A Suggestion on Balance

[whispersofblood]

More 1 drop armies in T-6 days. So there is that to look forward to. 

[Dead Scribe]

Then Overread, where are those people on forums and social media today defending that concept?  I don't really hear them and when I do see them pop up they are ridden out of the forum.

[Vakarian]

Maybe forumites are generally predisposed to prefer the older GW approach, and tend to be more dedicated to the game as it’s grown up over the past years (decades, for some us)? 
 

@Overread I truly hope that GW got and understood that message. But @Dead Scribe has a point that a lot of the vocal online community, at least, don’t seem to be so hot on the idea. I thought it would be better received on this forum, at least (and at least the disagreement here has been incredibly polite). I would never dare posing the suggestion on Dakka. 

[Overread]

Actually the whole "make it more balanced" is about the most vocal viewpoint on Dakka in the AoS threads. 40K as well I would argue has that general viewpoint as well. 

What tends to happen is most people, by and large, want a balanced game. However what makes their army and other armies balanced differs in opinion so the discussion, whilst all agree (by and large) to a general direction, there's endless back and forth on the solutions proposed. Some will argue that their army is overpowered, others that its underpowered. Some might argue from specific viewpoints others in general. 

Plus we can't overlook that some are just bad at the game and will argue that they lose a lot and thus their army must be underpowered etc...

 

 

By and large the only defence for having individual armies that are overpowered is for meta-chasing and that only works if GW is specifically building their game for the meta- chasers in the competitive end. But even there its a false truth. If your whole competitive meta chases the same overpowered armies then you've got overpowered army VS overpowered army which, in the end, results in a flat level of balance. However instead of having a flat level of balance between, perhaps 10 totally different armies; its a flat balance of one or two - heck almost one with 40K and marine forces. 

So in the end you still get flat balance, just a really boring situation of the same lists/armies fighting each other alone. 

 

 

 

 

Again don't confuse a lack of consensus on what might be done with a lack of general unity toward wanting better balance. Heck its one of the biggest online topics that GW could improve balance and, many argue, should. The threads are endless where people have "left GW for better balanced games" and at the end of the "Kirby" GW era that was one of the vocal arguments for people abandoning the game and moving to other companies. 

[Dead Scribe]

Quote

Actually the whole "make it more balanced" is about the most vocal viewpoint on Dakka in the AoS threads. 40K as well I would argue has that general viewpoint as well. 

Eh.  Its brought up by the same 2-3 people over and over.  They may be vocal about it but its the same people bringing it up over and over.  And every time they are ganged up on and slandered off the board for a while lol.   And nobody sticks up for them.  I would think if more people agreed with them that there would be more support for their stance.  There really isn't.  If there is its all underground and private messages. 

Maybe thats what fuels those guys?  They have people that they talk to via private message that encourage them or something.   Because I can't see how anyone would have the fortitude to do what they do lol.

I also disagree that GW really cares about balance.  I mean Ben Johnson posted pictures of his triple keeper of secrets army before it was released with a caption that said something along the lines of "you'll want three of these".  He knew what he was unleashing onto the rest of us lol.

Edited February 2, 2020 by Dead Scribe

[Overread]

The "ganged up on" is more that people are just tired of the same thread every time. In my view most are supportive of it, its just got nowhere to go because no one on Dakka (nor TGA) is  stakeholder in the balance department at GW. 

 

As for your Johnson example I think that is part of the issue in so much as GW's rules writers are the same people we've had for years and years. They have good points ,but also bad points and I think there's a culture in their system that will honestly take new staff with a new approach to make a proper change. 

 

You can't ignore that better balance DID contribute to higher sales. Nor can you deny that many people who leave GW games for other franchises often cite rules as the reason and balance as core part of why they've jumped ship. Heck look at Kings of War who have models perhaps 20 years back in design ethos and style compared to GW to the point where many say "I play Kings of War with my GW minis" and its more than just the rank and file side of it as even when Old World was around people were shifting toward Kings of War. 

Then look at computer games and magic the gathering and almost even event based system - having balanced rules that aim for fair play where the greater sum of the difference is player skill; is shown time and time and time again to be the big pull in competitive events. Magic bans cards; MOBA games rebalance and even ban characters from events etc... Basically the strive toward better balance does result in increased sales and popularity and increased growth of the competitive end of the game. 

 

GW is about the only big name that "doesn't get it" or aim for it -(heck under Kirby when all the rest of the geek world was aiming for more recognition of competitive events GW was pulling right back from them. They went from a major company with competitive events support to nothing whilst the everyone else was going the other way). Part of that I think is the culture and staff they've got and their attitude toward things like open alpha and beta testing. They still do the whole "sending out a pre-designed list" to their independent testers rather than "here's the full rules see what you make of them" approach. 

 

 

 

Honestly its more that I just don't see any evidence that supports imbalance as a benefit to a game community nor company. The only benefit is short term sales to meta-chasers; however, as I noted above, if your competitive meta is chasing the best-build then they are playing with flat balance anyway. For the company it might mean spikes in sales, however many meta chances are more likely to buy secondhand and sell secondhand models so its not actually always funding fresh sale where the parent company is actually profiting. Instead its funding the secondhand market and the profits are there. Plus it also means that a company can end up sitting on stock that isn't selling because its poorly balanced and poorly supported. GW shouldnt' be sitting there with Dark Eldar and Sisters of battle and Tombkings sitting on shelves and not being sold. It's far healthier for the market to be buying all of what the parent company is producing, rather than only the flavour of the month. 

 

I've yet to see GW get skyrocketing sales from making one army super imbalanced. Heck the only army that could do that would be marines and that's only because they are already their biggest seller. 

[Kadeton]

I've seen an awful lot of discussions about balance, and I can't think of any where I noticed a balance-advocate being "hounded out of the forum". My general impression has been much as Overread suggests - almost everyone agrees that balance is good, but nobody agrees on how balance should be achieved. Perhaps that's just down to individual interpretation. (Also, you're the only person I can remember ever seeing outright state that balance would be bad.)

Balance often proves difficult and divisive to define, especially when that definition involves fluffy concepts like "player skill". To my mind, the truest metric for balance in a game system is variety of representation. If all the available factions have roughly equal representation at competitive events, then the game is balanced enough for all practical purposes. If a faction has significantly higher or lower representation than normal, then the competitive meta-chasers have identified that it is unusually strong or weak, and the balance of that faction should be addressed to bring it into line.

This has the primary advantage of being easily measurable, while things like win rates get muddied by arguments about skill levels and similar factors that are impossible to quantify or control for. A high win rate will inevitably push a faction towards over-representation anyway, and a low win rate will cause under-representation, so these can still be accounted for by this achievable metric.

Variety helps to keep the game fresh and interesting. When I say I want better balance, generally what I mean is that I want players to feel like their competitive choices are less restricted, and they are free to base their selection on personal preferences instead. That means a greater variety of opposing forces for me, and a healthier, more engaging game for everyone.

[Dead Scribe]

I haven't seen it happen on this forum though I have heard there have been posters in the past that were removed for complaining about balance.  I see it a lot on facebook, somewhat on dakka, and somewhat on twitter as well as reddit.  

I also dont' really see people supporting it but tired of the same thread because they can't influence GW.  The responses are typically "balance is fine" or in that vein or "50/50 balance is impossible" or "balanced games mean that a lot of options get removed and that would be boring and bad".

Edited February 2, 2020 by Dead Scribe

[whispersofblood]

Here is the thing about balance. I think AoS is pretty balanced in a group of about 4-5 players. Generally there isn't much doubling up of factions and you are buying models to a) that you like and b) help you win against maybe 4 other people. 

But on the competitive scene the game is dominated by personalities and army builds that want to win the game in 3 or less turns. Because competitive games are stressful and over a weekend generally the players that play the fewest battle rounds are at an advantage in game 4 and 5. 

These means we see a lot of front loaded damage army builds. Which makes a lot of factions basically unplayable. Nurgle defensively are very good, in a small play group they might even be the "that guy" faction. But competitive AoS is so focused on highly concentrated maximum levels of dmg that Nurgle struggles. 

So now we have a problem, where the preferences of competitive players are driving the design space since a stalwart factions has to be N=maximum output tough or they don't function. And, as we have seen the competitive scene literally mentally cannot handle any faction that doesn't play the maximum combat dmg in 2 turns strategy.

Tbh I was kind of hoping the OBR were so tough on the defence that you couldn't play mac aggro anymore affectively and they probably are in casual play but in tournament play they seems to be really ok in that regard. 

[Nos]

On 2/1/2020 at 5:42 PM, Overread said:

Considering that when GW shifted their attitude and updated all the 40K armies at once for a new edition with Index's which were pretty decently balanced on the whole - not perfect but a LOT better than what had been before. Plus no more "waiting 5 or more years for updated rules" as was standard under the old system where armies could be left without updates for ages and fall way behind the balance curve. 

When all that happened GW's sales went so high so fast they topped the UK stockmarket and have stayed high; in addition they exceeded their production demand for the first time in, basically, forever. In fact they are still only just keeping on top of domestic stocks and overseas often fall out of stock for a while on several kits at once. They've invested over 9 million in a new land and a factory in the UK and new warehousing and more.

 

 

So basically when GW updated the rules and improved balance their sales skyrocketed. To me that sends a VERY clear message. Sure GW can and did survive with bad balance; but better improved balance resulted in increased sales. 

You have no idea why GW's profits have grown the way they have. Neither do I. You might point to things like that but I would suggest over the same time period you'll also find proliferation of Warhammer TV content, Start Collecting sets, Boxed games, push fit models etc.  Also in the interviews I've read and in GW's own business statement they are very clear about the shops being so valuable and profitable because they act as a hobby landing ground and encourage a lifelong investment and interest. The number of games played in shops pales in comparison to the number of kits built and painted.

Buy even then, im not saying that means I know for sure, because I dont. Neither of us know.

GW do though, they know for absolute sure. But the evidence on hand suggests that their interest and investment in "balance" is negligible (as attested to on this forum, a new book in no way equals improved balance at all, and is now actually ingeniously a reason to have to buy 5 or 6 things more than just the book as used to  e the case) but their interest and investment in more models, more hobby supplies, more bundle sets etc, more systens, more big box sets, more miniatures across the board, that's through the roof, it positively buries any advance they have made in investing in balance. 

 

[gjnoronh]

On 2/1/2020 at 12:16 PM, thediceabide said:

Speak for yourself! Two players of equal skill with two equally optimized armies, should absolutely have an equal chance of winning. Not just the player who bought the most recently released, poorly worded army. 

Read the other thread if we are trying to define balance long discussion there.    Checkers is head to head perfect balance with no army differences, Chess has only very slight differences with a detectable variance in win rates (White has  first move) and something like Rock Paper Scissors has huge 'faction' differences but presumably equivalent win rates for all factions across a large enough data set.  

Warhammer is intentionally built with a bit of a Rock Paper Scissors type system and that's not unusual in this  type of design model with widely different factions with very different strengths and weaknesses.   Some of those are hard counters to other factions.  That's fairly common in many miniature systems GW or otherwise.    This is an oversimplification but for example : an army reliant on heroes does poorly against an army that can snipe the heroes fairly easily. An army with with a few behemoths does worse against an army with an ability to put out a lot of mortal wounds to a limited number of targets.    

Warhammer is designed with a lot of between faction differences and internal to a faction a lot of flexibility in how you build an army. The internet may have determined the conensus optimal build for each faction (rightly or wrongly) but there is room to go counter to type or to build more of an all comers force vs one more specialized to win certain match ups (and likely lose others.)  

There are systems where the per faction special rules or design differences are minimal (Battletech at 3025 tech levels)  but most larger scale miniature games tend to push that way.  One of the complaints about early 9th Age and KoW 2.0 was the fact the factions felt very similar and to some players 'boring.'  

Because of the  RPS design nature of Warhammer - you won't easily get a consistent 50% win rates for any two factions against each other.  At best you get a 50% win rate against the total field of 'the meta.'  But that meta keeps shifting with each book - the optimal army list for even a long since released Battle tome may be different now then it was 1 year ago because of that ongoing shifting of the potential pool of opponents.  Shooting got better when Slaanesh were released however as it tend to be  a fairly hard counter.  The more Slaanesh there was in 'the meta' the better shooting was - Cities with a lot of shooting was about the end of Slaanesh's dominance (roughly speaking. ) 

 

 

[thediceabide]

28 minutes ago, gjnoronh said:

Read the other thread if we are trying to define balance long discussion there.    Checkers is head to head perfect balance with no army differences, Chess has only very slight differences with a detectable variance in win rates (White has  first move) and something like Rock Paper Scissors has huge 'faction' differences but presumably equivalent win rates for all factions across a large enough data set.  

 

Balance is not the same as parity. As the thread talks about, the existence of Infinity pretty much flies in the face of the rest of your argument here. 

[gjnoronh]

On 2/3/2020 at 4:28 PM, thediceabide said:

Balance is not the same as parity. As the thread talks about, the existence of Infinity pretty much flies in the face of the rest of your argument here. 

Are you saying the data you have available shows that all Infinity factions are perfectly balanced in head to head match ups as your post I quoted seems to suggest?   Because the data I believe we've been shown is about  Infinity overall win rates in the systems current meta.    The data would be much more complicated presentation then what we've seen so far to show us two players of equal skill with equally well selected forces would always have an equal win rate irrespective of faction chosen.

For example Blood Bowl has the most complicated in depth data analysis and deepest data sets for miniatures I'm aware of here's an example of how you could look at head to head match ups between different teams and different skill levels (the <150 number indicates a player with a low win rate with that team, the >200 is someone with a very high win rate with that team that's the ELO system used by chess)    It's worth noting how win rates in any given match up change at different levels of player skill - that gets at the question of what level player are we trying to balance for.   There is also a pull down for different formats (which in the AoS world would be different scenarios almost) which pulls separate and possibly quite different results.  The data set in this analysis is only one of three large data sets out there for the system and because of some differences in game play I would expect the results to differ somewhat (NAF data is all swiss pairings tournament based as opposed to random matchups or matchups based on similar 'team strength' in the progressive growth system that is Blood Bowl league play.) 

https://public.tableau.com/profile/mike.sann0638.davies#!/vizhome/NAFMatchupChecker/Matchup

It's a  much more complicated data analysis then a simple table of win rates which  we saw earlier in the thread.  For example for blood bowl a simple win loss table looks like  this and is more similar to the structure of the Infinity data set we saw earlier: (note Blood Bowl's design philosophy is to intentionally have some teams be harder to play then others as well as the intrinisicRock Paper Scissors match up issues):

https://member.thenaf.net/index.php?module=NAF&type=statistics

There are game systems where the factions aren't too dissimilar including miniature games I discussed in my previous posts that's absolutely a fun way to design games.   It is the case that for similar large scale army games that was poorly received by some sections of  of largely one time warhammer players.  Doesn't mean it's bad design philosophy - just wasn't well enough received.      I don't know Infinity well enough to know if the factions are fairly similar in strengths and weaknesses if they are it's easier to get to your stated goal of a 50% head to head win rate for any faction vs faction matchup that's the checkers example.      But it's clear AoS factions are very different from each other in strengths that's much harder to balance head to head win rates - often the internet consensus best build for a faction is the most RPS type (FEC is a good example.)   In a system with an RPS underpinning could tweak to get the overall win rates to be  similar to each other in a specific or evolving meta but head to head is very hard.  

In other words you can get an RPS system to have a 50% win rate per faction (if it's exactly 1/3rd rocks, 1/3rd paper and 1/3rd scissors) but it's a lot harder for the that type of system to have a 50% win rate for every match up.   

 

Edited February 5, 2020 by gjnoronh