Discussing balance in AoS

[Battlefury]

5 hours ago, Vaporlocke said:

Don't... Don't do that, don't give me hope that my Goatboys will actually be good. 

Don't worry, they will not perform good, just because the game edition brings changes

By the way I play BoK, welcome to the pleasure dome.

 

[Kamose]

I'm painting up some Gors right now in anticipation of the "You're one those people that actually bought lots of Gors after the last Beasts of Chaos book was released, thank you!" Secondary Objective,  score 15 points. 

 

Just an automatic 15pt crutch for running Gors! 🐐

Edited May 3, 2021 by Kamose

[Vaporlocke]

27 minutes ago, Kamose said:

I'm painting up some Gors right now in anticipation of the "You're one those people that actually bought lots of Gors after the last Beasts of Chaos book was released, thank you!" Secondary Objective,  score 15 points. 

 

Just an automatic 15pt crutch for running Gors! 🐐

Good luck finding anything else outside of the start collecting box!

[Kamose]

When Broken Realms: Kragnos drops and Gors get a surprise warscroll rewrite I'll be sitting pretty! 

[Battlefury]

Today there was a situation at our local community chat.

A player, who is a long term player for like 5 years now, complained about balance issues he is seeing. He brought out some data from honest wargamer, to show what he is meaning ( Seraphon win rate for example ).
What happened is, that people came with comments like:

"Gonna take another beer and stay silent."
"We don't need to discusss, that there are better armies, but throwing numbers in the room...?"
"So you mean, that players who wanna win should play Seraphon, because the rest is kind of not that successfull?"
"That you need to talk about overpowered armies, I know no combo, army or unit that is op."

People even don't want to listen to people, that see a problem in the current situation.

Personally, I have enough of people just countering, that there is no problem, because they didn't see it yet. By the way, most of the pople countering his point are playing DoT, IDK, Seraphon, HoS.


 

[Phasteon]

7 hours ago, Battlefury said:

Today there was a situation at our local community chat.

A player, who is a long term player for like 5 years now, complained about balance issues he is seeing. He brought out some data from honest wargamer, to show what he is meaning ( Seraphon win rate for example ).
What happened is, that people came with comments like:

"Gonna take another beer and stay silent."
"We don't need to discusss, that there are better armies, but throwing numbers in the room...?"
"So you mean, that players who wanna win should play Seraphon, because the rest is kind of not that successfull?"
"That you need to talk about overpowered armies, I know no combo, army or unit that is op."

People even don't want to listen to people, that see a problem in the current situation.

Personally, I have enough of people just countering, that there is no problem, because they didn't see it yet. By the way, most of the pople countering his point are playing DoT, IDK, Seraphon, HoS.


 

Why? 

Why don’t you understand people that just want to enjoy the game and not discuss about balance? 

In this thread its 100% legit to discuss balance and if I don’t like it I am free to ignore this thread. 

But coming from someone that worked at a GW store for some time:

When every game results in a balance discussion because some1 cant take the loss its getting really annoying. 

90% of the time balance is NOT the issue - its just people blaming mistakes (gameplay or listbuilding wise) on the general balance. 

 

EDIT: 

@Battlefury iirc your BoK list was pretty MSU style and featured many different units? 

What about 20 Blood Warriors in the ignore -1 rend battalion to hold objectives, or 5-6x 10 Reavers to generate lots of blood tithe to get a BT of insensate rage - tripple BT + Skarbrand in the fight first battalion? 

I faced every possible BoK list and so many of them were very scary and if I made one bad move or lost one crucial initiative roll off it would have been gg. 

But your list looked nothing like it. 

Edited May 4, 2021 by Phasteon

[Kasper]

7 hours ago, Battlefury said:

Today there was a situation at our local community chat.

A player, who is a long term player for like 5 years now, complained about balance issues he is seeing. He brought out some data from honest wargamer, to show what he is meaning ( Seraphon win rate for example ).
What happened is, that people came with comments like:

"Gonna take another beer and stay silent."
"We don't need to discusss, that there are better armies, but throwing numbers in the room...?"
"So you mean, that players who wanna win should play Seraphon, because the rest is kind of not that successfull?"
"That you need to talk about overpowered armies, I know no combo, army or unit that is op."

People even don't want to listen to people, that see a problem in the current situation.

Personally, I have enough of people just countering, that there is no problem, because they didn't see it yet. By the way, most of the pople countering his point are playing DoT, IDK, Seraphon, HoS.


 

My only issue when talking about balance in the local gaming clubs is when balance is being used as an excuse of ****** poor play and a reason for why the person loses their games. "Oh but your army is so OP! Honestwargamer stats supports this!" meanwhile my army isnt a "meta list" and the opponent did like 100 mistakes. Stuff like this pisses me off.

[stratigo]

the problem with seraphon is that they really are too easy to accidently into a list that will clobber anyone casual. It's just all good. Not all great, but there's only really a few obviously wrong choices in seraphon and a lot stands on its own.

[pnkdth]

4 hours ago, Kasper said:

My only issue when talking about balance in the local gaming clubs is when balance is being used as an excuse of ****** poor play and a reason for why the person loses their games. "Oh but your army is so OP! Honestwargamer stats supports this!" meanwhile my army isnt a "meta list" and the opponent did like 100 mistakes. Stuff like this pisses me off.

I agree, it shouldn't be the go-to excuse and people should be made aware that every list from X army won't be as competitive or optimised as those winning tournaments. Worse still if it spreads to the tabletops, cause that's going to create a horrible gaming environment.

Similarly, we should be careful when dropping the 'git gud' bomb on new players. Some armies definitely require a lot more focus and game knowledge than others, even against fairly middle of the road tier armies. Acting as if everything is fine can be just as toxic to the game as always blaming X or Y army for a loss.

Expectations is, IMO, the key bit that's missing. If you end up in a meta-chasing group of players then there are armies which will struggle. If that player is told you can do well with any army and just 'git gud' that player could end up feeling like it is pointless. If that player is told that "yeah, that's a pretty advanced army, you should expect to lose a lot before you get the hang of it", the player will enter games with more realistic expectations.

Stuff like this is inevitable, i.e. that some armies will be more or less straightforward than others. Perfect balance would be so very boring since the game would either be incredibly rigid in what you can bring or symmetrical in balance like chess. Neither sounds appealing to me.

In other words, gittin' gud is a part of it is also true that some armies can stack their army list with incredibly point efficient units giving them an advantage of their opponent. At the other end, some armies have a very small selection of good choices much of their battletome is a trap (the back of forth on BoK in this thread is a good example of that). Indeed, some of the factions rely on creating synergies through souping/allying in units to make their army work properly.

Then there's the side of me who enjoy playing the underdogs and anti-meta lists...  Plus, there's always going to be one or two armies which the players manage to break. Too many moving parts really and that is kind of the charm. If we communicate that aspect, that the meta comes and goes, instead of being defensive about it I think people would be more accepting and willing to 'git gud.'

 

[Battlefury]

5 hours ago, Phasteon said:

Why? 

Why don’t you understand people that just want to enjoy the game and not discuss about balance? 

In this thread its 100% legit to discuss balance and if I don’t like it I am free to ignore this thread. 

But coming from someone that worked at a GW store for some time:

When every game results in a balance discussion because some1 cant take the loss its getting really annoying. 

90% of the time balance is NOT the issue - its just people blaming mistakes (gameplay or listbuilding wise) on the general balance.

My community is in the spot, where competetive players claim they are casual, but the lists they bring, are absolutely nasty.
I understand, that people don't want to talk about it. But the clubbing of everyone, who went up and told, what he / she is experiencing, is not the way to go. Most of the players here just brand those as idiots, who should shut the **** up and get good.

 

5 hours ago, Phasteon said:

EDIT: 

@Battlefury iirc your BoK list was pretty MSU style and featured many different units? 

What about 20 Blood Warriors in the ignore -1 rend battalion to hold objectives, or 5-6x 10 Reavers to generate lots of blood tithe to get a BT of insensate rage - tripple BT + Skarbrand in the fight first battalion? 

I faced every possible BoK list and so many of them were very scary and if I made one bad move or lost one crucial initiative roll off it would have been gg. 

But your list looked nothing like it. 

Tried that list, with no sucess. As far as I remember, that lists got stomped by MW output a la couleur. Skarbrand is mostly done in turn 2, since my local meta is completely dominated by shooting and magic.

Why my list didn't look like this is, that I just have no motivation anymore in experimenting with all those lists from the past. It began in AoS 1.0, when the bok got nerfed ( Murderhost ), wich was pretty much a very good possibility for competetive play.
Now I am to play casual, but even that doesn't work. Getting stomped over and over again.
As I told, my meta is dominated by shooting and magic and those armies, that just are very better in melee ( DoT, HoS, Ser, KO, OBR, CoS, SCE )

But thank you for your tip and will to help

1 hour ago, pnkdth said:

Similarly, we should be careful when dropping the 'git gud' bomb on new players. Some armies definitely require a lot more focus and game knowledge than others, even against fairly middle of the road tier armies. Acting as if everything is fine can be just as toxic to the game as always blaming X or Y army for a loss.

He bought Nighthaunt with the AoS 2.0 release, because he likes the models ( can absolutely agree, they're just so good ).
Mentioned today, that he will not play them anymore, too frustrating.

Gonna talk to him today, maybe I can find a way to keep him from leaving the game ( as most of our veteran players did before ).

 

1 hour ago, pnkdth said:

Then there's the side of me who enjoy playing the underdogs and anti-meta lists...  Plus, there's always going to be one or two armies which the players manage to break. Too many moving parts really and that is kind of the charm. If we communicate that aspect, that the meta comes and goes, instead of being defensive about it I think people would be more accepting and willing to 'git gud.'

Good point. Could you maybe give me an example for those Anti Meta amries / lists?
Maybe via PM. I would like to see and adapt, since my local meta is in desperate need of changes, otherwise I see the community breaking apart.
Maybe I can even use those to bring back players, who abandoned AoS for the inconcistent rule design.

[Nos]

Balance is too diffuse a word.

When I say balance I mean I want a game which is principally balanced towards both players being involved and enjoying themselves with what they have. This is something which most mini games have as their ethos. The rules of things like Oathmark, Saga, Kings of Wrar etc are designed around this.

Hardly any games are designed around the ethos that every instance is 50/50. Thats why Chess Is a stand out. The core of most strategy games in any form is not balance in chances of winning, but balance through transparency. The Rock Paper Scissors abalogy is the obvious example. This does this. This means this. This is good at this. This is bad at this. That's basically what warscrolls are meant to convey, and the shift to objective gameplay. The idea with strategy games is that experience and grasping the basics are the currency of how to win, and then different factions have different ways to interact with these.

But AOS is nonetheless *attrocious* on this front otherwise. As is 40k, as was Warhammer. GW are in general.

Bit thus is because GW principally sell their lore. People for the most part collect GW armies because they want to invest in the models and the whole experience of following them through the lore. There is more flavour in GW factions. People love their army like they love their sports teams. They get excited for new releases like they want new players to sign for their club. With the historical wargames I play, which are vastly more elegant systems on the table, there is nothing like that degree of enthusiasm off it. 

I think the issue with balance is that GW dont know how to/don't care about translating the character of factions onto the table *with restraint*.

Sylvaneth are my favourite AOS faction because they combine beautiful models with thematic rules. The problem is they have clearly been designed with close adherence to the core mechanics. You have to play the game well to utilise their powers. You get the basics wrong, you're not going to be able to use your army effectivley. I love that because it makes them a very involved experience 

Whereas the strongest factions tend to get rules with supersede those of the core mechanics, either through exploit or deliberately. The abundance of MW and Ward Saves is the most obvious case in point. These were originally designed to be rare, powerful supplements to combat. Now they're just routine components for the strongest factions while being largely unavailable to others. With the strong factions, you can play badly and still win just by virtue of having the tabletop equivalent of an atomic bomb. You just need to detonate it. 

In that scenario you could have someone who plays the basics much better stil lose to someone who makes multiple basic errors but is able to exploit a gimmick. And learning how to beat that gimmick isnt really about learning to play the game better- it's about learning how to stop one very particular contrivance.

Basically if GW actually stuck to the core rules of AOS as rigid, and worked out how to acce that the character ter of each da tion within those, rather than inventing new ways for every new army to effectivley ignore some of them, it would be more fun and no less competitive. 

Edited May 4, 2021 by Nos

[baiardo]

16 minutes ago, Nos said:

Balance is too diffuse a word.

When I say balance I mean I want a game which is principally balanced towards both players being involved and enjoying themselves with what they have. This is something which most mini games have as their ethos. The rules of things like Oathmark, Saga, Kings of Wrar etc are designed around this. AOS is *attrocious* on this front. As is 40k, as was Warhammer.

But I get it, because GW principally sell their lore. People for the most part collect GW armies because they want to invest in the models and the whole experience of following them through the lore. There is more flavour in GW factions. People love their army like they love their sports teams. They get excited for new releases like they want new players to sign for their club. With the historical wargames I play, which are vastly more elegant systems on the table, there is nothing like that degree of enthusiasm off it. 

I think the issue with balance is that GW dont know how to/don't care about translating the character of factions onto the table *with restraint*.

Sylvaneth are my favourite AOS faction because they combine beautiful models with thematic rules. The problem is they have clearly been designed with close adherence to the core mechanics. You have to play the game well to utilise their powers. You get the basics wrong, you're not going to be able to use your army effectivley. I love that because it makes them a very involved experience 

Whereas the strongest factions tend to get rules with supersede those of the core mechanics, either through exploit or deliberately. The abundance of MW and Ward Saves is the most obvious case in point. These were originally designed to be rare, powerful supplements to combat. Now they're just routine components for the strongest factions while being largely unavailable to others. With the strong factions, you can play badly and still win just by virtue of having the tabletop equivalent of an atomic bomb. You just need to detonate it. 

In that scenario you could have someone who plays the basics much better stil lose to someone who makes multiple basic errors but is able to exploit a gimmick. And learning how to beat that gimmick isnt really about learning to play the game better- it's about learning how to stop one very particular contrivance.

Basically if GW actually stuck to the core rules of AOS as rigid, and worked out how to acce that the character ter of each da tion within those, rather than inventing new ways for every new army to effectivley ignore some of them, it would be more fun and no less competitive. 

 

 

 

 

Also GW makes better miniatures(by far) and as you said, lore, that's why I'm in, and personally the knowledge that every army get the "power" at some point. Sure that encourages having more than one faction

Edited May 4, 2021 by baiardo

[Battlefury]

5 minutes ago, baiardo said:

Also GW makes better miniatures(by far) and as you said, lore, that's why I'm in, and personally the knowledge that every army get the "power" at some point. Sure that encourages having more than one faction

If you can pay for that, wich a lot of people can#t and don't want. Also, some armies won't get the power. We never know what GW designes and why. Ther is no certain foresight of an army being powerful.

[baiardo]

8 minutes ago, Battlefury said:

If you can pay for that, wich a lot of people can#t and don't want. Also, some armies won't get the power. We never know what GW designes and why. Ther is no certain foresight of an army being powerful.

Yeah I am one of those people haha, I have one faction and don't want another one!

I have only said what appears to be.

[Battlefury]

1 minute ago, baiardo said:

Yeah I am one of those people haha, I have one faction and don't want another one!

I have only said what appears to be.

So am I one of those

Sorry I maybe got the intention wrong, didn't want to offend you.

[pnkdth]

36 minutes ago, Battlefury said:

Good point. Could you maybe give me an example for those Anti Meta amries / lists?
Maybe via PM. I would like to see and adapt, since my local meta is in desperate need of changes, otherwise I see the community breaking apart.
Maybe I can even use those to bring back players, who abandoned AoS for the inconcistent rule design.

It is fairly straightforwards, you look at your local meta and design an army which goes against what those armies are used to dealing with. It does require a certain degree of list tailoring but since it won't be against a specific army or specific battle you're not becoming 'that guy.' You're adapting the meta rather than trying to make one particular player's experience worse.

The difficult part of this is that some army lists are so incredibly oppressive (shooty/magic meta) all you really can do is move up and hope you win priority. However, an anti-meta list would approach this with "how do I make the decisions of what to shoot more difficult?" Is it possible for you to create a list where everything is a bad choice since no matter what gets shot up you still have something to answer with/trade with? It doesn't have to be MSU but you might want to design a list around redundancy. 

Best way to do it would be start brainstorming with the rest of the players of your group + experienced players online who use your faction. You guys know the local meta best, after all. 

It is always good to remember that the Seraphon player also have put a lot of time/money into their army. Both of which are good reasons for why that player gets defensive about the list he's using. Getting called out is not fun either... Which is what makes situations like this so delicate.  

[Nos]

37 minutes ago, pnkdth said:

It is fairly straightforwards, you look at your local meta and design an army which goes against what those armies are used to dealing with. It does require a certain degree of list tailoring but since it won't be against a specific army or specific battle you're not becoming 'that guy.' You're adapting the meta rather than trying to make one particular player's experience worse.

The difficult part of this is that some army lists are so incredibly oppressive (shooty/magic meta) all you really can do is move up and hope you win priority. However, an anti-meta list would approach this with "how do I make the decisions of what to shoot more difficult?" Is it possible for you to create a list where everything is a bad choice since no matter what gets shot up you still have something to answer with/trade with? It doesn't have to be MSU but you might want to design a list around redundancy. 

Best way to do it would be start brainstorming with the rest of the players of your group + experienced players online who use your faction. You guys know the local meta best, after all. 

It is always good to remember that the Seraphon player also have put a lot of time/money into their army. Both of which are good reasons for why that player gets defensive about the list he's using. Getting called out is not fun either... Which is what makes situations like this so delicate.  

I think it depends on the nature of how the army was collected though 

If someone buys an army over time that gets a boost from new rules etc, that's different from someone who buys an army solely because its strong in the meta.

And even then, a Seraphon player can easily tailor a list to still be strong without being egregious. I remember at launch of 2nd ed when Sequitors and Gav Bomb were stupidly obnoxious, I stopped using them pretty quickly. I wasnt winning on account of anything besides exploiting something which was neither fun for me or my opponent.

Someone who makes a single list which clings to the strongest meta safety blanket unerringly, without the slightest experimentation or attempts to get inside the theory of it, who just plats a list, esse totally, who then has that pointed out to them,  I think that's fair enough.

It's their prerogative to do that if they want but it's also inarguably what they're doing. Its not a case of superior skills, it's a case of effective execution of an established system that somebody better and more creative at AOS than them created.

Which is also fine and a skill in itself. But it's not a mark of being good at AOS and it's not why those who are good at AOS suceeed and develop their skills 

 

[Kadeton]

15 hours ago, Battlefury said:

My community is in the spot, where competetive players claim they are casual, but the lists they bring, are absolutely nasty.

Now I am to play casual, but even that doesn't work. Getting stomped over and over again. As I told, my meta is dominated by shooting and magic and those armies, that just are very better in melee ( DoT, HoS, Ser, KO, OBR, CoS, SCE )

He bought Nighthaunt with the AoS 2.0 release, because he likes the models ( can absolutely agree, they're just so good ).
Mentioned today, that he will not play them anymore, too frustrating.

This seems like an opportunity to build a more fun-oriented community. Your BoK and your friend's Nighthaunt are getting smashed by overly-competitive "casual" players? Don't play against them - play against each other instead. Your armies should be better matched, and you'll have a more enjoyable time. You'll probably find other people in your community who aren't into the highly competitive meta, and they'll be happy to join you.

Make it clear to the competitive players that you won't play against hardcore lists. They'll either adjust to suit, or they'll continue just playing each other - either is fine, you don't need those people who refuse to adjust for the sake of the community. You'll be building a new local scene based on clear expectations where being too competitive is frowned upon rather than rewarded.

I think this is an important point that's been largely missed in all the balance discussions. If you're the kind of player who just wants to have casual games, but your pool of opponents are largely players who just want to win, then you'll probably have a bad time regardless of whether your army is "meta strong" or not. Finding like-minded opponents is just as (if not more) important as having balanced armies.

[Golub87]

23 hours ago, Phasteon said:

Why? 

Why don’t you understand people that just want to enjoy the game and not discuss about balance? 

In this thread its 100% legit to discuss balance and if I don’t like it I am free to ignore this thread. 

But coming from someone that worked at a GW store for some time:

When every game results in a balance discussion because some1 cant take the loss its getting really annoying. 

90% of the time balance is NOT the issue - its just people blaming mistakes (gameplay or listbuilding wise) on the general balance.

First of all, we do have definitive numbers that prove that books have great impact on mid-lvl players and their games. Your 90% number on the other hand, is a complete and utter fabrication with absolutely no data to back it up. You just added it there to sound more convincing. Please stop doing that. It is deceptive and manipulative.

Now the second thing is: Why?

Why don't you understand that some people can't enjoy the game if it is impacted so much by the army matchup and so little by their actions on the table? As Honest Wargamer has started exploring, it seems that the numbers get even more skewed when you take specific army vs army interactions.

It seems that there is a significant subset of people who enjoy the fact that their armies can effortlessly crush others and then get downright terrified whenever talk of balance is brought up. I mean, of course they are, how will they get such skewed win ratios if the game is even remotely balanced?

I am super sorry, but I want a game that will provide randomized and fun outcomes on a Sunday afternoon, not a game that will indulge someone's power fantasies at the expense of someone else. I get it that it is super fun for the hypothetical tryhard personality profile who lucked into getting an army that dominates its local casual meta, but it is not fun for anyone else.

[Phasteon]

55 minutes ago, Golub87 said:

First of all, we do have definitive numbers that prove that books have great impact on mid-lvl players and their games. Your 90% number on the other hand, is a complete and utter fabrication with absolutely no data to back it up. You just added it there to sound more convincing. Please stop doing that. It is deceptive and manipulative.

Now the second thing is: Why?

Why don't you understand that some people can't enjoy the game if it is impacted so much by the army matchup and so little by their actions on the table? As Honest Wargamer has started exploring, it seems that the numbers get even more skewed when you take specific army vs army interactions.

It seems that there is a significant subset of people who enjoy the fact that their armies can effortlessly crush others and then get downright terrified whenever talk of balance is brought up. I mean, of course they are, how will they get such skewed win ratios if the game is even remotely balanced?

I am super sorry, but I want a game that will provide randomized and fun outcomes on a Sunday afternoon, not a game that will indulge someone's power fantasies at the expense of someone else. I get it that it is super fun for the hypothetical tryhard personality profile who lucked into getting an army that dominates its local casual meta, but it is not fun for anyone else.

Edit: Srsly, you are not worth the attention.

To your last paragraph though, thats exactly how 90% (Ha! gotcha, call me out on those „unproven 90%“ again now?) of games go.

 

Edited May 5, 2021 by Phasteon

[Kadeton]

1 hour ago, Golub87 said:

First of all, we do have definitive numbers that prove that books have great impact on mid-lvl players and their games.

I am super sorry, but I want a game that will provide randomized and fun outcomes on a Sunday afternoon, not a game that will indulge someone's power fantasies at the expense of someone else.

It's worth considering that the "definitive numbers" we have come from tournament results, not from casual gaming. Tournaments are (to my mind at least?) the complete opposite of "randomized and fun outcomes on a Sunday afternoon".

Tournaments skew the balance data (everyone is trying to bring their nastiest list), but it's extremely hard to see because tournaments are the only data. I'm not saying that you're wrong about the impact of army selection on the outcomes of casual games, just wanted to point out that we don't have any definitive numbers on that whatsoever - the numbers we do have are from a completely different context, and we should keep that in mind.

[Battlefury]

6 hours ago, Kadeton said:

This seems like an opportunity to build a more fun-oriented community. Your BoK and your friend's Nighthaunt are getting smashed by overly-competitive "casual" players? Don't play against them - play against each other instead. Your armies should be better matched, and you'll have a more enjoyable time. You'll probably find other people in your community who aren't into the highly competitive meta, and they'll be happy to join you.

Make it clear to the competitive players that you won't play against hardcore lists. They'll either adjust to suit, or they'll continue just playing each other - either is fine, you don't need those people who refuse to adjust for the sake of the community. You'll be building a new local scene based on clear expectations where being too competitive is frowned upon rather than rewarded.

I think this is an important point that's been largely missed in all the balance discussions. If you're the kind of player who just wants to have casual games, but your pool of opponents are largely players who just want to win, then you'll probably have a bad time regardless of whether your army is "meta strong" or not. Finding like-minded opponents is just as (if not more) important as having balanced armies.

Good advice, will try that. Unfortunately I am the local TO

The problem really is, that I can only play casualy, since I will not have a chance versus other armies, if it comes to a competition.

[Battlefury]

2 hours ago, Golub87 said:

I am super sorry, but I want a game that will provide randomized and fun outcomes on a Sunday afternoon, not a game that will indulge someone's power fantasies at the expense of someone else. I get it that it is super fun for the hypothetical tryhard personality profile who lucked into getting an army that dominates its local casual meta, but it is not fun for anyone else.

Completely agree.

The entire balance issue is, that the outcome of a game is massively controllabe and predictable via the choice of faction.

I would like to define, what balance means for me, so all of you see my point.

A game I concider balanced, is a system, that provides a variation of outcomes. Meaning, no matter what I play against, then win rate is DYNAMIC. As long as it stays dynamic in any way, where no clear faction choice leads into more or less LINEAR results, I concider the game to be ok.

 

1 hour ago, Kadeton said:

It's worth considering that the "definitive numbers" we have come from tournament results, not from casual gaming. Tournaments are (to my mind at least?) the complete opposite of "randomized and fun outcomes on a Sunday afternoon".

Tournaments skew the balance data (everyone is trying to bring their nastiest list), but it's extremely hard to see because tournaments are the only data. I'm not saying that you're wrong about the impact of army selection on the outcomes of casual games, just wanted to point out that we don't have any definitive numbers on that whatsoever - the numbers we do have are from a completely different context, and we should keep that in mind.

I see what you mean. In fact I think, the combination of data is the correct way. In a casual scene it is kind of okeyish, when players agree on what they use.
Otherwise the probem really is, that the choice of faction determines a big percentage of game outcomes in the casual games, since some army choices provide players with a "always viable" combination of units, no matter what they will use. Other armies do clearly have several trap rules, that prevent them from having the same game experience, and therefore will have a bad game experience.

Competetive data only really show the extremes of this trend. That's why we use those data, since they are documented. Casusal games do often not get public documentation. Yeah I know, this froum has some of them, but the agreement to meet before the game, will in fact influence those data massively, and therefore not show the whole picture.

[Kadeton]

6 minutes ago, Battlefury said:

The problem really is, that I can only play casualy, since I will not have a chance versus other armies, if it comes to a competition.

I think folks on all sides of this debate can probably agree that BoK are in a bad place right now and will need a new book before they're in the same league as most of the armies in the game. That's a specific balance outlier.

[Battlefury]

29 minutes ago, Kadeton said:

I think folks on all sides of this debate can probably agree that BoK are in a bad place right now and will need a new book before they're in the same league as most of the armies in the game. That's a specific balance outlier.

I guess you're right. I am the only one playing the army in my city, therefore some of the players just smile at me, when I say, that I won't play on tournaments since I will not have a chance.

That's very frustrating, and in fact it is discouraging to play at all. That's where my point comes from, that I concider AoS to be very unbalanced, since I experience the extreme in an extreme environment, which is tournaments.

That's, what shouldn't be in any game.