Discussing balance in AoS

[Hannibal]

35 minutes ago, NinthMusketeer said:

I remember that article! I didn't read it, because I know from the results that it doesn't work.

 

It´s easy to offer a negative perspective, but how would YOU balance the game?

Did you ever try?

 

I ´ve been playing GW games since about 25 years now and there is one fact regarding all of the games: GW can´t balance.

I played a lot of other tt games over that 25 years. And there is one fact regarding all that games: balance didn´t exist anywhere.

How would you balance a unit of Chaos Warriors which can be played in 5 different armies?

How would you calculate the points of Flamers of Tzeentch which are heavily supported by an other warscroll (Exalted Flamer) and a certain subfaction? What if you just field a unit of 3 Flamers without any support compared to a 6 - 9 men unit with full support in Eternal Confaguration? => no points system can reflect this.

 

That being said, I don´t even see the problem. If I like to be successful at tournaments, I go and pay that 600 to 1000 Euros to get a fully painted – now new shiny toy – army and don´t look back.

 

Someone here wrote about negative play experience. IMO this is the real problem, because it effects every single person out there. Let´s say 3 people enter a GW shop and buy what they think is cool. Then it is possible that at least one of these persons will have an uphill battle in every single game due to negative play experience because of too strong units in the opposing army or not enough understanding of the game or simply because he plays underwhelming low model count units against well working big units (which are favoured by the rules).

[NinthMusketeer]

1 hour ago, Hannibal said:

It´s easy to offer a negative perspective, but how would YOU balance the game?

Did you ever try?

Yes, actually, and thank you for asking. Back before the first General's Handbook I worked with one of the three major fan comps at the time, what we had was better than anything since. And I think that is an important factor to understand about my perspective; when GW started doing points the balance of my games went down as compared to when they weren't doing them at all. A lot.

I also manage Road to Renown, which is a complete second edition to Path to Glory that rebalances all of the warband tables. Not matched play, but it is still a rather intricate balancing dynamic.

So yeah, when I say GW should do better I say it from a position of being able to do better myself.

 

Also, in regards to this:

"I played a lot of other tt games over that 25 years. And there is one fact regarding all that games: balance didn´t exist anywhere."

This is another rendition of the perfect balance fallacy, where one uses the reality of true balance being impossible to defend balance that is terrible. No one has ever advocated for true balance in AoS. People like me just want it to be better than it currently is. People like me want to lose the chance for games to be decided simply from the lists involved.

Edited March 23, 2021 by NinthMusketeer

[NinthMusketeer]

1 hour ago, whispersofblood said:

Meh this used to be a troupe back in WHFB and basically we reached a point where people needed to not be so serious about nouns. Sure each tribe has one Frostlord but what if the Huskards in one tribe were so powerful they would be a Frostlord in another. Narrative fixed

Mechanically you just need to make sure that the abilities (warscroll) of each unit is useful, and not so over priced to be not worth taking. 

For example in WHFB a captain who wasn't a battle standard bearer offered little compared to a warrior priest. Then they got Hold the Line and you could actually have a conversation about one or the other. 

See the likes of a Frostlord don't just come along every day. The whole point is they are one-in-a-million and having multiples of them damages narrative immersion. And strictly narrative players, despite being fully capable of writing around the issue, rarely do. Because it is writing to excuse what is obviously a balance-driven decision, and it often reads as lame as it sounds.

Your second point doesn't work. The Huskard is worth taking. It still gets dropped in favor of a Frostlord because the latter is far stronger for its cost. Your idea is in essence 'if everything was balanced it would be fine' which, while true, will never happen and so is entirely moot to the discussion.

WHFB had separate allocations for Lord and Hero options, and even had specific limits on them for quite some time. During the golden age of WHFB you could only have 1 lord choice in a 2000 point army, even more restrictive than what I am suggesting.

[Gurgamel]

Dont know if these mechanics are in play or not but to change that who strikes first and burst the enemy type of gameplay more effects and abilites that can only trigger (be used) efter surtain rounds or modells lost or enemys slain. And only after that bring out the power to dominate or turn the tide, difference is that  of wiping say 50% of enemy forces later ingame will make it feel less op since there has already been casulties. Instead of having all spells alla abilites and battalion bonuses in the begining.  Like shifting gears to get pumped up.

[NinthMusketeer]

Some units do have mechanics like that. I also think they are fun and a good self-balancing mechanism, it would be cool to see more of them.

[Kadeton]

9 hours ago, NinthMusketeer said:

WHFB had separate allocations for Lord and Hero options, and even had specific limits on them for quite some time. During the golden age of WHFB you could only have 1 lord choice in a 2000 point army, even more restrictive than what I am suggesting.

Yeah, those restrictions were pretty brutal. I'm playing in a 7th-edition-with-6th-edition-armies WHFB escalation league at the moment, and my Vampire Counts army can't even be led by a Vampire until we scale up to 2000 points. Great for conveying the sense that Vampire Counts were extremely rare and powerful beings, and Vampire Lords were another step even above that.

On the other hand, that was a totally different game. AoS focuses much more on heroes, gods and monsters. Immersion-wise, I find it much harder to believe that Nagash, Alarielle or Teclis show up to a 2000-point battle in person than two Abhorrent Arch-Regents, but it is what it is.

Edited March 24, 2021 by Kadeton

[zilberfrid]

12 hours ago, Hannibal said:

I played a lot of other tt games over that 25 years. And there is one fact regarding all that games: balance didn´t exist anywhere.

negative play experience because of too strong units

Regarding the first: I think you're going for a "No true Scotsman" fallacy here:

Perfect balance might be impossible due to terrain, objectives being 0.1 mm this way or that way and similar, but there are quite a few companies doing better than GW in the balance department. Often by way of a more equalized ruleset.

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. In GW's case: can you start to at least try for something resembling balance?

Regarding the second point: we must remove NPE from balance.

Badly balanced games are bad, but losing because you cannot beat the enemy is far from the only NPE.

An army can be both a massive pain to play against and weak.

Look at the Cathaller for instance. Don't think she's taken often, but she can take bravery from an enemy unit and give it to her own. Not too bad.

Then she can take bravery rolls from her own unit, and outsource that to an enemy one.

Bravery rolls are already annoying, so if you manage to beat something with a decent model count, your guys run away? Sounds weird, and bad. Note that this could be with that lowered bravery.

Then she has a spell (oh yeah, those things may sound like spells, but that might be counterable, and we don't want the enemy to have any influence on the game) that simply removes the ability to act for one unit, depending on a bravery roll, which, again, can be lowered.

Then if we do start beating up single entities to prevent that stupid battleshock outsourcing, she has an artifact that can revive a fallen pointy elf hero, with all wounds restored (though this is chance based). This is to ensure the enemy feels helpless even when achieving something.

 

It's a beautiful model, but awful rules that treat an opponent as an enemy you want not only beaten, but entirely losing the willingness to fight you ever again.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

1 hour ago, zilberfrid said:

Regarding the first: I think you're going for a "No true Scotsman" fallacy here

I agree with what you are saying in your post, but that's not "No True Scotsman". That fallacy is about changing your argumentative standards in an opaque way when confronted with counter arguments by arbitrarily excluding counter-examples as invalid, e.g.:

• 1: "There are no balanced games without a double turn mechanic."
• 2: "40k doesn't have a double turn mechanic and is balanced.
• 1: "Yeah, but 40k isn't a truly balanced game."

But you did correctly identify the actual argumentative trap in your post, anyway. "The perfect is the enemy of the good", the idea that because perfection is not possible, there is no point in trying. But even if we think perfect balance is not achieveable/realistic, there is definitely better and worse balance, and we should strive for "better".

[Beliman]

Unpopular opinion about Lumineth:

I like all this type of gimmicks that don't offer more lethality, and I'm all in for utility.  I will wait to see the Hurakan dudes on the table and I'm fine with the Stoneguard push. Some of the old KO's gimmicks (AoS 1.0) that I really miss were the grapnel and the Thunderers slingshot. Really powerful abilities, but only one (maybe two) units could do that, and after the first play, the enemy could play around it (and doesn't matter what army was playing).

My main issue is the high lethality that we can achieve with some wombo-combo that can just reduce everything to ashes. And there are some armies that  don't have enough mechanics to play around it (ranged mortal wounds, magic with auto-cast or +3 to casts, high dmg alpha-strikes, etc...).

In other words, I don't care if I can throw a chicken to your sentinels, if my army doesn't have a chicken that can do that. I don't care if magic missiles can be absorbed by save after save if my army doesn't have anything like that. I don't care if I can break 2+ saves with rend if my army doesn't have any rend.

Edited March 24, 2021 by Beliman

[JonnyTheKing]

I’m in a weird spot with Lumineth, they’re very powerful but I don’t think they’re truly broken, Sentinels and the Cathallar absolutely need adjusted though, whether that be the points or the warscroll itself. I also find Lumineth super unfun to play, I’ve played around 10 games against them now and never lost but I’ve only enjoyed maybe 1 of the games?

 

100% agree that there are huge differences in power, look at most Blades of Khorne units and then compare them to Lumineth units, it’s absolutely insane the difference between them. Hopefully 3rd Ed can bring everything back to similar levels 

[Skreech Verminking]

1 hour ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

2: "40k doesn't have a double turn mechanic and is balanced

I would like to see you explain exactly  that to a mono Khorne daemon player.

I’m certain that he will be disapproving those words in his own aggressive way

Edited March 24, 2021 by Skreech Verminking

[Skreech Verminking]

1 hour ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

• 1: "Yeah, but 40k isn't a truly balanced game."

 

Oh never mind my first post,

ssry

[Enoby]

1 minute ago, Skreech Verminking said:

I would like to see you explain exactly  that to a mono Khorne daemon player.

I’m certain that he will be disapproving those words in his own aggressive way

Daemons in 40k are weird; it's kinda like 4 armies in one codex that you can use together, so it's hard to say if they're good or not. Slaanesh and Nurgle do well in tournaments, no clue about Tzeentch besides a LoC being used, and Khorne is just worse Slaanesh.

Not that this is relevant, just the daemon codex is weird because it's thematically 4 armies that hate each other, but usually to get the most use of them you need to use them together 

 

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

10 minutes ago, Skreech Verminking said:

I would like to see you explain exactly  that to a mono Khorne daemon player.

I’m certain that he will be disapproving those words in his own aggressive way

 

9 minutes ago, Skreech Verminking said:

Oh never mind my first post,

ssry

Just so we are on the same page, the exchange in my post is not actually supposed to reflect my opinion or represent facts. It's just an illustration of a faulty mode of arguing. If you don't like that example, here's the classic one:

• 1: "No scotsman would ever put cream in their porridge."
• 2: "My uncle Angus McSweeny always puts cream in his porridge."
• 1: "Yeah, but he's no true scotsman."

The problem is with the the way 1 argues: They present a claim, 2 presents a counterexample, and 1 invalidates it without justification by saying that the counterexample does not count.

But this threat is about discussing balance, not discussing logical fallacies, so back to topic.

Edited March 24, 2021 by Neil Arthur Hotep

[Kadeton]

2 hours ago, Beliman said:

I like all this type of gimmicks that don't offer more lethality, and I'm all in for utility.

I'm with you, to some extent. Mechanics that evoke a particular image of a special fighting style or unique ability without just being "add some Mortal Wounds" (like the Stoneguards' push) are often great for the game. Rather than just increasing raw damage numbers, they encourage the player to think creatively to maximise the value of their units' abilities.

Where I would add a caveat, though, is with abilities that cause the other player's units to be locked down and unusable. These don't offer more lethality, but they're still one of the most consistently negative player experiences across the whole spectrum of tabletop wargames. As we've seen mentioned in other discussions, this is because they reduce player interaction, and that's generally frustrating rather than fun.

[zilberfrid]

1 hour ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Just so we are on the same page, the exchange in my post is not actually supposed to reflect my opinion or represent facts. It's just an illustration of a faulty mode of arguing. If you don't like that example, here's the classic one:

• 1: "No scotsman would ever put cream in their porridge."
• 2: "My uncle Angus McSweeny always puts cream in his porridge."
• 1: "Yeah, but he's no true scotsman."

The problem is with the the way 1 argues: They present a claim, 2 presents a counterexample, and 1 invalidates it without justification by saying that the counterexample does not count.

But this threat is about discussing balance, not discussing logical fallacies, so back to topic.

Small aside: I tried preempting the Scotsman.

The position in the post I replied to was "Balance didn't exist anywhere" across 25 years of tabletop gaming.

The only way that the position makes even a little sense is if you zoom into differences down to microscopic levels. That would go to a "Catan creates a semblance of balance by its village/city placement" "Yes, but depending on where exactly the numbers are, any place in the order can have a leg up" "Yes but, contrary to that...." and so forth.

If we balance a stick on a fulcrum, if you dig deep enough, there will be more atoms of stick on one end or the other, but as long as the stick stays level, we say it's perfectly balanced.

So it may have been a bit rude to accuse of logical fallacies, but it's the only way the post worked in my head.

[Beliman]

3 minutes ago, Kadeton said:

Where I would add a caveat, though, is with abilities that cause the other player's units to be locked down and unusable. These don't offer more lethality, but they're still one of the most consistently negative player experiences across the whole spectrum of tabletop wargames. As we've seen mentioned in other discussions, this is because they reduce player interaction, and that's generally frustrating rather than fun.

That's a good point, but I want to add something. 

I'm more frustated that my units are killed without playing my first turn, than 2 units in an entire army that I know that they have a gimmick (that can be played around btw) that can stop one of my units to attack in one of their ten possible fighting phases.

And I already played with a unit that can "move" outside of combat in the fighting phase, but nobody had a problem with it. After all my opponents knew  the slingshot trick, all of them played around it without too much problems.

Of course, if the whole army can ignore the fight phase and the enemy can't play around it, that's another story. 

[Kadeton]

39 minutes ago, Beliman said:

I'm more frustated that my units are killed without playing my first turn, than 2 units in an entire army that I know that they have a gimmick (that can be played around btw) that can stop one of my units to attack in one of their ten possible fighting phases.

Yeah, I think there's some really interesting psychology around killing units in games. It's immensely frustrating if a unit dies before it gets to "do" anything, no question. But that feeling is really diminished if the player got to make some kind of action with that unit before it died - even as little as getting the chance to move it into a different position changes the impact of its death.

Similarly, there's a weird difference between lockdown mechanics and death. Killing a unit is obviously the ultimate "you don't get to use that piece any more" mechanic, but players don't strongly object to that outcome because it's expected in the genre. But paralyse a unit so that it can't move or take any actions but is still on the board? Players, broadly speaking, tend to hate that. Even if the paralysis mechanic takes as much "effort" or "resources" as just straight-up killing the unit, players have more fun when it dies than when it's rendered unusable.

(The other mechanic that really ticks people off is summoning. Something in our monkey brains can accept that the opponent can remove models from my army, but not that they can add models to their army, for "free". Killing models is also free!) 

[Beastmaster]

1 hour ago, Kadeton said:

 

(The other mechanic that really ticks people off is summoning. Something in our monkey brains can accept that the opponent can remove models from my army, but not that they can add models to their army, for "free". Killing models is also free!) 

I think that’s more to do with the overall structure of the game. Agreeing on a number of points, then setting up models up to that point limit is, on the surface, the only balancing mechanic with which the player actually interacts. Setting up some more points of models after the game begun feels like cheating, obviously. It’s not what was agreed upon. 

[NinthMusketeer]

8 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

I agree with what you are saying in your post, but that's not "No True Scotsman". That fallacy is about changing your argumentative standards in an opaque way when confronted with counter arguments by arbitrarily excluding counter-examples as invalid, e.g.:

• 1: "There are no balanced games without a double turn mechanic."
• 2: "40k doesn't have a double turn mechanic and is balanced.
• 1: "Yeah, but 40k isn't a truly balanced game."

But you did correctly identify the actual argumentative trap in your post, anyway. "The perfect is the enemy of the good", the idea that because perfection is not possible, there is no point in trying. But even if we think perfect balance is not achieveable/realistic, there is definitely better and worse balance, and we should strive for "better".

Technically it is the Nirvana Fallacy, but it is brought up so often I think breaking it off into it's own sub-category of "Perfect Balance Fallacy" is worth doing. Because seriously almost every balance discussion has someone popping in to try it. There was, at least, no mention of the phrase 'even chess isn't perfectly balanced!' and for that I am thankful.

[Beer & Pretzels Gamer]

This has been an interesting thread but I keep coming back time and again to the question: what are we willing to trade off for more balance?

For example, are we willing to increase list building complexity to increase balance?  Certainly if AoS went the 40k route and started charging points for a lot more of the options we currently get “free” the ability to increase balance via point differentiation would increase.

Alternatively would we be willing to accept more of a Rock Paper Scissors style balance?  By this I mean would we except that for our faction there are opponent’s that we are simply going to have a very low win probability if they are balanced out by alternative opponents where we’ll have very high win rates if it meant overall the balance in the game improved?

This stems again from my basic impression that there are deep & complex feedback loops in AoS so it is difficult to make adjustments in one area without impacting many others.  Given this I struggle to see “free” ways to improve balance.  That is not to say there are not low cost options currently available or higher cost solutions that may be worthwhile to pay up.  I’m just very curious what prices players would be willing to pay, most particularly s relates to their favorite faction, to improve the game’s overall balance?

[NinthMusketeer]

2 minutes ago, Beer & Pretzels Gamer said:

Certainly if AoS went the 40k route and started charging points for a lot more of the options we currently get “free” the ability to increase balance via point differentiation would increase.

Going to stop you right there. It wouldn't. 40k balance is at least as bad as AoS. If anything, 40k is proof that the AoS approach of point costing in 'bundles' is better because splitting things into component point costs simply gives GW that many more places to mess up.

[Gorsameth]

5 minutes ago, Beer & Pretzels Gamer said:

This has been an interesting thread but I keep coming back time and again to the question: what are we willing to trade off for more balance?

For example, are we willing to increase list building complexity to increase balance?  Certainly if AoS went the 40k route and started charging points for a lot more of the options we currently get “free” the ability to increase balance via point differentiation would increase.

Alternatively would we be willing to accept more of a Rock Paper Scissors style balance?  By this I mean would we except that for our faction there are opponent’s that we are simply going to have a very low win probability if they are balanced out by alternative opponents where we’ll have very high win rates if it meant overall the balance in the game improved?

This stems again from my basic impression that there are deep & complex feedback loops in AoS so it is difficult to make adjustments in one area without impacting many others.  Given this I struggle to see “free” ways to improve balance.  That is not to say there are not low cost options currently available or higher cost solutions that may be worthwhile to pay up.  I’m just very curious what prices players would be willing to pay, most particularly s relates to their favorite faction, to improve the game’s overall balance?

In theory points for wargear options could lead to more balancing. In practice it doesn't and probably leads more to some options being never taken because of bad points balancing.

 

Having more nobs to turn only helps if the people turning the nobs are good at using them

Edited March 24, 2021 by Gorsameth

[Beer & Pretzels Gamer]

4 minutes ago, NinthMusketeer said:

Going to stop you right there. It wouldn't. 40k balance is at least as bad as AoS. If anything, 40k is proof that the AoS approach of point costing in 'bundles' is better because splitting things into component point costs simply gives GW that many more places to mess up.

 

3 minutes ago, Gorsameth said:

In theory points for wargear options could lead to more balancing. In practice it doesn't and probably leads more to some options being never taken because of bad points balancing.

 

Having more nobs to turn only helps if the people turning the nobs are good at using them

I agree with both these points.  Just trying to throw options out that I’ve seen because while I regularly hear calls for more balance there is a tendency to focus on narrow solutions such as nerf faction X (which the poster typically does not play).  When the changes are bigger (nerf shooting) the unintended consequences are rightly highlighted.  So I’m just struggling to understand what trade offs people are interested in.

[NinthMusketeer]

There are a lot of changes in design I think would improve balance, improve the game, and make AoS better. Some people also think my ideas are cool, others disagree, or only partly agree. There is a lot of discussion to be had on the what-ifs in that regard.

But I don't ask GW to do that. What I ask of GW in regards to balance is very simple: do a better job with the point costs. That's it. No trade-offs, no changes. Just balance them better.

Hell, send the stuff to me before it goes to the printers and I would do it for free. It is not that difficult to improve.