage of players of X army dislike X army"

Could help a lot to get a more casual look at AoS.

[Lucentia]

They did do general surveys a couple of times a few years back but, as you say, I suspect the data gathered from them was too time-consuming or limited to parse into anything very useful so we haven't seen any in a while, I think they might still sometimes send them out to folks subscribed to their email, or whatever?  With a survey there's also the additional barrier of distribution, how many casual players are going to take the time to bother to fill out a survey on the community site? Or will they even see it in the first place? etc.

[Gitzdee]

They could put a survey link in the app and on the webstore. I think many people will see those and share their thoughts. I would.

[MitGas]

4 hours ago, willange said:

I get that it’s a joke (and a good one at that!), but Lumineth WERE one of those smaller armies until they had their second wave. The only anomaly for them was that their second wave came very quickly. It’s weird that we keep picking on them when really we’d just love to have a 2nd wave of fyreslaers/ko/ironjawz/idoneth/bonesplitterz, etc

 

 EDIT: What is that about Financial Education Compensation?

No, no, it's that I just hate hate HATE Lumineth aelves and will always stoop so low if it means I can make fun of them! 😙

Anyways, Lumineth were smallish but not exactly small (like Fyreslayers) before their 2nd wave. And it's obvious they received a huge amount of the spotlight cause Phil Kelly likes them. Since he's on record as hating Chaos, so can I hate his army.

Pettiness aside, I think we can stomach preferential treatment with Stormcast or Space Marines but there was a time where Lumineth felt like that too as they got units in the other games and everything was kinda about them. The last straw was that Teclis calls himself God of Magic too and he's got 4 spells. As a disciple of Tzeentch, I'm miffed about that. Kairos is way cooler than Teclis. A common grot is cooler than that spoony aelf! 😤

Edited November 11, 2022 by MitGas

[Maogrim]

5 minutes ago, MitGas said:

No, no, it's that I just hate hate HATE Lumineth aelves and will always stoop so low if it means I can make fun of them! 😙

Anyways, Lumineth were smallish but not exactly small (like Fyreslayers) before their 2nd wave. And it's obvious they received a huge amount of the spotlight cause Phil Kelly likes them. Since he's on record as hating Chaos, so can I hate his army.

Pettiness aside, I think we can stomach preferential treatment with Stormcast or Space Marines but there was a time where Lumineth felt like that too as they got units in the other games and everything was kinda about them. The last straw was that Teclis calls himself God of Magic too and he's got 4 spells. As a disciple of Tzeentch, I'm miffed about that. Karis is way cooler than Teclis. A common grot is cooler than that spoony aelf! 😤

I think they just wanted to build up a second Order alliance that was associated with light, justice etc next to the Stormcast Eternals to drive a part of the narrative. And High Elves were always a fan favourite in ye olden days so there was clearly money to be made. And I for one am thankful for it gave us amazing and imaginative miniatures like the Light of Eltharion, the Spirit of the Mountain and the Archmage himself.

And you do realize that, in your third paragraph, you state some rather petty grievances, right after opening with 'Pettiness aside'?

[MitGas]

9 minutes ago, Maogrim said:

I think they just wanted to build up a second Order alliance that was associated with light, justice etc next to the Stormcast Eternals to drive a part of the narrative. And High Elves were always a fan favourite in ye olden days so there was clearly money to be made. And I for one am thankful for it gave us amazing and imaginative miniatures like the Light of Eltharion, the Spirit of the Mountain and the Archmage himself.

And you do realize that, in your third paragraph, you state some rather petty grievances, right after opening with 'Pettiness aside'?

Of course I do but I've already (shamelessly too, absolutely shamelessly!) admitted that I'll use every single chance to attack your Aelves! At this point you should know that I can't help myself. I'll be complaining about Lumineth Aelves on my deathbed!

I think it really boils down to Lumineth coinciding with the beginning of a perceived slower release schedule. We've had a ton of coverage of Mega-Gargants too, simply because the release pattern changed, where before many releases dropped and very soon the next force came. Pretty sure that, coupled with the second wave coming so quickly, felt unfair to many. Also, you know how it is: the fairest get bashed, it's an unwritten law. 

Eltharion is indeed a truly great mini (definitely one of GW's best), even I will give you that.