AoS3 - The points discussion

[RuneBrush]

+++ MOD HAT +++

Could I ask people to steer away from comments about "the devs have no clue" please?  There will have been some logic behind the points changes even if we don't (and never will) know it - that logic could be flawed, may not necessarily work and need changing in the future, but there will be logic!

[Aeryenn]

4 minutes ago, RuneBrush said:

+++ MOD HAT +++

Could I ask people to steer away from comments about "the devs have no clue" please?  There will have been some logic behind the points changes even if we don't (and never will) know it - that logic could be flawed, may not necessarily work and need changing in the future, but there will be logic!

Ok Sir but at least now devs will be aware of the flaws players see at first glance. It is mind boggling that a company which has 30+ years of experience in wargaming, 6 years with AoS alone, still makes obvious mistakes in writing rules and setting points especially when having a vast community that constantly supports them with game experience and comment. As if GW didn't care at all.

[Enoby]

I do think some of these points raise a good argument for faster points changes on weaker units. For example, a look at the weakest factions every 3 months with a careful hand.

I understand it would be unhealthy for the top armies to be nerfed that often (unless they're totally broken), but I really don't think it would have a negative impact to help the bottom factions out a bit. The meta wouldn't shift but people could have more fun with their lower tier armies. 

It's easy to get disheartened when your army is weak because there's no guarantee GW will do anything meaningful to fix it. While harder to balance (though far from too hard), I think they should work on scaling armies up just as much as knocking some down.

[Yoid]

At this moment is clear that Slaanesh points are a placeholder waiting for the moment GW choose to really test and give the army real point costs. There were suspicions (and even confirmation from some playtesters) that this was the case even in the battletome (at least mentioned about Slaangors and Hellstriders).

Is gonna be a rough year for anyone wanting to play with his Slaaneshi toys. But im ready to pay the extra points, play my understrength army and be removed from the table on one or two turns. Im ready to move some big monsters around the table and roll some dices. Now we don't play to win, we play to party as hard as possible and go out in a big wave of depravity.

[Greybeard86]

2 hours ago, Mcthew said:

 

So I'm not buying that GW has a masterplan. Points increases means less models and less profit for GW, but I think that reflects a longer, slower game. A good thing?

Will let you know after my first AoS 3.0 game today.

They have done this already in 40k. They increased points for everything and shortly afterwards decreased them in a targeted manner. I don’t think 9e is any cheaper than 8e, as a result.

It is painfully obvious that GW uses a rotating spotlight to both balance and model releases. There is reason behind the chaos. If just might not be the way you prefer things done.

[Greybeard86]

10 minutes ago, Yoid said:

Is gonna be a rough year for anyone wanting to play with his Slaaneshi toys. But im ready to pay the extra points, play my understrength army and be removed from the table on one or two turns. Im ready to move some big monsters around the table and roll some dices. Now we don't play to win, we play to party as hard as possible and go out in a big wave of depravity.

Replace we by I and it’s golden. I guess it does suck though for those who prefer a more balanced experience. 
 

Given how new some of this sculpts are, my guess is that with slaanesh they are targeting more the hobby side.

[Enoby]

2 minutes ago, Greybeard86 said:

Given how new some of this sculpts are, my guess is that with slaanesh they are targeting more the hobby side.

I really would not understand any marketing strategy that would start with "Guys, how about we make absolutely phenomenal models but point them so highly that only hobby players would want to buy them" - why cut out a part of the market? I don't think there's a hobby player who would say "well, I would have bought these models if only they were worse in game". 

I can understand this line of reasoning for something like Gloomspite - an army that GW may think "we'll make them wacky - silly to play and random, but not necessarily good", but that's very different to using a 'boring' method like points to make something bad. 

I understand targeting different audiences, but having worked in marketing, there would have to be a good reason to turn away a potential audience (e.g. if they would clash with a larger audience). From my understanding, having good rules and points doesn't hurt a hobbyist but does open up to the competitive or even just casual gamer.

[Laststand]

2 hours ago, Skreech Verminking said:

I can’t say much about the skaven, since I haven’t had a game in yet.

Yet there are some buts in the min. Size department, when it comes to certain units.

Skaven have that wonderful allegiance ability where they get +1 to the hit roles if a unit has 20 or more models and +1 to the wound role if it has 30 or more models.

Since stormvermin and plague monks, can now only be taken in 30s (stormvermin) and in 20s (plague monks in a not all units a re pestilence army) it basically means, that they loose on their buff most of the times instantly, which I kinda find sad.

considering that stormvermins and plague monks are sold in boxes of 20, I really was hoping that they would get an increase on their min. size  yet stormvermins and plague might now never see the table again, since it takes a huge amount of reinforcement points to upgrade them to a size where they almost always loose their allegiance bonus instantly.

Now I know Stormvermins, could be a huge problem in units of 60, with which I definitely agree, but it could be easily handled by just adding something, that says: this unit can only be reinforced ones.

 

@Skreech Verminking  I wonder if monks may have some use in 10s as aggressive road blocks? 4 bringers of the word with books of woe are going to be a real nuisance if they are all in one area of the board. 

[RuneBrush]

51 minutes ago, Aeryenn said:

Ok Sir but at least now devs will be aware of the flaws players see at first glance. It is mind boggling that a company which has 30+ years of experience in wargaming, 6 years with AoS alone, still makes obvious mistakes in writing rules and setting points especially when having a vast community that constantly supports them with game experience and comment. As if GW didn't care at all.

My issue is that I'd be pretty miffed if I went somewhere and read comments where strangers were telling me that I was rubbish at my job and it was "obvious".  It's one thing for people to point out problems, it's another for people to be rude about it.  Hope you can see where I'm coming from - ultimately if we want the devs to identify the issues we believe we've found, it's best to not start off telling them they're god-awful at their job.

[Greybeard86]

37 minutes ago, Enoby said:

I really would not understand any marketing strategy that would start with "Guys, how about we make absolutely phenomenal models but point them so highly that only hobby players would want to buy them" - why cut out a part of the market? I don't think there's a hobby player who would say "well, I would have bought these models if only they were worse in game". 

I can understand this line of reasoning for something like Gloomspite - an army that GW may think "we'll make them wacky - silly to play and random, but not necessarily good", but that's very different to using a 'boring' method like points to make something bad. 

I understand targeting different audiences, but having worked in marketing, there would have to be a good reason to turn away a potential audience (e.g. if they would clash with a larger audience). From my understanding, having good rules and points doesn't hurt a hobbyist but does open up to the competitive or even just casual gamer.

I think we discussed this at some other point. Not all armies can be good at the same time in GW's design paradigm.

Do you believe, for a second, that they cannot spot some of the underperfoming units and armies same as you can?

It is not rocket science, it is very simple statistics we are dealing with here.

[Ragest]

39 minutes ago, RuneBrush said:

My issue is that I'd be pretty miffed if I went somewhere and read comments where strangers were telling me that I was rubbish at my job and it was "obvious".  It's one thing for people to point out problems, it's another for people to be rude about it.  Hope you can see where I'm coming from - ultimately if we want the devs to identify the issues we believe we've found, it's best to not start off telling them they're god-awful at their job.

The lack of communication is one of the problems because people can get mad about they can see.

I understand some post are more agressive than should be, but if you see that a big number of players are unhappy with your decissions the best way is to make an AMA or even make a post giving some context, explaying what's behind the changes.

If you don't say anything people will tend to think that you did random stuff instead of a good playtest, even if is not the case.

[Malakithe]

25 minutes ago, Greybeard86 said:

Do you believe, for a second, that they cannot spot some of the underperfoming units and armies same as you can?

It is not rocket science, it is very simple statistics we are dealing with here.

Ehhh....you would think that but look at at the online gaming industry. Games like World of Warcraft. You would think the devs of a 15+ year online game of millions of players would be able to identify balance issues...but they dont. They cant. Thats what we are for. We complain and point out stuff until they do something about it. Or they dont...which is largely the case.

GWs metrics on buffs and nerfs are largely based on sales and tourneys. Baring those they claim to have play testers but ive always found that to be false. It would take months and months and dozens of 3rd party testers to point out flaws in rules and points. Thats what public test realms are for. GW has what, maybe a handful of play testers? The sample size needs to be huge for actual results. Not just a few guys that play a couple games.

Edited June 19, 2021 by Malakithe

[Rachmani]

The thing about this type of feedback (emotional & conclusive, sometimes mean, not purely informative) is, that it holds little value apart from showing disappointment.

Without showing the means of our conclusions & objective evidence, how could GW separate accurate feedback from let’s say not so accurate? In most cases GW doesn’t know who we are & what credibility we have.

Now, if you’d ask me, I‘d say the new point values are all over the place and „clearly“ mismatched. But I‘m also the guy who couldn’t play since lockdown first started  last march. I get that especially the Slaanesh guys & gals have been more thorough than others and there is a wide variety of feedback given, some undoubtedly very accurate. But give them at least until the GHB and a possible FAQ until you jump to conclusions. 
And beyond that, show you‘re right through games played. Unfortunately these things take time, and we had a pandemic after all. 
 

P.S. hey, no losing on purpose you little slaanesh ******!

P.P.S. The censored word was ma-so-chist. Before someone thinks I wrote something less humorous.

Edited June 19, 2021 by Rachmani

[Greybeard86]

4 minutes ago, Malakithe said:

Ehhh....you would think that but look at at the online gaming industry. Games like World of Warcraft. You would think the devs of a 15+ year online game of millions of players would be able to identify balance issues...but they dont. They cant. Thats what we are for. We complain and point out stuff until they do something about it. Or they dont...which is largely the case.

And I think you (we) should complain. But know that, mistakes aside, they actually bake imbalance in their design. Because system mastery reward is a design paradigm embraced by many companies in the nerdsphere (DnD, Magic, and GW).

[Malakithe]

2 minutes ago, Greybeard86 said:

And I think you (we) should complain. But know that, mistakes aside, they actually bake imbalance in their design. Because system mastery reward is a design paradigm embraced by many companies in the nerdsphere (DnD, Magic, and GW).

That is true. If it aint broke, dont fix it doesnt help sales and creates product stagnation 

[RuneBrush]

16 minutes ago, Ragest said:

The lack of communication is one of the problems because people can get mad about they can see.

I understand some post are more agressive than should be, but if you see that a big number of players are unhappy with your decissions the best way is to make an AMA or even make a post giving some context, explaying what's behind the changes.

If you don't say anything people will tend to think that you did random stuff instead of a good playtest, even if is not the case.

It's about how you put your unhappiness across that's the biggest factor.  If you want to make a complaint about anything you need to be clear and concise, not angry and offence.  Humans are funny creatures, but if you greet somebody with hostility you're likely to get hostility or avoidance.  Greet somebody with a smile and a balanced argument and you're much more likely to get the same response in return.  This applies to face to face and the internet in equal measure.

This has been my Saturday morning TED talk 😁  I'd best get on with something that isn't on the computer now 🧐

[Phasteon]

40 minutes ago, Ragest said:

The lack of communication is one of the problems because people can get mad about they can see.

I understand some post are more agressive than should be, but if you see that a big number of players are unhappy with your decissions the best way is to make an AMA or even make a post giving some context, explaying what's behind the changes.

If you don't say anything people will tend to think that you did random stuff instead of a good playtest, even if is not the case.

Just because those people yelling about balance and rules flaws are the loudest doesnt mean that they are right or even a majority. 

I think this point came up often enough by now, if you think the devs created a „bad“ game, by all means go ahead and play something different. 

Just because YOU personally dont like the design choices they are not „obviously“ bad/wrong/whatever. 

Not talking to someone specific here, just generally speaking. 

[shinros]

22 minutes ago, Phasteon said:

Just because those people yelling about balance and rules flaws are the loudest doesnt mean that they are right or even a majority. 

I think this point came up often enough by now, if you think the devs created a „bad“ game, by all means go ahead and play something different. 

Just because YOU personally dont like the design choices they are not „obviously“ bad/wrong/whatever. 

Not talking to someone specific here, just generally speaking. 

Clearly slaanesh is well-pointed and well-designed, GW clearly know what they're doing. When even the play-testers and most youtubers can't defend the points, thanks, I'm sure you know best. Yes, I'm also playing something different, but if people are unsatisfied with a product they have the right to voice their complaint, for if they don't, GW won't know if something has gone wrong or not. 

Corporations aren't our friends. In my eyes there is clear favouritism going on with certain factions considering the glaring balance differences between books and pointing.    

Edited June 19, 2021 by shinros

[Enoby]

2 hours ago, Greybeard86 said:

I think we discussed this at some other point. Not all armies can be good at the same time in GW's design paradigm.

Do you believe, for a second, that they cannot spot some of the underperfoming units and armies same as you can?

It is not rocket science, it is very simple statistics we are dealing with here.

We did yes

And yeah, not every army can be good, but I don't see any gain in the company making bad rules that appeal to no one (as in, none of the player "types").

For an example army (a hypothetical one so we don't get bogged down in details of a real army), let's say Umbraneth got released with absolutely amazing models - a full range detailing everything a fan could want. However, their rules were abysmal. I don't understand how this could help sales. Hobby players won't buy more because the rules are bad.

I don't think the devs are incompetent, but I do think they miss things or get rushed. Listening to one of the playtesters of the Slaanesh book, it sounded like a messy affair. They couldn't go into detail but it sounded like a struggle, and they said Slaangors were just plain bad. I think poor rules/points are mostly accidental and caused by a mix of external pressure and human error.

Edit: I remember you shared an interesting article on why bad cards existed in Magic, and I responded giving my reasons I don't think it applied to Warhammer. 

I guess my 'thesis statement' is, "A miniature company would not intentionally sabotage its (expensive to make) product to the entire gaming audience as it would result in lower sales and potentially a loss of profits" 

The reasons in magic made sense because it's a deck building game with little emotional attachments to each card (so no real "fans" of a particular card), and the cards are cheap to make and their usability is on rotation. In magic, who cares if you pull a bad card? There are ten others in a pack and it's not like you were emotionally invested in that card being good. And a very important one is that Magic makes money off card packs with random cards in - they sell cards individually, so if you want the good cards, you have to buy the bad too (or the ebay resellers do). For Wizards, if they have three great cards in a set then that set could sell well, regardless of the other quality so the financial risk is considerably lower. In Warhammer, a bad army is just not bought, and they cost a lot to bring out. 

As we've seen, at least with Slaanesh, a lot of even die hard Slaanesh fans have chosen not to purchase any more. This is a loss of sales caused by a marketing tactic, which sounds like a poor tactic to me? 

Edited June 19, 2021 by Enoby

[stratigo]

2 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

My issue is that I'd be pretty miffed if I went somewhere and read comments where strangers were telling me that I was rubbish at my job and it was "obvious".  It's one thing for people to point out problems, it's another for people to be rude about it.  Hope you can see where I'm coming from - ultimately if we want the devs to identify the issues we believe we've found, it's best to not start off telling them they're god-awful at their job.

I mean I have to go through life with people on the internet nd in real life pretending they know my job better than I do because they read a book from penguin press, or read a few wiki articles and that makes them experts on history now. Just how the internet works.

 

GW rules writers make mistakes. Often a lot of them. I suspect these mistakes mostly come from lack of support combined with incredible time pressures from corporate and not because they are actually incompetent, and it's a pity cause it's just easier to blame the writers instead of the system. But that's kind of a common tragedy where individuals get blamed for institutional or systematic failings.

[Greybeard86]

22 minutes ago, Enoby said:

And yeah, not every army can be good, but I don't see any gain in the company making bad rules that appeal to no one (as in, none of the player "types").

[...]their rules were abysmal. I don't understand how this could help sales.

 

22 minutes ago, Enoby said:

As we've seen, at least with Slaanesh, a lot of even die hard Slaanesh fans have chosen not to purchase any more. This is a loss of sales caused by a marketing tactic, which sounds like a poor tactic to me? 

Bad rules are bad in relation to other armies. GW follows a design paradigm according to which you offer "better" options for people who crunch numbers to find. Thus, there must be relative worse options, otherwise there would be no "better choices".

The beauty of this is that, whenever they want to make a product line appealing to number crunchers, they can just tweak the rules.As a matter of fact, they do this, constantly. I am more familiar with the "competitive" gaming side of 40k, and there units rise and fall within months. But there are always several broken options, which can be spotted with a calculator and 30 mins on release of every book. Making them obviously good and obviously bad is just to ensure that we average dummies can spot the good things, but still feel smug.

I believe that GW is aware that some more invested players grumble, but this rotating spotlight system they have, coupled with reward system mastery, seems to be working very well for them. GW does not want you to buy Slaanesh miniatures and that's it. Ideally, you'll have 3+ armies, and you'll rotate between gaming and hobby armies. At some point, every army gets to shine, just wait your turn, etc.

I mean, it's been like this for as long as a I remember, it is just that GW releases way faster now so everything seems more frantic.

[stratigo]

4 minutes ago, Greybeard86 said:

 

Bad rules are bad in relation to other armies. GW follows a design paradigm according to which you offer "better" options for people who crunch numbers to find. Thus, there must be relative worse options, otherwise there would be no "better choices".

The beauty of this is that, whenever they want to make a product line appealing to number crunchers, they can just tweak the rules.As a matter of fact, they do this, constantly. I am more familiar with the "competitive" gaming side of 40k, and there units rise and fall within months. But there are always several broken options, which can be spotted with a calculator and 30 mins on release of every book. Making them obviously good and obviously bad is just to ensure that we average dummies can spot the good things, but still feel smug.

I believe that GW is aware that some more invested players grumble, but this rotating spotlight system they have, coupled with reward system mastery, seems to be working very well for them. GW does not want you to buy Slaanesh miniatures and that's it. Ideally, you'll have 3+ armies, and you'll rotate between gaming and hobby armies. At some point, every army gets to shine, just wait your turn, etc.

I mean, it's been like this for as long as a I remember, it is just that GW releases way faster now so everything seems more frantic.

40k has more of a vision in competitive gaming then AoS historically has had. Maybe this will change in 3.0. They have made some movement in that way, but AoS has historically been more hesitant to cater to competition than 40k has been.

[Fred1245]

32 minutes ago, Greybeard86 said:

 

Bad rules are bad in relation to other armies. GW follows a design paradigm according to which you offer "better" options for people who crunch numbers to find. Thus, there must be relative worse options, otherwise there would be no "better choices".

The beauty of this is that, whenever they want to make a product line appealing to number crunchers, they can just tweak the rules.As a matter of fact, they do this, constantly. I am more familiar with the "competitive" gaming side of 40k, and there units rise and fall within months. But there are always several broken options, which can be spotted with a calculator and 30 mins on release of every book. Making them obviously good and obviously bad is just to ensure that we average dummies can spot the good things, but still feel smug.

I believe that GW is aware that some more invested players grumble, but this rotating spotlight system they have, coupled with reward system mastery, seems to be working very well for them. GW does not want you to buy Slaanesh miniatures and that's it. Ideally, you'll have 3+ armies, and you'll rotate between gaming and hobby armies. At some point, every army gets to shine, just wait your turn, etc.

I mean, it's been like this for as long as a I remember, it is just that GW releases way faster now so everything seems more frantic.

This is an incredibly optimistic take that somehow makes it even more predatory that the reality.

GW makes clearly overpowered units as a design crutch, not as a 'reward for number crunchers'. They leave themselves obvious above curve units because they know they're terrible at balance on the margin and at least if they leave something OP, there'll be ONE reasonably effective way to play the army. They did that to DoK right now. 'We'll bump the whole faction up 20% compared to the average 10 but we'll only hit Morathi 10% (despite her being the uncontested best unit in the book) so at least they'll still have 1 really powerful unit to pivot off of. Armies generally get out of control when they make those OP units/strategies and then accidentally get the rest of the codex right (see Drukhari, Late 8th Space Marines). 

Secondly, the strategy you're outling is dumb as spit and is likely responsible for bottlenecking sales far more than it is encouraging them. Rotating which MODELS WITHIN A FACTION are powerful drives sales, rotating which factions are dog**** stagnates sales of the bad army as much or more than it boosts sales of the good army resulting ina net zero change AT BEST. Less than 1% of the playerbase is concerned enough with tournaments to go out and buy a brand new faction if their army gets bad and another army gets good and the players who DO have multiple armies have them because they LIKE them and it's incredibly unlikely that even with 3(which is an insane number for one game if you ask me, how do you STORE it all?) That even one of your armies will be that rotations so called 'good one'. It's far more likely that your average player(specifically player, not hobbyist) will stop purchases and/or switch games temporarily or permanently. Any increased sales that come from fixing bad factions come from people already within those factions or who were already looking for an excuse to get in on the faction. Not people who see a GT winning list and go 'whelp time to spend several hundred dollars and several dozen hours for no guarantee!'

 Anecdotally, I stopped buying stormcast models after the last codex was lopsided, uninspired bunk, to the point where I'm skipping dominion entirely and only planning on buy yndrasta from ebay box breakers and haven't bothered to pick up the DoK battletome or their endless spells or Shadowstalkers. I used to see that stuff as being on the same level as my electric bill, now I just can't justify spending anything on it and I don't like any of the other factions enough for good rules to matter(even as essentially a tournament only player).

 

You give GW both far more and less credit that they deserve and seem to think the community is a bunch of powerchasing lemmings who don't have anywhere else to go.

[whispersofblood]

37 minutes ago, Greybeard86 said:

 

Bad rules are bad in relation to other armies. GW follows a design paradigm according to which you offer "better" options for people who crunch numbers to find. Thus, there must be relative worse options, otherwise there would be no "better choices".

The beauty of this is that, whenever they want to make a product line appealing to number crunchers, they can just tweak the rules.As a matter of fact, they do this, constantly. I am more familiar with the "competitive" gaming side of 40k, and there units rise and fall within months. But there are always several broken options, which can be spotted with a calculator and 30 mins on release of every book. Making them obviously good and obviously bad is just to ensure that we average dummies can spot the good things, but still feel smug.

I believe that GW is aware that some more invested players grumble, but this rotating spotlight system they have, coupled with reward system mastery, seems to be working very well for them. GW does not want you to buy Slaanesh miniatures and that's it. Ideally, you'll have 3+ armies, and you'll rotate between gaming and hobby armies. At some point, every army gets to shine, just wait your turn, etc.

I mean, it's been like this for as long as a I remember, it is just that GW releases way faster now so everything seems more frantic.

TBF the HoS warscrolls are bland, like so bland that every time I go to write a list or talk about HoS I have to reread them... and I'm the sort of person who can recall keywords on specific warscrolls from armies I don't play, that didn't interact with the rules of the game until a new rule shows up. 

Their basic profiles are ok, so yeah I think some of the HoS stuff is overblown, and fundamentally based on what was the desire to really be able to field a Mortal Hedonite army, so essentially being frustrated. For example Painbringers are fine, they are the sort of God specific Chaos Warrior clone you would expect, but somehow that's really disappointing and falls flat. Some of it is archetypal though, elite but otherwise normal line infantry aren't good in AoS, unless they are incredibly hard to kill for their points. So it is not really a surprise that Painbringers, and Twinsouls are meh.

So I don't actually think its a stats problem, there are competitive builds even still in the HoS book, they just are kinda not what a person who is drawn to HoS is going to prebuilt to see, or enjoy if that makes sense?

Your third paragraph does have a lot of merit, GW does want you to rotate through your armies to even out your individual purchasing power/quarter, so that you are constant buying. That's obviously an incentive structure they could build into the game, I don't know if they necessarily have the system mastery to pull it off though. But it isn't an impossible narrative.

[Vaporlocke]

6 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

My issue is that I'd be pretty miffed if I went somewhere and read comments where strangers were telling me that I was rubbish at my job and it was "obvious".  It's one thing for people to point out problems, it's another for people to be rude about it.  Hope you can see where I'm coming from - ultimately if we want the devs to identify the issues we believe we've found, it's best to not start off telling them they're god-awful at their job.

Or maybe you take a step back and think "What am I doing to make people say that?". You're always going to have detractors, but when enough people agree that you did something wrong it reaches of point where it's impossible to dismiss it. The next step is to identify and improve in those areas, both for your customers and yourself. 

 

There have been thousands of well written posts describing in great detail how to make things better. If GW was smart they would reach out to the community and take advice from some of the better known players. I would love if someone like Joel McGrath had a hand in writing or designing the next BoC book and I'm sure other armies would benefit from the input of players who love their armies and know them inside and out. It's something that simple that would improve the game and sales and becomes a win for everyone. 

Edited June 19, 2021 by Vaporlocke
Autocorrect got me