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A Suggestion on Balance


Vakarian

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5 minutes ago, amysrevenge said:

I think this entirely misses the largest type.

D : Casual players who like to play games and pick up some models to play, might never get fully painted, might never get beyond 1500-2000 points, might not ever go to a tournament.  (My local AoS league is at least 2/3 type D )

There's another big group:

E: 40K players, either curious about the fantasy game with 90% less complication, or upset that their faction isn't good right now.

11 hours ago, Spears said:

I recently Took a bunch of screenshots to try and demonstrate just how good the Infinity Tournament System is. 

By tying in the ITS login to the army builder and tournament organiser its possible to track not only win rates of the faction, but who was playing them and against whom all the way down to unit level. (not all of this is directly available through the portal).

Now I'm not saying its flawless and I'm not sure Cb always get their balancing right but it does make attending a GW event feel slightly quaint with TTO etc.

Edit: how on earth do i paste in a tweet like that above? 

First up is Infinity Army a free army builder that links straight to the rules wiki.

From here you can submit your lists straight to the tournament manager used for pairing on the day. Results effect your global elo and gaming style achievements. All that data is then used to monitor the performance and popularity of armies and missions.

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The picture above is actually one of the things that keeps me from playing Infinity, and yes I am a newb. Why are we selecting units by little logos that mean nothing to me, instead of by their names or having an actual picture of the model(s) to reference? 

Also, nothing against having a heap of data to comb through. But unlike the Warhammers or Warmahordes, I always felt that a massive plus to Infinity was that pregame list-building didn't have near the impact on the game's result than in-game decisions did.

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22 minutes ago, Fairbanks said:

There's another big group:

E: 40K players, either curious about the fantasy game with 90% less complication, or upset that their faction isn't good right now.

The picture above is actually one of the things that keeps me from playing Infinity, and yes I am a newb. Why are we selecting units by little logos that mean nothing to me, instead of by their names or having an actual picture of the model(s) to reference? 

Also, nothing against having a heap of data to comb through. But unlike the Warhammers or Warmahordes, I always felt that a massive plus to Infinity was that pregame list-building didn't have near the impact on the game's result than in-game decisions did.

Well, when you hover over the picture, it tells you the name, but I do agree, just seeing the names would be easier.

 

I have to disagree about the list building though. List building in Infinity will have a massive impact on the game, because typically, the first thing you do for a game is choose the Mission that will be played, and then you build your list to fit the mission. If, for example, you choose the mission "Deadly Dance" and then don't bring a TAG, you're gonna have a harder time winning. 

However, that doesn't really change what I think the point you trying to make was. You'll win very few games of Infinity by just building a list that'll kill the soul out of your opponent. You've gotta build for and play the missions. 

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29 minutes ago, Fairbanks said:

There's another big group:

E: 40K players, either curious about the fantasy game with 90% less complication, or upset that their faction isn't good right now.

The picture above is actually one of the things that keeps me from playing Infinity, and yes I am a newb. Why are we selecting units by little logos that mean nothing to me, instead of by their names or having an actual picture of the model(s) to reference? 

Also, nothing against having a heap of data to comb through. But unlike the Warhammers or Warmahordes, I always felt that a massive plus to Infinity was that pregame list-building didn't have near the impact on the game's result than in-game decisions did.

Regardless of A, B, C, D or E, there is really no good argument to not balance things, haha. Doesn't matter if most people are casuals or competitive, there's really no good argument against game balance.

It's just a user preference, a lot of people do the vertical bar, and on mobile it is vertical, oh yeah, the army builder works great on mobile too, lol. Your point about list building is very accurate, you may need to take some specialists to accomplish the missions, but it's far more about your in-game decisions. Hell, I rarely even spend more than a few minutes on a list before playing it, as long as I know how to use the tools I'll do just fine. There also aren't really net lists and auto-includes are extremely rare (and not really that auto), the person who won the entire ITS season last year regularly used units which are bemoaned as awful on the internets.

Screen Shot 2020-01-29 at 1.03.53 PM.png

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1 hour ago, whiskeytango said:

Well, when you hover over the picture, it tells you the name, but I do agree, just seeing the names would be easier.

 

I have to disagree about the list building though. List building in Infinity will have a massive impact on the game, because typically, the first thing you do for a game is choose the Mission that will be played, and then you build your list to fit the mission. If, for example, you choose the mission "Deadly Dance" and then don't bring a TAG, you're gonna have a harder time winning. 

However, that doesn't really change what I think the point you trying to make was. You'll win very few games of Infinity by just building a list that'll kill the soul out of your opponent. You've gotta build for and play the missions. 

That sounds like it's much easier to avoid a mismatch based on scenario  by definition.  Put another way you aren't going to bring a list to a game that's very good at one thing and realize the win condition is something else.    

On the other hand by design AoS  scenario win conditions are hidden to the players at the time of list building.  A list (or Battletome) good for some scenarios may not  be as good for others.    To some extent that encourages 'more balanced' list building.  Events that publicize scenarios pre event actually allow people to take more unusual variant list. 

 AoS list balancing is a pretty amazingly complex deal given the diversity of scenarios, mortal realms and book to book matchups as well as variant lists inside of each book.

I'll note more generally despite the fact every 3-6 months something causes this kind of consternation amongst AoS fans about a book that breaks the game 1 year later it's not the same things we are talking about.   It's not  power creep (aside from the obvious fact some books clearly come in below the power curve) it's also the continuous rebalancing of the meta (sorry Sleboda) as the   'top dog' books changes.  There is a lot of Rock Paper Scissors built into AoS by army mechanics and scenarios it makes for a very interesting and fun game.    But it's almost certainly not 'balanced' in terms of equivalent win rates per army.  And really that's okay.  The win rates aren't the same this month with these books out as they will be in 6 months or one year with new books out.  That's aside from the prespecified intentional rebalancing in GHB and point updates.    

 

Also this is an older thread on this forum but in it several of us talked about what it would take to get unit level point values right and if sophisticated fomulas for point values would get us there. It's not the conversation we're talking about here but it does touch on some of the variables that make it hard to figure out 'balance' 

 

 

Edited by gjnoronh
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While I love the idea of AoS some day achieving the kind of Balance Mecca of everyone hovering around 50% like Infinity has, I don't think it would be possible without a giant change in system. 

One of the reasons it works so well for Infinity is because, for the most part, CB has built that game around Universal Special Rules and weapons. The main differences in armies is how those weapons and rules are spread out, but overall, you're going to find a combi-rifle order monkey in most armies. You're going to find an MSV2 Multi-Sniper in most armies. You're going to find a Core-link with an HMG in most sectorals. Everything is built around that kind of principle of swapping in different rules from the same base pool that (nearly) every army pulls from, whereas everything in AoS and 40k is built around the idea that each army is almost entirely unique and made to play completely different to every other army (I'm sure a debate could be had about how successful that design principle is). 

I'm just not sure that we can have both entirely unique and entirely balanced armies, though I'm sure MORE balanced is possible.

Edited by whiskeytango
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1 hour ago, whiskeytango said:

While I love the idea of AoS some day achieving the kind of Balance Mecca of everyone hovering around 50% like Infinity has, I don't think it would be possible without a giant change in system. 

One of the reasons it works so well for Infinity is because, for the most part, CB has built that game around Universal Special Rules and weapons. The main differences in armies is how those weapons and rules are spread out, but overall, you're going to find a combi-rifle order monkey in most armies. You're going to find an MSV2 Multi-Sniper in most armies. You're going to find a Core-link with an HMG in most sectorals. Everything is built around that kind of principle of swapping in different rules from the same base pool that (nearly) every army pulls from, whereas everything in AoS and 40k is built around the idea that each army is almost entirely unique and made to play completely different to every other army (I'm sure a debate could be had about how successful that design principle is). 

I'm just not sure that we can have both entirely unique and entirely balanced armies, though I'm sure MORE balanced is possible.

Yeah this is a good point.  
AOS tends to lean a bit more towards a rock/paper/scissors system rather than a full/equal balance system.   
Which is why GW seem fine with having a few super strong armies and a few weak ones.  

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9 minutes ago, Dead Scribe said:

I also don't think the majority of GW's fanbase really wants that level of balance.

I don't agree with that. This is, obviously, anecdotal but I know everyone in my play group would prefer that kind of balance. 

I think the problem comes in that they, and I would guess most others, wouldn't want that kind of balance at the expense of the uniqueness of the armies, and it probably isn't possible to have both. If balance was all they were looking for in a tabletop game, then Infinity is staring them in the face, waving its hands wildly. Clearly balance isn't the MOST important thing to those of us who choose to persist in GW games.

Edited by whiskeytango
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I think you answered that question then.  You know people can't have both, and you know the GW fanbase is willing to sacrifice balance on the altar of diversity.  If players really wanted that level of balance, Infinity would be at the level 40k is, and 40k and AOS would be struggling to have visible players.

If GW fanbase WANTED that level of balance, really wanted it, they would find other games to play.  

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I wasn't, no. The two games are different and scratch different itches, which is why I play both.

 

My point was to provide an example of how a games company can use modern technology to get some really good information about the overall state of the game and health of different factions. I don't think GW will ever be CB, or that AoS will be Infinity (nor do I want them to be). But if GW is interested in increasing game balance (anecdotally, and by inference from actions like the 6-month FAQ and points updates, they seem to be), then this sort of analytical tool would be very helpful in pointing out the actual problems.

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I think in many cases the actual problems are easy to point out by simply reading the army book, and even then GW doesn't really fix it until they feel like.  So I'd have to wonder what this tool would do other than provide official stats?  I don't know that they'd rush to fix things with it because in many cases I feel they already know what the problems are.

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3 hours ago, Dead Scribe said:

If GW fanbase WANTED that level of balance, really wanted it, they would find other games to play.  

Not true.  Talk to people outside your circle. Check social media.  The fanbase can still be present as well as unhappy with the balance:

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Whether the fanbase is happy with the rules or frustrated with bad rules will determine how many pitchforks you will see on facebook and the general  mood of the actually-playing community.  

Why do they stay? No, it's not because they secretly enjoyed getting their butts handed to them by slaanesh last year.

 People are fans of Warhammer and GW's models.  For that reason people can still be fans and be very unhappy with the current rules balance.  Sure, some people will be unhappy to the point that they stop playing (I've seen it), but others stay at least semi-active and provide feedback with the hope that GW will one day  better balance their book releases (they do start to balance things eventually, but nearly a year too late and not quite enough). Until then, my circle for example would manually ensure our own "balanced" match-ups by avoiding anything that's obviously too broken.  Note, it's not as fun to have to avoid anything in the game, but we make the fun that we can make.

Personally I don't need Warhammer to be balanced to the point that the highest win rate faction is under 53%.  I do however want them to focus on balance until they can at least achieve a range purely in the 41-59% win rate.  To me, publishing and leaving a faction at 65-70 percent win rate is just disgustingly inexcusable.

Edited by Zanzou
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Infinity's ITS data collection is one of the best in the industry, its true, and something to be respected.

Infinity also has close to 50% winrate among all its factions, which is also impressive, but as several commenters have already pointed out, is more related to every model being built off a common build formula, with stats, skills, and equipment costing the same for every faction.  Some models receive discounts on some characteristics, but in general, every model in the game is on the same playing field.

Its worth noting however, that despite having the incredible tool that is ITS, Corvus Belli effectively does no balancing AT ALL, post-release.  Once printed, 99.9% of models will never get updates until their faction gets an overhaul, which has a timescale of 3-5 years.  This means underwhelming models remain ******, and great models remain top-picks effectively forever.  Games Workshop actually balances their games very aggressively compared to CB already.

The only thing which CB has admitted to using the data provided by ITS for... is deciding which factions to discontinue, based on low player count.  I don't think anyone wants that kind of feedback applied to Games Workshop games.

Edited by Armoured
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Yes there are meta chasers, but people aren't telling me that those meta chasers are spending more than 1% of GWs overall profits every year. The amount of people the term applies to is probably a drop in the ocean of there sales.

I think most people rather enjoy the huge differences and will always find a flavour they like because of these differences. Yeah its sad that it has such a massive impact on win ratios at tournaments. But as we can see from 40k, it only takes 1 round of changes to make an army ridiculous (space marines), and I think that is fun too. :D 

PS: I do think that Infinity statistic is pretty impressive though!

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I think it's great to see what other companies are doing for their own systems, but I'm not sure that the Infinity system would work for GW because the tournament scene is only a tiny portion of games played of AoS.  The fickle community would also slate them if they released a tournament system like this for trying to take over how people run tournaments 🤷‍♂️

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I play both infinity and AoS.

I play infinity competitively and enjoy it very much. I never feel like I do not have a chance to win a game due to army and it is all dependent on me and how i play (well and the dice to a point)

AoS I would never play competitively. It is not balanced nor really tries to be. So I play it just for fun. 

Back to the original subject of the post, GW could make all their games balanced and develop the tools to collect data. The honest wargamer stats show such disparity in win/loss due to the imbalance. GW has created this mess but can clean it up if they chose to do so. They have the resources but lack the will or desire to do so. 

The OP is a good example what can be achieved if balance was a goal. 

 

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14 minutes ago, Maloc said:

I play both infinity and AoS.

I play infinity competitively and enjoy it very much. I never feel like I do not have a chance to win a game due to army and it is all dependent on me and how i play (well and the dice to a point)

AoS I would never play competitively. It is not balanced nor really tries to be. So I play it just for fun. 

Back to the original subject of the post, GW could make all their games balanced and develop the tools to collect data. The honest wargamer stats show such disparity in win/loss due to the imbalance. GW has created this mess but can clean it up if they chose to do so. They have the resources but lack the will or desire to do so. 

The OP is a good example what can be achieved if balance was a goal. 

 

They do not definitively show any such thing, there isn't nearly enough information collected in that data to be able to suggest that is true.  They at best imply imbalance, and at worst suggest there is something going on worth looking deeper at.

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The flaw with the honest wargamer stats is that they don't show you the context.  They don't show you the skill level of the players involved, and they are heavily weighted and influenced by volume of games played by people bringing what the meta considers OP.  

The honest wargamer stats contextually show what people are bringing to events, and overall how that faction does.  It highlights inferred imbalance.  It definitely points at trends of what the community feels is very weak and what is very strong.  

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6 hours ago, Armoured said:

Infinity's ITS data collection is one of the best in the industry, its true, and something to be respected.

Infinity also has close to 50% winrate among all its factions, which is also impressive, but as several commenters have already pointed out, is more related to every model being built off a common build formula, with stats, skills, and equipment costing the same for every faction.  Some models receive discounts on some characteristics, but in general, every model in the game is on the same playing field.

Its worth noting however, that despite having the incredible tool that is ITS, Corvus Belli effectively does no balancing AT ALL, post-release.  Once printed, 99.9% of models will never get updates until their faction gets an overhaul, which has a timescale of 3-5 years.  This means underwhelming models remain ******, and great models remain top-picks effectively forever.  Games Workshop actually balances their games very aggressively compared to CB already.

The only thing which CB has admitted to using the data provided by ITS for... is deciding which factions to discontinue, based on low player count.  I don't think anyone wants that kind of feedback applied to Games Workshop games.

This isn’t actually true - CB has updated their points formula at least once based off the data, and applied that change to both new and old profiles to make some older and rarely taken profiles more desirable. It also worked! Lots more people started using the old models after the update.

 

But you’re right in the sense that they don’t balance with points very often, in part because they don’t need to with their system. They more often balance by altering what units can be taken in link teams. The useful point for GW there is that altering some rules or abilities may have more benefits than small points tweaks (not that points tweaks should never happen, though). 
 

Also, they don’t use the stats to decide who to rotate off production (not discontinue, the models will return to production later), they use sales numbers for that. GW has enough production capacity (or will whenever their new factory is finished) compared to CB that such an issue seems unlikely to ever be a GW problem. 

 

5 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

I think it's great to see what other companies are doing for their own systems, but I'm not sure that the Infinity system would work for GW because the tournament scene is only a tiny portion of games played of AoS.  The fickle community would also slate them if they released a tournament system like this for trying to take over how people run tournaments 🤷‍♂️

There’s definitely more non-tournament games of Infinity played as well, but there isn’t really any other place to mine this information. So using what is available is better than not using anything. If it’s true that TOs would just reject using a GW system that helped provide feedback for later balancing efforts, then, well, to some extent the community is getting what it deserves in a lack of balance. 
 

Edited by Vakarian
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4 minutes ago, Dead Scribe said:

The flaw with the honest wargamer stats is that they don't show you the context.  They don't show you the skill level of the players involved, and they are heavily weighted and influenced by volume of games played by people bringing what the meta considers OP.  

The honest wargamer stats contextually show what people are bringing to events, and overall how that faction does.  It highlights inferred imbalance.  It definitely points at trends of what the community feels is very weak and what is very strong.  


CB’s stats don’t show this either, at least not at the surface. Yes, their tournament system is deep enough that they can track individual player standings and games against specific opponents and thereby assume skill levels, but the profile changes and balancing efforts are done more off of a combination of how often units are used by players, from my understanding. 

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36 minutes ago, whispersofblood said:

They do not definitively show any such thing, there isn't nearly enough information collected in that data to be able to suggest that is true.  They at best imply imbalance, and at worst suggest there is something going on worth looking deeper at.

Win loss rates and dominate armies in the data make it clear that many armies perform sub par. It is a robust enough set of data that you can draw conclusions from it.  

39 minutes ago, Dead Scribe said:

The flaw with the honest wargamer stats is that they don't show you the context.  They don't show you the skill level of the players involved, and they are heavily weighted and influenced by volume of games played by people bringing what the meta considers OP.  

The honest wargamer stats contextually show what people are bringing to events, and overall how that faction does.  It highlights inferred imbalance.  It definitely points at trends of what the community feels is very weak and what is very strong.  

Player skill will always be a factor and is one with Infinity tracking as well. CB data is collected from tournaments like honest wargamer so it is comparable data. 

as above, if some one is bringing what is considered OP to skew the statistics, it actually validates that AoS is not balanced. There shouldn't be a perceived OP and it should not perform so well vs other armies. The significant win ratio actually means it has a performance advantage over other armies. 

 

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39 minutes ago, Maloc said:

Win loss rates and dominate armies in the data make it clear that many armies perform sub par. It is a robust enough set of data that you can draw conclusions from it.  

 

When it comes to data analysis volume is not depth. Especially in a data set that is constantly changing. Data from the summer is essentially useless beyond the most rudimentary conclusions. In my line of work using data as shown by THG would be laughable, these data sets need to be heavily curated, especially given that specific players are showing up multiple times in numerous data sets disproportionately.  The British data set is dominated by probably less than 30 players, and British data dominates the data set, the Aus/NewZ meta is similarly dominated and disproportionate. There is this high school math belief that aggregation averages out, it is incorrect. That only works as well as the strength of your data collection and robustness of the curation method. As is the current method would increase the representation of any skews in the data, skewing the results to be inline with the preferences of maybe 100 individuals globally. 

So you end up with problems like factions which appear to be good, get picked up by good players, which gives good results, which confirms the original assumption. Especially as a good player doesn't expect to go less than 4-1, which is already an 80% winrate. That's before you get into the context of the event, realm spells, artefacts. An event that uses realm spells and rotates realms, is a vastly different beast from an event that plays the whole event in Aqshy with realm spells, to an event with no realms at all. 

And, that's before we even get started on the assumption that the stats represent the "best build" without ever actually measuring the occasions any variation of what could be considered the best build shows up. Or even an estimation of what the "best build" would be as an archetype. The lack of rigor combined with the hyperbolic level of usage literally does my head in.

For these reasons and more I would heavily recommend people do not use TWG stats as anything more than an inference. 

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