Is balance an obtainable goal for AoS?

[Saxon]

On 8/23/2020 at 6:40 PM, Belper said:

This is more or less a myth. 'Powergamers' tend to be thrifty a lot of the time. The nature of needing to build, assemble, and paint 'new hotness' units in order to actually be able to use them limits the amount of full faction changes to people who either have pre-existing collections, ridiculous amounts of money, or people looking to enter into factions like space marines that can be acquired(especially prepainted) relatively cheaply. You'll either see a large percentage of their army being purchased second hand or through discount box sets, or they simply stick to a handful of factions and only make purchases that are relevant to those factions. Sure, if one UNIT get broken to hell and gone people will flock to that, but the number of individuals who have the combination of time and money to create tournament ready armies of brand new factions essentially out of the blue, within the time frame where their powerlevel is significantly above curve, is very small.

A myth? This is another deflection to avoid criticizing GW for some really stupid rules in new factions.  In our community, a lot of people will spend a fortune and get an army commission painted to get the best. We know this because after the inevitable nerf from our masters after they've pushed enough product the amount of them coming up for sale with commission painted specified to try and recoup as much money as possible on buy/swap/sell sites in massive.

If i wasn't significantly reducing my spending on GW products i would be able to pick up some really cheap full armies of bonereapers or Slaanesh haha

[Popisdead]

On 8/20/2020 at 3:40 PM, Orsino said:

You suggest that no games are well balanced and then dismiss examples of well balanced games because you haven't played them and...they're not AoS. That's really not an argument. And again, balance is a continuum and repeating "no game is perfectly balanced" doesn't mean balance can't be improved.

I played the one game you mentioned along with lots of others.  *also the aforementioned game had terrible balance and I gave an actual example instead of just arguing.  I've played lots of games.  Games generally don't have perfect balance.  

I've never said it cannot be improved, I've pointed out it isn't something that can be achieved.  You are correct it isn't an argument   

[Popisdead]

On 8/20/2020 at 3:43 PM, Saxon said:

BA is up to 2nd edition which is pretty well balanced. Germans can be hard to play with but the gap between the best and worst factions is not even close to AOS. It's also not homogenized, each faction has its special rules that do factor into the game. It's a lot simpler and that is quite different to AOS. Some people would like that, some don't, each to their own. 

There surely has to be a reasonable expectation of balance. These forums become tiresome when people will make any excuse to defend GW and their tendancy to cheese new abilities and then nerf them later as if it was accidental. The cynic in me feels like the regularity that this now seems to happen means that its part of the marketing plan to appeal to the power gamers who will drop a fortune to have a flashy new army. Sure it works. But it's a collective eye roll from my gaming group seeing these flash rules come out each time a faction is updated. 

This isn't a Bolt Action forum and I would suspect very few people play the game.  It is moot to argue it's a counter point to AoS's lack of balance.  

If you want to play AoS play it.  If you want to play BA play it.  If you want to play Oldhammer play it.  I'm not slamming Bolt Action, I'm saying it's more a sign of personal slight towards GW to argue that point than BA being "perfectly balanced".  Belabouring that point isn't going to do much other than validate gamers like to complain online.  

Expecting reasonable balance is surely a good thing to strive for.  I've played Wood Elves and Beasts of Chaos since 2003.  Neither of those armies have had great track records apart from 6th ed and early 7th ed dominance of WE.  BoC were fun after their AoS release.  Do I care?  It's a crumby deal.  I would like GW to balance the warscrolls into the game more but do I feel entitled that will happen?  Not sure, I was actually pretty happy BoC got a Battletome and didn't get put into Legends.  

 For now I see the game as what it is, I see the gaming industry for what it is.  

I can also get on board @Saxon when you talk about the cynic it is a marketing plan previously powerful armies got a nerf.  Sylvaneth looking at you.  

But at the end of the day, play or don't.  There isn't really an alternative.  The game is change and stuff falls by the wayside.  

[novakai]

My 2 cent is that perfect balance is unstainable but you can bring the game in a good place internally

i think where GW can do better on is notice when something is too egregious  (FEC gristlegore, Slaanesh summoning and to some extent Fyreslayer Hearthguard bloab and OBR petrifix elite) and internally test their rules better before release stuff like that. i say this because i know a lot of people who thought that was the lowest point of AoS 2.0 when a few certain battletome where release

[Saxon]

4 hours ago, Popisdead said:

This isn't a Bolt Action forum and I would suspect very few people play the game.  It is moot to argue it's a counter point to AoS's lack of balance.  

If you want to play AoS play it.  If you want to play BA play it.  If you want to play Oldhammer play it.  I'm not slamming Bolt Action, I'm saying it's more a sign of personal slight towards GW to argue that point than BA being "perfectly balanced".  Belabouring that point isn't going to do much other than validate gamers like to complain online.  

Expecting reasonable balance is surely a good thing to strive for.  I've played Wood Elves and Beasts of Chaos since 2003.  Neither of those armies have had great track records apart from 6th ed and early 7th ed dominance of WE.  BoC were fun after their AoS release.  Do I care?  It's a crumby deal.  I would like GW to balance the warscrolls into the game more but do I feel entitled that will happen?  Not sure, I was actually pretty happy BoC got a Battletome and didn't get put into Legends.  

 For now I see the game as what it is, I see the gaming industry for what it is.  

I can also get on board @Saxon when you talk about the cynic it is a marketing plan previously powerful armies got a nerf.  Sylvaneth looking at you.  

But at the end of the day, play or don't.  There isn't really an alternative.  The game is change and stuff falls by the wayside.  

BA a miniature board game. I get that it makes people uncomfortable that other games might be more balanced thus reflecting poorly on GW but it is comparable.

BA isn't perfect. I'm not arguing that at all. I'm suggesting that AOS has atrocious balance which seems to conveniently align with flashy new models. I play Cities of Sigmar, Nighthaunt and Sylvaneth. I still play AOS, i'm even still painting it. I have just decided against investing in another army given my concerns with the state of the game. 

I take further issue with the huge gap between new armies and older ones. Legions of Nagash are in an absolutely awful state right now and they had a 2nd ed tome. It's greatly concerning that an army can be so badly  affected in such a short period of time. 

[Orsino]

5 hours ago, Popisdead said:

I played the one game you mentioned along with lots of others.  *also the aforementioned game had terrible balance and I gave an actual example instead of just arguing.  I've played lots of games.  Games generally don't have perfect balance.  

I've never said it cannot be improved, I've pointed out it isn't something that can be achieved.  You are correct it isn't an argument   

You said you hadn't played the current edition of BA, which is the one that was being referred to.  No one in this thread has suggested any game has perfect balance,  but rather games can be better or worse balanced relative to other games and balance in AoS is relatively poor. 

5 hours ago, Popisdead said:

This isn't a Bolt Action forum and I would suspect very few people play the game.  It is moot to argue it's a counter point to AoS's lack of balance.  

If you want to play AoS play it.  If you want to play BA play it.  If you want to play Oldhammer play it.  I'm not slamming Bolt Action, I'm saying it's more a sign of personal slight towards GW to argue that point than BA being "perfectly balanced".  Belabouring that point isn't going to do much other than validate gamers like to complain online.  

This is just a bizarre argument.  When you claim no game is well balanced of course people are going to bring up counter-examples of games that are well balanced. For you to then say that people shouldn't mention those better balanced games on the forum because it's a "personal slight" against GW is really quite strange and unreasonable.  You end by saying  "play or don't", apparently forgetting this is a discussion forum. If you're not interested  in the discussion then don't take part in it, but don't turn up to tell other people not to talk about it. 

 

Edited August 25, 2020 by Orsino

[Mogwai Man]

I'd say for the most part the game is balanced, I think there will always be some outliers though. We do have an issue with hordes being favored over elites, monsters and chariots are mostly below average, and assassin heroes go unused.

[Fairbanks]

On 8/18/2020 at 2:26 PM, AaronWilson said:

https://hobbyinthewarp.blogspot.com/2020/08/is-balance-obtainable-goal-for-aos.html Hi guys! My blog post is up. Is balance an obtainable goal for AoS? My thoughts on the subject but really I want to discuss with all of you. I'd be ever so grateful if you took a read and then let me know your take the subject.

Sure.

Matched Play is by design intended to be balanced, or have more or less the same chance of winning. It's all over the Introducing Matched Play section of your General's Handbook. People who are arguing that this format isn't meant to be balanced are completely wrong in their statement.

[Kasper]

Balance in what sense? That all battletomes have a 50% win ratio? I dont think this is important at all. To me it is much more important there arent armies out there that cause super polarized games. If you 100% win every other game and lose the others, you have a 50% win ratio which means your army is "balanced" according to stats but actual game experience is terrible.

[Neverchosen]

Should it be a goal?
Absolutely!
Is it obtainable?
Not even close, and that is part of the fun.

I have always loved that Warhammer is a living game system, one that is constantly growing and changing. In a strange way, we become the play-testers for the game and help in a dialectical approach to make a stronger and more coherent game system. I am a big fan of the use of Warhammer Community as a means of reaching out to the community and clarifying rules and points updates. It is not perfect, but it is part of the fun of the game to see it evolve and change. Certain armies may be one buff or nerf away from feeling balanced but often times it is something that the player base will more easily identify than the rules writers. 

Certain armies get preferential treatments which can be frustrating and some armies are tied very closely to certain rule sets (magic being an obvious example). This were the goal of balance always feels the most stymied as new armies and top sellers will get greater focus and certain armies may be at an advantage due to certain game mechanics being somewhat stronger than others. But still it is a nice feeling to be a part of the overall balancing and rules implementation of a game even if my direct voice is somewhat lost in the shuffle. 

[Popisdead]

On 8/25/2020 at 4:21 PM, Saxon said:

 

BA isn't perfect. I'm not arguing that at all. I'm suggesting that AOS has atrocious balance which seems to conveniently align with flashy new models.

I agree.  Granted it's not always flash new models.  Kroak looking at you.

[Popisdead]

On 8/25/2020 at 4:33 PM, Orsino said:

You said you hadn't played the current edition of BA, which is the one that was being referred to.  No one in this thread has suggested any game has perfect balance,  but rather games can be better or worse balanced relative to other games and balance in AoS is relatively poor. 

This is just a bizarre argument.  When you claim no game is well balanced of course people are going to bring up counter-examples of games that are well balanced. For you to then say that people shouldn't mention those better balanced games on the forum because it's a "personal slight" against GW is really quite strange and unreasonable.  You end by saying  "play or don't", apparently forgetting this is a discussion forum. If you're not interested  in the discussion then don't take part in it, but don't turn up to tell other people not to talk about it. 

 

Um no. 

I was interested and took part of the discussion and you came at me pretty hard.  

I don't think the issue is the topic, or participating but you not being happy there are people who will say things other than what you believe.  

[Saxon]

5 hours ago, Popisdead said:

I agree.  Granted it's not always flash new models.  Kroak looking at you.

No argument from me on that one. Kroaks comets call is a rather unpleasant spell when it can be cast anywhere. It encourages seraphon players to hide Kroak behind terrain so you can't get near him which is pretty frustrating and given his abilities, its not a model you can ignore. I'm not a huge fan of mechanics that encourage narrow tactics. I played freeguild as my first army and the hit bonuses for shooty boys meant all i ever did was hermit and murder which wasn't fun for my opponents. Haven't had much luck changing it up though 😆

[Enoby]

I personally think 'balance' is less important than 'fun', which I fully acknowledge is a close to meaningless statement. I'll try to explain myself a bit better:

Having a perfectly balanced 50% win rate across armies game is very hard (if not impossible without removing tonnes of rules). Being more realistic, pruning the outliers (e.g. things with an 80% or 30% winrate) is important for the health of the game. But overall, 'fun' should be the main aim of the game. I also think a lack of total balance (and randomness) is important to attract new players.

By this I mean, if you look at chess (a very balanced game with minimal randomness), a new player would find it close to impossible to beat a winner of a local tournament. This is fine because chess is very cheap to start and has a global community with a lot of prestige so is very unlikely to die out. If all armies (and units) were perfectly balanced in AoS *and* randomness was reduced, then I think new players would struggle to get into the game because it becomes far more skill based. As AoS is not as prestigious and cheap as chess, the game would risk dying off as new blood struggled to enter the hobby. Lack of balance, on the other hand can (though not always) help new players as more experienced players can reduced their army's power by taking less optimal units but still make tactical choices to ensure the game isn't boring; I always play Beasts of Chaos of Fiends of Slaanesh against new players - they tend to be weaker than most armies, so I can still play tactically without rolling over the newbie. Of course, lack of balance can have the opposite effect where somebody new buys the cool goatman minotaur army, and find they don't have much fun losing all the time.

But, let's be honest, no one is asking for or expecting chess.

As such, we need to find a way to balance units and models in a way that's fun for players (because powerful combos are exciting), without it rolling over everything it sees. This is what I'm trying to say with my first statement - balance doesn't really matter if everyone playing is having fun, but bad balance often stops fun. My proposal would be that the priority needs to be balancing something to the degree that it is fun to play with and against, and everything after that is a secondary concern. 

Let's take Slaanesh as an example. As many know, HoS was a ridiculously powerful army in 2019. It had an incredibly strong greater daemon that could first turn charge and force important units to strike last 80% of the time, and it could summon itself back with little effort. #ShelveSlaanesh went around Twitter for a good reason, and despite this, it's win ratio in tournaments was about 65~%. This wasn't the highest win ratio we'd seen in powerful armies, and yet I don't think there has been a more reviled army than un-nerfed Slaanesh. Why? Because it was very unfun to play against. If you lost against them, it felt like you were getting rolled over by waves and waves of greater daemons. If you won, it still felt like an uphill slog fighting against their allegiance abilities. While they were not statistically the most unbalanced army, they were one of the most unfun. As such, reducing their oppressive abilities was much more important than trying to balance them with just points changes (though I do think they have gone too far in the opposite direction with Slaanesh now).

Another example would be older Beastclaw Raiders. They had a low winrate and yet, especially to casual players, the 2+ 6mw snowball was very unfun. I also think this is more important than increasing the army's overall winrate. 

So yes, bad balance often goes hand in hand with being unfun, but it's not always a 1:1 correlation (assuming balance and fun could be numerically correlated). Nerfing and removing things like Slaanesh's depravity points, 3+ rerolling save bonereaper hordes, and whatever Kroak is up to now is more important to the health of the game than trying to balance win rates. At the end of the day, for the vast majority of players, not getting rolled over first turn by any army is more important than knowing if that army has a 30% or 70% win rate in tournaments.

[Overread]

I think they go hand in hand honestly. 

One thing that Slaanesh shows is bad balance both between armies and also internally. That powerful depravity and Keeper combo is so powerful that it breaks balance not just with other armies, but also internally as well. I think that if you aim for good internal and external balance of each army you will remove many of the un-fun elements on their own.

 

It also leaves you in a strong position whereby you've got a general flat balance and thus you can start to look at mechanics which might be "un-fun" to play against and which are hard to counter. That said I think that un-fun in that case has to be very carefully approached. IF you're mostly just dealing with removing more "tricky" elements from the game you run the risk that you end up with a balanced game that lacks any sense of challenge within its balance. Which in turn removes fun for the more experienced player. 

 

Beginners will always have struggles and whilst its good to make the game open to them as much as possible,  I think that the best way is rather than pandering to them; you instead build up the knowledge base. This might mean writing more tricks, tips and guides into the core books as well as into articles on the GW website and White Dwarf. Tactical understanding that newbies can engage with and learn, just the same as we do for building, painting, converting. Instead of lowering the game to the beginner you open them up to the game by arming them with better understanding and skill. GW can also encourage local players through articles so that clubs away from GW stores can have tools and ideas to help their own less experienced players along. 

I think that that approach starts to shift the "unfun" type of elements from something that just confuses into a challenge for the players to overcome. Plus because you've achieved a generally even level of balance players "know" it can be overcome mathematically. It's up to them to work out the tactical application of the maths to achieve those end goals. Just like its their opponents task to try and deflect and avoid that countering.

 

 

Bringing it back to Chess its like looking at the Queen and going "she's unfun because she's so broken in how she can move anywhere." However the trick by chess players hasn't been to remove her power, instead they've written books; taught new players; run chess clubs; make youtube videos etc... They support the less experienced by offering up knowledge, teaching and training. 

[Kramer]

52 minutes ago, Overread said:

Bringing it back to Chess its like looking at the Queen and going "she's unfun because she's so broken in how she can move anywhere." However the trick by chess players hasn't been to remove her power, instead they've written books; taught new players; run chess clubs; make youtube videos etc... They support the less experienced by offering up knowledge, teaching and training. 

Ehm I think the central point you aren’t mentioning is both players have acces to the exact same queen 😅

you could change the rules but as both side have acces to the same exact model it’s like taking a 💩  on the scales your standing on expecting your weight to change. It’s very messy and won’t change number on the scales  

Edited September 4, 2020 by Kramer

[Overread]

1 hour ago, Kramer said:

Ehm I think the central point you aren’t mentioning is both players have acces to the exact same queen 😅

you could change the rules but as both side have acces to the same exact model it’s like taking a 💩  on the scales your standing on expecting your weight to change. It’s very messy and won’t change number on the scales  

True both do have a queen, however the inexperienced will likely lose their queen very easily compared to the experienced player. Just like how in a wargame a player might not recognise the power that they do have, but can easily see the power that the enemy has just used on them. 

Again if you've a balanced game then, broadly speaking, both sides will have a "queen". Though it won't work the same and in one it might be one model (eg Gotrek or Nagash) and in another it might be a block of units (30 witch aelves with a queen support). 

 

Of course there will still be bad combinations and good combinations of units, in theory a good internal balance of a battletome will give armies a general range of choices.