Speculation: Will AOS ever be balanced or is this as good as it gets?

[Panzer]

2 hours ago, Malakithe said:

Id say just look at the state of 40k. 8th edition was supposed to be the best and 'simplest' form of 40k ever and now look at it. The battletome power creep is nothing compared to the power creep of 40k codexes. A game of this size will never be truely balanced as there is way too many factors to look at and consider. 

That's what many people get wrong. 40k was only supposed to be the best and 'simplest' form of 40k ever in regard to the core rules and constant updates. The core rules ARE super simple and the constant updates definitely make sure it's the best 40k ever since glaring issues can be addressed within a few months instead of having to wait years for a new edition.

That's as far as it goes.

The Codexes themselves were always a completely different topic, though I argue they still qualify for 'the best form of 40k' as no other edition of 40k had the benefit of constant updates nor got that much customisation in terms of subfactions (which only seems to become better now too).

Edited October 17, 2019 by Panzer

[Malakithe]

1 minute ago, Panzer said:

That's what many people get wrong. 40k was only supposed to be the best and 'simplest' form of 40k ever in regard to the core rules and constant updates. The core rules ARE super simple and the constant updates definitely make sure it's the best 40k ever since glaring issues can be addressed within a few months instead of having to wait years for a new edition.

That's as far as it goes.

The Codexes themselves were always be a completely different topic, though I argue they are still qualify for 'the best form of 40k' as no other edition of 40k had the benefit of constant updates nor got that much customisation in terms of subfactions (which only seems to become better now too).

The issue is balance though. Its the battletomes/codexes are the reason for the constant imbalance. Its a double-edged sword. People want constant updates and new stuff but when a new book comes out it almost full tilts the game in one direction or the other. The core rules for AoS are just fine (double turn debate no withstanding). Its the new battletomes that full tilt the entire system. Slaanesh is the prime current example. 

True balance can only happen when you pull 2 factions out of a hat at random and they both stand an equal chance to beat each other. Currently thats not possible nor has it ever been possible for both AoS and 40k.

[Panzer]

41 minutes ago, Malakithe said:

The issue is balance though. Its the battletomes/codexes are the reason for the constant imbalance. Its a double-edged sword. People want constant updates and new stuff but when a new book comes out it almost full tilts the game in one direction or the other. The core rules for AoS are just fine (double turn debate no withstanding). Its the new battletomes that full tilt the entire system. Slaanesh is the prime current example. 

True balance can only happen when you pull 2 factions out of a hat at random and they both stand an equal chance to beat each other. Currently thats not possible nor has it ever been possible for both AoS and 40k.

The balance is not worse than in most other editions though. The gap between the strongest (not counting Iron Hands because they are new and still need to get adjusted) and the weakest faction is much smaller than last edition for example. And with the constant updates they have the tool to keep improving on it.

Also it happens extremely rarely that a new book full tilts the game. The top armies stayed at the top and the bottom armies stayed at the bottom for the most part regardless of the new hotness. There's the occasional release that tilts everything but those are the exception instead of being the norm. It's a constant up and down with GW and balance but it's much better than being stuck with a broken release for years , relying on the community to figure something out, like it used to be.

[kuroyume]

6 hours ago, Nezzhil said:

I think the two principal problems are summoning and the cheap/free attack&not response mechanics...

Those are certainly the two biggest problems. Some of the factions that have summoning (such as Tzeentch and Khorne) managed to get it mostly right.  Pink Horrors, for example, are extremely expensive because you are paying for the blues and brimstones you will summon. Meanwhile, FEC summoners, for example, are extremely cheap and clearly don't have the cost of summoning added. The good news is that it should be a pretty easy fix through a points update (no more of that "let's add 10 points and see how it goes stuff... I'm talking about major, significant point changes)

As for activation shenanigans, the fixes are harder. For some armies, like Slaanesh, they are deeply integrated into their identity. For others, like FEC you can just make it so instead of fighting twice in succession the second activation has to happen at the end of the combat phase. 

[Kugane]

At this point, I think when it comes to Games Workshop gaming systems, perhaps the community should take it into their own hands similar to the 9th age.

We have seen similar stuff happen in other games where people create new formats where certain stuff is allowed and other stuff is not in order to create a diverse new metagame. Some of these formats end up becoming so popular that they were eventually adopted as official formats.

If the community can put together a living rule system where points are adjusted, tested and additional rules or fixes to current rules are introduced, we might have something on our hands that all people can enjoy.

Like for the summoning problem, an possible fix could be something along the lines of "Call in the reinforcements." In which an army is allowed to deploy miniatures equal or less to the points exceeded by the opponent over a certain limit. Alternatively, something along the lines of. "A change of strategy" in which an army gets extra command points for each 50 points summoned by an opponent.

 

[nels1031]

On 10/14/2019 at 7:28 AM, Dead Scribe said:

Over the weekend I played in a 32 player tournament ($100 buy in, $2500 first prize) and it was a lot of fun.  

Where was this and do you have any breakdowns of the lists? 

[Dead Scribe]

40 minutes ago, Kugane said:

At this point, I think when it comes to Games Workshop gaming systems, perhaps the community should take it into their own hands similar to the 9th age.

We have seen similar stuff happen in other games where people create new formats where certain stuff is allowed and other stuff is not in order to create a diverse new metagame. Some of these formats end up becoming so popular that they were eventually adopted as official formats.

If the community can put together a living rule system where points are adjusted, tested and additional rules or fixes to current rules are introduced, we might have something on our hands that all people can enjoy.

Like for the summoning problem, an possible fix could be something along the lines of "Call in the reinforcements." In which an army is allowed to deploy miniatures equal or less to the points exceeded by the opponent over a certain limit. Alternatively, something along the lines of. "A change of strategy" in which an army gets extra command points for each 50 points summoned by an opponent.

 

9th Age happened because the game it supports went away.  I don't know how viable a "9th age" for AOS would be because AOS is a living game backed by a company.  Certainly an ITC could happen (and I know ITC is a thing for AOS its just not really caught on like it has for 40k) that could address some of the issues people seem to have.  But casuals don't really pay attention to tournament packets either so I don't know how useful that would be?

[Televiper11]

I'll try not to repeat what others have said but I do think AoS needs to be find balance in thematic ways appropriate to each particular armies lore and abilities. I think GW tries to have it both ways by making armies like Gloomspite or Nighthaunt thematic but then underpowering them as a result instead of giving them abilities that play to those strengths while also serving as a counter to other armies abilities.

The Cities tome gives me hope given the diversity offered and a return to shooting, which is essential for defeating armies like FEC & Slaanesh.

Edited October 17, 2019 by Televiper11

[zilberfrid]

1 hour ago, kuroyume said:

Those are certainly the two biggest problems. Some of the factions that have summoning (such as Tzeentch and Khorne) managed to get it mostly right.  Pink Horrors, for example, are extremely expensive because you are paying for the blues and brimstones you will summon. Meanwhile, FEC summoners, for example, are extremely cheap and clearly don't have the cost of summoning added. The good news is that it should be a pretty easy fix through a points update (no more of that "let's add 10 points and see how it goes stuff... I'm talking about major, significant point changes)

As for activation shenanigans, the fixes are harder. For some armies, like Slaanesh, they are deeply integrated into their identity. For others, like FEC you can just make it so instead of fighting twice in succession the second activation has to happen at the end of the combat phase. 

I would also add easy, cheap or costless access to battleshock immunity. All bravery mechanics are out the door at this point. Bravery mechanics may be bad, but some armies rely on them or have options for them, and they are lessened because of this.

[tripchimeras]

33 minutes ago, zilberfrid said:

I would also add easy, cheap or costless access to battleshock immunity. All bravery mechanics are out the door at this point. Bravery mechanics may be bad, but some armies rely on them or have options for them, and they are lessened because of this.

I agree battleshock immunity is a problem.  A single command point should not invalidate an entire phase of the game, it should be re-roll plain and simple, and no army should have countless special rules eliminating the phase either.  It should be a rarity in the game, units like Phoenix Guard being one of the few instances where it makes sense.  Particularly in armies where leadership issues are clearly intended to be primary weaknesses (most greenskins, skaven etc) yet in each case there are widespread army rules that nearly completely invalidates the leadership problem, this becomes emersion breaking.  Either eliminate battleshock entirely, or eliminate the prevalence of rules that break it.   That being said with the exception of Skaven, nothing in the top tier is particularly affected by this, so as much as it is a major GW rules blunder, I don't think it is particularly meaningful to the game's biggest balance issues.

As far as the wide prevalence of ASF/ASL abilities, and the ability to double strike/get extra pile ins and attacks out of phase.  I think these things are anti fun and against many armies that don't have them potentially game breaking.  I think part of the fix to both of these things is to change the combat phase ordering.  I think when GW first ran into this problem IE the wording of ASF for deepkin vs the wording of ASF for FEC they implemented a solution that they thought would keep things simple, but also allow them to pretend the wording of ASF for FEC was not a mistake.  Since then their wording for these abilities has always been in the FEC wording, which makes what I propose as the solution more difficult, but no less necessary.  The phase sequence needs to be Start of phase combat abilities (mostly passive ones) always occur before attacks (things like mortal wounds/impact hits should all be occurring within the charge phase, so voltaic blasts and the like should be moved to then), THEN ASF attacks, THEN normal attacks, THEN ASL attacks, and anything that allows an additional pile in/attack phase should always occur at the tale end of combat.  With the crazy power level of AOS combat in the game I really don't think out of phase pile ins (DoK) should be a thing at all.  I think this fixes a lot of the problems with these rules, and I think Cities is promising in this regard, because it has multiple rules that dole out additional attack phases etc but all of them place those at the end of combat or after the death of a model.  I think this is the way forward here.

Overall though I honestly think the game isn't doing that bad.  Per my earlier post, I think the biggest issue is just list diversity.  The last tourney I went to was a blast, and I saw some great players using some generally underpowered armies to good effect.  You are always going to see meta chasing, and even moderate advantages are going to lead to a disproportionate number of a couple of armies, but I think there are a good number of books right now that in the hands of an expert player seem entirely capable of winning a tournament.  I would like to see Slaanesh taken down a notch, and I think as far as summoning goes they are the extreme example where they just made it too damn easy to gain summoning points.  I think it made a lot of sense thematically and in terms of fun gameplay as a self flagellation fettish style thing where you get summoning points for basically killing yourself.  I think where it falters is getting basically double, for killing your own tough models AND your opponents.  It needed to be 1 or the other.  Some of the others are a tick too powerful, but in general I think if they follow the Tzeench/Khorn model as mentioned by @kuroyume summoning isn't nearly as big of a problem as it feels at the moment.

[Kugane]

3 hours ago, Dead Scribe said:

9th Age happened because the game it supports went away.  I don't know how viable a "9th age" for AOS would be because AOS is a living game backed by a company.  Certainly an ITC could happen (and I know ITC is a thing for AOS its just not really caught on like it has for 40k) that could address some of the issues people seem to have.  But casuals don't really pay attention to tournament packets either so I don't know how useful that would be?

Funny enough, 9th age has more support in some cities near my area than AOS because of the unbalance.

The not paying attention to tournament packs is an issue almost everywhere I went a few years ago as well. Regardless, I think the problems mostly affect the people that actually trying to be competitive without buying into a completely new army though. So it may help that group in particular.

I have some "whales" in my area that are against additional rules/fixing though. Mostly people that dont mind dropping 1000+ euro each new release if its the best army and commision painting their stuff for another 2k. They seem to want to maintain their overpowered position XD. 

[tripchimeras]

23 minutes ago, Kugane said:

Funny enough, 9th age has more support in some cities near my area than AOS because of the unbalance.

The not paying attention to tournament packs is an issue almost everywhere I went a few years ago as well. Regardless, I think the problems mostly affect the people that actually trying to be competitive without buying into a completely new army though. So it may help that group in particular.

I have some "whales" in my area that are against additional rules/fixing though. Mostly people that dont mind dropping 1000+ euro each new release if its the best army and commision painting their stuff for another 2k. They seem to want to maintain their overpowered position XD. 

I am a proponent of Comp, and it certainly was the only reason 8th edition had such a thriving tournament community.  Between Swedish, ETC, and multiple other rule variants in between we were spoiled with a large variety of tournaments that all felt unique, while also maintaining a degree of competitiveness that just didn't exist in the base game.  That being said, the majority of people who feel this way have moved on to 9th, and as new players come in and for those that are left I think the historical 40k attitude towards comp (no) is going to continue being the prevalent attitude in AoS.  So feel like its not really worth much discussion at this point.

Luckily AoS is in a much better place then 8th ever was in terms of balance.  It could use quite a bit of improvement, much of which is quite fixable via some form of comp, but I think quite a few mid tier armies are viable at the top of the scene (ie if played by extremely skilled players who know the ins and outs of their armies).  I think when it comes to tournament play, most don't choose to go this route, but those people you are talking about who want to be competitive with one singular list, can absolutely achieve that (unless we are talking about a true bottom tier army) if they are willing to put in enough practice and continually bang their heads against that wall of the top tier.  The game just has so many movement nuances and is so dependent on precision and the single minded pursuit of objectives and what exactly you need to do to maximize them, that I think the combat imballances are a bit less important then they seem for many of us.  However, getting to that level of skill, where it stops mattering quite as much seems to be a place that is hard to reach.  I certainly am no where near it.  But I have seen people who have gotten their (think people like the Seraphon player who won Adepticon).

[frostfire]

We see that the ironhand in 40k is quickly nerfed within a month. It’s suggested in the faq that GW rule team do receive player’s feedback and fix the problem in time.
But for AoS we could see slannesh keeping ruining the whole melee game for about half a year without being nerfed and are even going to get some much stronger rules in the WD.

A bit sad TBH.

Edited October 18, 2019 by frostfire

[Sleboda]

13 hours ago, Kugane said:

At this point, I think when it comes to Games Workshop gaming systems, perhaps the community should take it into their own hands similar to the 9th age.

I'd be out immediately. The splintering of the player base would destroy the game for me.

Edited October 18, 2019 by Sleboda

[Sleboda]

11 hours ago, tripchimeras said:

A single command point should not invalidate an entire phase of the game

Not saying it can't be made better, but this sort of hyperbole is a bit much.

Factually, the spent command point does nothing of the sort.

[Panzer]

1 hour ago, frostfire said:

We see that the ironhand in 40k is quickly nerfed within a month. It’s suggested in the faq that GW rule team do receive player’s feedback and fix the problem in time.
But for AoS we could see slannesh keeping ruining the whole melee game for about half a year without being nerfed and are even going to get some much stronger rules in the WD.

A bit sad TBH.

To be completely fair, IH have made a bit more of a splash than any Slaanesh list people have come up with so far, plus there are a LOT more Space Marine players in 40k than there are Slaanesh players in AoS so while you keep seeing Slaanesh regularly in the top spots they aren't completely dominating the top10.

[Eevika]

On 10/15/2019 at 3:30 PM, IneptusAstartes said:

A truly balanced game would be like chess - both players using the exact same armies with the exact same terrain and starting points. Considering all the armies and playstyles, true balance would be next to impossible. And as previous posters said, new armies are released taking the older ones into account, so in general armies with newer rules are overpowered in comparison.

I always find this funny in the age of video games like league where you have 130+ champions, 200+ items... and so many variables but every single champion is between 55-45% winrate. Its not hard to reach balance it just takes a lot of updating of the rules when problems arrise. Something GW does not do.

[Moldek]

10 minutes ago, Eevika said:

I always find this funny in the age of video games like league where you have 130+ champions, 200+ items... and so many variables but every single champion is between 55-45% winrate. Its not hard to reach balance it just takes a lot of updating of the rules when problems arrise. Something GW does not do.

If people had to photoshop the skin of each hero themselves after buying them at a high price, remember all of their stats, and read each patch note; then had to physically go to a lan party to play a game, that would be a fair comparison.

I don’t get how people expect GW to apply a digital model to a physical product. It’s a completely different way to play, a completely different investment. If they changed the rules weekly most people would give up in my opinion.

Edited October 18, 2019 by Moldek

[Eevika]

2 minutes ago, Moldek said:

If people had to photoshop the skin of each hero themselves after buying them at a high price, remember all of their stats, and read each patch note; then had to physically go to a lan party to play a game, that would be a fair comparison.

I don’t get how people expect GW to apply a digital model to a physical product. It’s a completely different way to play, a completely different investment. If they changed the rules weekly most people would give up in my opinion.

Just make everyone use the app for warscrolls. Update the app. Thats it. Announce larger changes just like FAQs right now. 

[Moldek]

19 minutes ago, Eevika said:

Just make everyone use the app for warscrolls. Update the app. Thats it. Announce larger changes just like FAQs right now. 

What I mean is that people are not going to buy a 60$ unit and spend 10 hours painting it if it can get nerfed at any point. The time and monetary investment is very significant, and GW have to take that into account in their policies.  People need to know that their rules are going to be halfway stable for a while or they won’t get invested in the game.

To be clear I’m not against adjusting rules but I think the hobby is too different from videogames for it to be a straight comparison. Plus video games get a ton of perfectly accurate data and metrics.

[Eevika]

1 minute ago, Moldek said:

What I mean is that people are not going to buy a 60$ unit and spend 10 hours painting it if it can get nerfed at any point. The time and monetary investment is very significant, and GW have to take that into account in their policies.  People need to know that their rules are going to be halfway stable for a while or they won’t get invested in the game.

To be clear I’m not against adjusting rules but I think the hobby is too different from videogames for it to be a straight comparison. Plus video games get a ton of perfectly accurate data and metrics.

I have invested about 1k in lol skins knowing everything might chance at any second. 

[hughwyeth]

1 hour ago, Eevika said:

Just make everyone use the app for warscrolls. Update the app. Thats it. Announce larger changes just like FAQs right now. 

Yeah this is the most retrograde thing GW currently do. It's crazy we still need to buy print books for all this stuff. I love the printed books and buy a lot of battletomes for armies I don't collect, but they have to get a proper app that has all rules required, always up-to-date, and give free access to faction rules when you buy the physical book. They're years behind here and I don't know why. If a single dude can make AoS Reminders (check it out here if you don't know what it is!), why can't GW make an app that does exactly the same thing??

It would be great to bring a tablet to a game as the only thing you need. I know you can currently do this, but it's literally a PDF of the printed book, which is not at all an efficient way to find rules. 

Edited October 18, 2019 by hughwyeth

[Panzer]

The only reason why GW can't and won't do as many updates as a videogame dev is because unlike with videogames GW has no way to collect even close to the same amount of data. All they can get are lists and results from tournaments and the occasional playtests, both which don't happen multiple times a day every day.

[Overread]

Another aspect is that with digital data you can at least review it somewhat and break gamers down into skill blocks. All those gamers losing to the easy AI in your data pool - you can take into account that either there's a problem or they are just really bad players and the data isn't worth it. 

For GW its much harder because online and email reports have no real database of info. Heck most battle reports don't fill in the full details. So GW likely gets a lot of "X is OP broken" from random people with no context. It takes a lot longer to pool data to actually see if there's an issue because you've got to have a LOT of data supporting itself before you can start to identify it as a pattern rather than just bad players.

Plus you've got the issue of house rules and getting the rules wrong (things that can't happen in a digital game and if they do then its consistent because something in the code is wrong). 

 

And then we add the time aspect on top. A single 2K game might be as many as 4 or 5 hours long and that in digital terms could be 8 or more matches in some games; sometimes even more. So suddenly you've got a system that generates less data and has far less reliable data reporting. Ontop of that the data likely takes longer to input and collate. 

 

 

 

That said there are still some glaring aspects that its surprising slip through the net. 

[chord]

1 hour ago, Moldek said:

I don’t get how people expect GW to apply a digital model to a physical product. It’s a completely different way to play, a completely different investment. If they changed the rules weekly most people would give up in my opinion.

If they define a data model for their rules/stats/abilities/etc they could when they make adjusts run it through some tests to see how balanced it becomes. It would require them embracing data science and technology fully for the way they handle the points systems 

 

16 minutes ago, Panzer said:

The only reason why GW can't and won't do as many updates as a videogame dev is because unlike with videogames GW has no way to collect even close to the same amount of data. All they can get are lists and results from tournaments and the occasional playtests, both which don't happen multiple times a day every day.

They could look into Swarm AI algorithms to help leverage the player base to help the model come up with "right" decisions.