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

[Moldek]

I agree that going digital would be the best, at least for the most involved people in the hobby. 

I don’t think it’s feasible to integrate machine learning and swarm algorithm into playtesting. It’s a huge investment with questionable returns, though it would be very interesting to see it done.

Also, personally what interests me in tabletop gaming is precisely how different it is from video games. I like not being on a screen, not having constant updates and data analysis, not being tied into a worldwide meta.

Converting and painting my dudes, crafting a beautiful battlefield, cracking open a book and sitting face to face with someone to play is what makes warhammer special in my opinion. If a rule feels broken we’ll come to an agreement, and I’m very glad that social dynamic is there. I feel eliminating it would be a disservice.

I think there’s a place for tournament restrictions / rules adjustments, but it probably should be up to TOs. Maybe with some official guidelines like they currently exist, but local metas and player expectations seem to vary quite a bit.

All in all I don’t feel the need to have a set in stone « law » coming down from GW for every situation. Not to say that they can’t adjust the system, they should, but it will never be perfect and people will always complain. The feeling that you’re not playing a real game if you’re not playing exactly as written is alien to me. The DIY aspect of the hobby is what sets it apart; and I think that’s GW’s philosophy too mostly.

I completely understand that some of you will strongly disagree with me, but that’s just the thing : GW wants both of our money, and that’s why I don’t think they’ll go all-in into fine tuning balance. Their goal is to keep most people mostly happy

[hughwyeth]

2 hours 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.

Plus the number of "THIS IS OP!" scares that turned out to be nonsense 2 months later is too damn high.

[annarborhawk]

1 hour ago, Moldek said:

****

Converting and painting my dudes, crafting a beautiful battlefield, cracking open a book and sitting face to face with someone to play is what makes warhammer special in my opinion. If a rule feels broken we’ll come to an agreement, and I’m very glad that social dynamic is there. I feel eliminating it would be a disservice.

I think there’s a place for tournament restrictions / rules adjustments, but it probably should be up to TOs. Maybe with some official guidelines like they currently exist, but local metas and player expectations seem to vary quite a bit.

All in all I don’t feel the need to have a set in stone « law » coming down from GW for every situation. Not to say that they can’t adjust the system, they should, but it will never be perfect and people will always complain. The feeling that you’re not playing a real game if you’re not playing exactly as written is alien to me. The DIY aspect of the hobby is what sets it apart; and I think that’s GW’s philosophy too mostly.

I completely understand that some of you will strongly disagree with me, but that’s just the thing : GW wants both of our money, and that’s why I don’t think they’ll go all-in into fine tuning balance. Their goal is to keep most people mostly happy

Wow, that's well said.

Edited October 18, 2019 by annarborhawk

[Televiper11]

4 hours ago, Moldek said:

Also, personally what interests me in tabletop gaming is precisely how different it is from video games. I like not being on a screen, not having constant updates and data analysis, not being tied into a worldwide meta.

Converting and painting my dudes, crafting a beautiful battlefield, cracking open a book and sitting face to face with someone to play is what makes warhammer special in my opinion. If a rule feels broken we’ll come to an agreement, and I’m very glad that social dynamic is there. I feel eliminating it would be a disservice.

 

I'm with you. I got into this hobby partly to get away from screens.

[gjnoronh]

On 10/14/2019 at 9:57 AM, Dead Scribe said:

But then why is there always so much complaining about balance if balance is something not really considered or cared about?

Because if people try to make the game something it's not,  the lack of balance gets to be a  seriously disturbing problem.   Particularly because the investment in fielding an army and switching it to something else in AoS is very high (money, and time spent as well as emotional investment involved in creating an army.) 

Put $2500 cash on the table and participants get very angsty about balance issues.  Treat winning or losing a game/tournament as a major change to your life you are going to worry about what's balanced. 

Tell people play the game to have a fun time win or lose - balance doesn't matter as much.  Some successful games are designed with intentional assymetry to win rates - to give players alternate options for fun.   The reality is most games have fairly significant assymetry between best and worst factions in win rates but people tend not to make a big deal about it because the cost  to switch factions is often less then in AoS.    

GW's main audience isn't people who go to tournaments to win cash prizes.  It's main audience is largely people who have never gone to a tournament or if they have  they aren't approaching it with a mentality that winning is more important then having fun.  There are certainly people like that in GW fandom but they aren't a large percentage of people.

Despite the marketing  for other highly competitive games around cash prizes - the reality is for games  the vast majority of players and dollars spent are for people who are playing games for fun. Some games market themselves around the cash competition at the top but that marketing is still mostly to people who are doing it for enjoyment not for a living. 

AoS and GW are actually IMO more transparent in design intentions.   It's a game designed to be a lot of fun to play and paint and collect and build.   The designers hope we enjoy all that enough to want to buy more toys.     It's not designed to be the ultimate tightly balanced competitive tournament game.    The open ended and continuously iterative design process makes that impossible (a process followed by most tabletop gaming companies mind you.) But all the changes keep the game fresh and interesting and gives us cool new miniatures and lore to inspire us to buy and collect more toys.   

It's not that GW can't do competitive games   in fact Warhammer Underworlds was designed with competition in mind.   AoS can be played competitively and can be tons of fun to play competitively  

Edited October 18, 2019 by gjnoronh

[Lord Krungharr]

I didn't have time to read through every page, but I like the double turn for AoS, keeps it different.  However, I also really like the Apocalypse way of dealing damage at the end of the turn, so every unit can do their thing during the turn.  Actually if they did that with AoS, the double turn becomes obsolete.  But letting all parties get their stuff done and see who did it best all at once, that seems more balanced I think?

Also, summoning just shouldn't be a thing!  Except it does sell more models.

[Televiper11]

44 minutes ago, Lord Krungharr said:

I didn't have time to read through every page, but I like the double turn for AoS, keeps it different.  However, I also really like the Apocalypse way of dealing damage at the end of the turn, so every unit can do their thing during the turn.  Actually if they did that with AoS, the double turn becomes obsolete.  But letting all parties get their stuff done and see who did it best all at once, that seems more balanced I think?

Also, summoning just shouldn't be a thing!  Except it does sell more models.

I think summoning can be fine but the threshold for being able to do it ought to be higher. I like a sacrifice mechanic in order to summon more than a magical summon. And whoever has that ability needs to cost a lot of points.

I do like the Apocalypse rule-set and look forward to some version of it being created for AoS.

One rule change that would favor balance, imo, is alternate shooting activations (same as combat); yes, it would make the game longer but it also would be a) more realistic and b) give an army with shooting a chance to shoot, even if its not their turn and their opponent has little-to-no shooting.

Edited October 18, 2019 by Televiper11

[Lord Krungharr]

You make a good suggestion about the alternating shooting phase too.  The first turn/double turn possibility gives that player the edge with the Hero phase and moving ahead of the other person, but lets the enemy respond at least in 2 phases instead of just 1.

[Acid_Nine]

I would personally like to see summoning toned down. It feels unfair that it could be a close game going on, then suddenly it tips to a loss because the enemy summons a unit to hold an objective while you just cannot. 

 

If they made it so summoned units cannot hold objectives,  and / or maybe suffer a sort of attrition after they appear for a turn or two like in warhammer total war, then I think it could be balanced 

[michu]

31 minutes ago, Acid_Nine said:

 and / or maybe suffer a sort of attrition

Summoning Sickness, like in MTG? But wouldn't make them useless in the wargame?

Edited October 19, 2019 by michu

[Overread]

As a Slaanesh fan I'd like to see it toned down not just because of how it can unfairly bias battles in favour of a summoning army; but also because (esp in teh case of Slaanesh) it can actually harm a summoning armies internal balance and options to put on the table. Slaanesh is the worst offender by far, but it neatly shows some of the worst aspects:

1) It creates summons based on opponent statistics. This means a skaven force can generate less depravity than a stormcast even though both armies have equal points. This creates a very swingy system that isn't balanced within battles. There's no real reason that a multi-wound opponent should have a harder time and generate more models for the slaanesh player than a single wound army. 

2) It places pressure on the Slaanesh player to build one type of army list - a one trick pony. This can even end up focusing on very specific models. For Slaanesh right now anything that isn't 3 or 4 keepers in a list is working weaker than optimum and if you're not building around depravity generation (and summoning more leaders etc...) then the army is again working weaker. This creates a situation where army variety is seriously harmed by the summoning mechanic itself. Granted you get to have more reason to use those glorious keepers; but far less to use seekers, chariots, troops, fiends etc.... 

3) It can generate large amounts which can result in a very unfair bias in points; even if the summoning is part backed into the base point costs (again that reinforces point 2 ); you're again giving a non-summoning opponent a much harder time.

 

[Dead Scribe]

6 hours ago, michu said:

Summoning Sickness, like in MTG? But wouldn't make them useless in the wargame?

I'm not sure how they would be useless.  If they suffered attrition they are still essentially free points that are able to kill things and knock the enemy off of objectives.

[michu]

Yeah, but if they couldn't move or score in the first round after summoning then they could be too little too late.

[Panzer]

Summoning is more or less fine imo, it's just the Slaanesh mechanic that's wonky. Too limited in that it's only useful with leaders and too powerful in that Keepers are leaders which just wreck face and have lots of wounds themselves.

The easy way out would be to let Keepers not generate DP, however personally I'd rather see it adjusted so that every Slaanesh daemon can generate them but also to increase the points required to summon the units in return.

[Overread]

1 hour ago, Panzer said:

Summoning is more or less fine imo, it's just the Slaanesh mechanic that's wonky. Too limited in that it's only useful with leaders and too powerful in that Keepers are leaders which just wreck face and have lots of wounds themselves.

The easy way out would be to let Keepers not generate DP, however personally I'd rather see it adjusted so that every Slaanesh daemon can generate them but also to increase the points required to summon the units in return.

Another option is to cap depravity per turn so that you can only generate X amount per turn and thus 6X per typical game. That plus allowing all units to generate would mean that there'd be less pressure to only take leaders - which brings fiends and other army build options right back into the game. Meanwhile putting a limiter cap means that allied units can also join the army without eating into depravity generation because there's a limit. It also means that armies with multiple wounds and armies with only one wound models shouldn't lead to the big swings that we currently see with generation per turn.

I think that would produce an army which can generate and summon units, but which isn't broken; provides a smoother more even curve of summoning potential across varied games against varied opponents and which isn't reliant upon its leaders both as purchased models and as summoned models. 

[stratigo]

 

 

On 10/15/2019 at 5:07 AM, Charleston said:

I belive we will see in the future gw to go on as they do right now. Competetive List Hoppers are good customers, I don´t see a reason why to loose them on a too tight balancing. Meanwhile the actuall main issue ain´t gw´s balancing in my eyes. It´s us players and the way we want to play.

If someone really wants to win, he will concider the powerlevel of an army and unit during army and listbuilding. This will lead to a army that is fragile for any point or rules changes and that also can get dull quite soon as it often follows an optimized pattern on the table.

If someone wants to build a fun army with different units and to build up a broad collection, there is more diversity on the table for that player which leds to more depths and in my opinion to a better long time enjoyment. Also, there is a higher resilience to nerfs and point changes.

And then there is the internet. In general the most people write in the internet about powerfull rules and combinations. This leads simply to more players think about how to optimize their army. The thing is: The internet does not apply to out local group. Local metas are broadly microverses of their own. Knowledge is here a much higher factor, as new armies often have the advantage that their enemies do not know what they have to stand against. Or luck, as Initiative Rolls oftten can turn whole games and dictate the winner. Also, this is rather the powerlevel I think GW wants to adress with their balancing.

I'd like to note, this isn't really good business sense. Both 40k 7th and fantasy 8th had extremely poor balance that shifted every new book, and those two games shed players drastically. A poorly balanced game will see gamers leaving it. And for all the cheers of some people going "Well they were all WAACs anyways!", man, they KILLED a setting over this. 

On 10/15/2019 at 8:20 AM, Clan's Cynic said:

Because for 99% of wargamers, GW products are their entry point and thus creates a monopoly on the wargaming hobby. It only tends to be after people have invested hundreds if not thousands of both [insert your currency] and man-hours that they might contemplate looking into other company's offerings. But then there's another problem... to play those games, you need people to actually play with. This naturally leads to the conclusion that they don't want to 'risk' spending hundreds of pounds on something that might not even get a game with.

For most people, you play 40k/AoS or you don't play. This is especially true in the UK due to the prevalence of GW stores being in about every major town/city. Wargaming is expensive but at least with 40k/AoS you're almost guaranteed to find a game local to you. In the States you find a wider palette of games due to the prevalence of LFGS' after GW wiped out (and is now slowly rebuilding) their North American stores a few years back.

This I feel is why GW products do have such a notoriously loud, negative fandom - because a lot of those people would genuinely be happier taking their money elsewhere, the problem is they can't justify taking that step due to the above limitations. As a result, they continue to hope that GW actually improves their pretty horrendous balancing, or else they just don't wargame at all.

There are still GW games that do balance better. SBG, and, like, a shocking amount of people have SBG models stored some place. If you're looking for an AoS off ramp because your sick of triple keepers, SBG. Especially in the UK which has a huge community for it.

On 10/15/2019 at 8:58 AM, Jamopower said:

I find the Middle Earth SBG to be reasonably well balanced for a game like this. I have never felt that I have lost because of my list, but because of my opponent playing better than me, or that I have taken too big risks that have backfired (that some people like to call luck). Of course, I'm not aware of all the fine details from the tournament play as we mainly play it quite casually, but what I've looked at the big tournaments, the winning lists are very varied and "balanced", i.e. there's no spamming of one unit type in most of them. Maybe it has something to do, that the main game designer is one of the best competitive players in the game? In any case, it has very different feeling from playing any sort of Warhammer, where you often know after the deployment who will win. Both games are from the same company, so surely there are things that can be done differently.

 

Of course, in MESBG, big part of the balance comes from pretty simple mechanisms. The game is very dependent on how you use your limited might points, where are your heroes and how you position the models and use your opportunities as the differences in statlines and special rules are quite minor compared to WH.

SBG is great and much better balanced than the two mainline games. And has a healthy community and healthy future.

On 10/15/2019 at 1:35 PM, Dead Scribe said:

The context that it is being used is if you bring a triple keeper list, you are "that guy", so in many cases it is being used 100% to denote what type of list you are bringing.

If someone comes up to you and goes "Hey I have only really played like a couple games. Want to throw down?" and you drag out your triple keepers and body their list, you are that guy. If you only play your triple keepers when your opponent is looking for competitive tournie prepping, that's fine. Context is context. 

On 10/16/2019 at 8:24 AM, michu said:

That's why there are 3 ways to play. If you want some people to stay in your community don't play only tournaments with best lists. Play some open and some narrative. There are really fun rules for smaller games in GHB2019. Some people will never be competitive. Create a place for them. You say non-competitive players have only three people to play with. Maybe you should play non-tournamental games with non-optimal lists with them ? Even with your competitive collections you can build some non-competitive lists. Different spells, weaker artefacts, add houserules, use msu units instead of hordes (20 clanrats instead of 40, no plague monks)... Diversity in game styles breads diversity in army lists. You're an MTG player so you probably know player psychographics - give Timmies a chance. Tournament games - optimal lists, non-tournament lists - slightly weaker lists. Use WD battlereports as inspiration.

The person playing triple keepers isn't not still playing that when they do open play. And some people will abuse the openess of the rules to the hilt. Matched play is as much a defensive measure against jerks as it is anything else. It is offloading the issues with trying to find balance to GW because a lot of people DON'T want balance. They want to win and will find the loopholes for it. Even when they complain about balance, they aren't going to moderate their lists or not use every single rule to their advantage, because the win is important for people. You have to have incredible force of personality and charisma to get people full on a narrative game that really does cut away the balance issues. I haven't seen it yet. When I played a firestorm campaign, one guy brought his tourney tzeentch list (tzeentch changehost was the best list of the time). And everyone else quickly followed in trying to build their own cutthroat lists with what they had. And eventually the whole thing fell apart. 

 

On 10/17/2019 at 9:38 AM, Televiper11 said:

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.

I fear Cities will just be the new slaanesh. That's not balance, that's just shifting who is the most busted. 

On 10/18/2019 at 6:33 AM, 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.

Currently the winrates for factions in 40k is largely 45 to 55 percent. There's no 60 percent winning factions right now in 40k period, and the one list that looked like it would break the meta lasted all of three weeks before GW nerfed it.

 

And that's the thing, despite what people who are, frankly, just haters say, 40k balance IS BETTER than AoS balance. And this is a thing members of this community need to get over. There's a vocal group on this forum that reflexively hates on 40k and dunks on it any time it comes up in comparison. And it drags the discussion down because 40k is a good comparison point. 40k balances itself more regularly and better than AoS does. Is it perfectly balanced? No. Is it even really well balanced? Not really in my opinion. Is it better than AoS? yes. Why? It's the same company. Because 40k has more resources put into its balance efforts. The iron hands nerf is just one of dozens of examples of how GW quickly shuts down drastically overperforming lists and builds in 40k. This still leaves certain lists trending to the top, and a couple of factions remain in the trash heap, but, man, there's no triple keeper slaanesh in 40k today. And instead of just hating on 40k and declaring everything is fine, maybe demand that GW put at least as much effort and resources into AoS as they do 40k. This is what I'd like to see.

[TheCovenLord]

On 10/18/2019 at 1:53 PM, gjnoronh said:

Because if people try to make the game something it's not,  the lack of balance gets to be a  seriously disturbing problem.   Particularly because the investment in fielding an army and switching it to something else in AoS is very high (money, and time spent as well as emotional investment involved in creating an army.) 

...

Tell people play the game to have a fun time win or lose - balance doesn't matter as much.  Some successful games are designed with intentional assymetry to win rates - to give players alternate options for fun.   The reality is most games have fairly significant assymetry between best and worst factions in win rates but people tend not to make a big deal about it because the cost  to switch factions is often less then in AoS.    

...

This game will never be as balanced as it could be and I believe the problem is two-fold. Your first statement I believe is an inherent issue with miniature wargaming that all systems will suffer from. The game is too hard to invest into, takes too much time (or money if you do not build/paint your own) for GW to make changes or shift blocks as quickly as say MTG. Where mechanics can be banned/blocks shifted with enough speed and regularity and the investment is much lower (both time and moneywise). 

 

 Your second statement is very true.  Inherently when a player picks up a game marketed as an asymmetric experience there is the expectation that it will be asymmetrical and you assume the risk that it will be difficult to impossible to win in your "funtime" when you choose to play it. Now you could say the same thing about AOS. But the game does NOT market itself as such. It leads the users to believe that despite some minor disparities, choosing a force of near identical points costs will at least have a chance at winning. However, as most GW gamers can attest this is absolutely not the case with faction selection/list building being not only a fundamental skill but a requirement to put up adequate competition. I find its an inconsistency in the experience vs expectation that people get the most hung up on (Ex: myself included when I run 2k of darkling covens vs Slaanesh) and that if players who wanted to play weaker factions (which requires a hefty amount of research that a lot of casual games will never do and is also part of the problem) went into battle with the knowledge that the game is actually an Asymmetric experience, regardless of whats advertised or how things are pointed, that it ends up being a lot more enjoyable. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This asymmetry, however, will be off-putting. For most people winning is an inherent part of fun and how much fun they get from winning is a spectrum. For some people, winning and proving yourself against your foes is the ultimate thrill. Its why people play competitive sports, compete in the olympics, run video game tournaments, MTG tournies. That drive to be the best is inherent in many people and I find people that dismiss competitive wargaming/the desire to perform and win to be a bit silly. Yes overall the population playing this game is casual. But you do not need to be a tournament top 5 player to still have the drive to put up a good fight. I count myself as a casual player. I rarely attend tournaments. I don't NEED to win to have fun. But if I never won? I would almost certainly lose interest in the game and move on to something I was more skilled at. This hobby has two parts (creative building/painting and reasonably competitive social game) and I require a bit of both to really enjoy it. I think the game has OK balance. But there should never ever be an argument against trying to make it better (I think if GW did quarterly balance passes at the level their summer points changes were the game would significantly improve, they also need to be more assertive and ready to tweak outlier abilities that cannot be balanced with point changes). 

On 10/16/2019 at 1:03 PM, chord said:

Not at all, I just think the community was doing a good job of it prior to GW introducing points.  The pools w/sideboard was a nice way to to handle it, plus with some of the human swarm AI a community led open source system would probably be more "accurate" and "balanced" than anything GW can do.  It would have the potential of all AoS players globally to help "balance" the game whereas GW only leverages a small number with some play testers. 

 I really like the idea of swarm/AI and even a public test period (where results and comments could be submitted via the AOS app) to help generate input to at least point designers in the right direction for balance changes. 

[Televiper11]

1 hour ago, TheCovenLord said:

I really like the idea of swarm/AI and even a public test period (where results and comments could be submitted via the AOS app) to help generate input to at least point designers in the right direction for balance changes. 

I agree. I hate the whole release/FAQ/Errata cycle -- get it right the first time.

[schwabbele]

1 minute ago, Televiper11 said:

I agree. I hate the whole release/FAQ/Errata cycle -- get it right the first time.

It’s not so bad when we take into consideration that we don’t even have all armies on aos2 books.  Who knows GW might even do something like this.
The App is here already so it would be easily doable. 

 

[Televiper11]

1 minute ago, schwabbele said:

It’s not so bad when we take into consideration that we don’t even have all armies on aos2 books.  Who knows GW might even do something like this.
The App is here already so it would be easily doable. 

 

I hope so. One thing I've found that keeps new players away is how many rules are scattered over multiple documents.

[chord]

13 minutes ago, Televiper11 said:

I hope so. One thing I've found that keeps new players away is how many rules are scattered over multiple documents.

Agreed the FAQ/Errata/Designer notes are terrible since they add to the scattering of rules.  I'd rather they expand their test bed (or use some data science) to help get it right the first time

[TheCovenLord]

5 minutes ago, chord said:

Agreed the FAQ/Errata/Designer notes are terrible since they add to the scattering of rules.  I'd rather they expand their test bed (or use some data science) to help get it right the first time

As some people have mentioned they play AOS to get away from screens but frankly the best solution in my opinion is to transition completely digitally to the app (for all rules/in game interactions) and sell the books more as sources of lore to flesh out backstory and setting (which already seems to be the trend with the change in FAQs and on the app).

[chord]

1 minute ago, TheCovenLord said:

As some people have mentioned they play AOS to get away from screens but frankly the best solution in my opinion is to transition completely digitally to the app (for all rules/in game interactions) and sell the books more as sources of lore to flesh out backstory and setting (which already seems to be the trend with the change in FAQs and on the app).

The app really needs to jump to PC's (without using emulation) so I can use my surface tablet with a larger screen.  (old man eyes)

[JackStreicher]

At least AoS is not a balance mess like 40k is (while GW claims that they're happy with how things stand right now, rofl).

[TheCovenLord]

1 minute ago, chord said:

The app really needs to jump to PC's (without using emulation) so I can use my surface tablet with a larger screen.  (old man eyes)

Absolutely agree. I use my phone but a tablet with better battery life and easier to read font would be a boon to anyone and everyone.