NPE (Negative Play Experience) in Age of Sigmar

[Enoby]

Continuing on from the discussion in the Rumour Thread. 

[novakai]

for some context and summary of the discussion:

Negative Play Experience (NPE) is when playing a game frustrates or bores one or both players. NPEs are thought to prevent new players from fully entering the game or leading to existing players abandoning the game.

Warhammer weekly show is probably where the term started gaining traction in the AoS community. the term NPE has existed in other gaming communities beforehand but this is the top video if you youtube search the term Negative Play experience.

people and players all have different views of what's NPE and what made them feel NPE in games. Some common ones cover in the show during AoS 2.0 where the Activation Wars (largely (sort of) been toned down in AoS 3.0), Multiple fighting abilities, Shooting, and Turn one alpha strike.

this episode was launched probably during the height of a Magic Domination, Shooting, or as a counter Tanky Deathstar meta. So at the time, the armies in the survey with the Highest NPE ranking were Seraphon, Tzeentch, KO, Fyreslayers, and LRL. Slaanesh and FEC  were probably up there at one point in time before some targeted nerfs but had left some bad taste in people's minds. As we are in 3.0 our perception of who is on top of this list has probably shifted a lot.

LRL has been used as the example of most NPE by the community (sometimes by Warhammer Weekly, often time even in other online communities like here and Reddit). an infamous example is probably Sentinel with their range attack at 30 inches, no line of sight, sometimes MW on 5s and 6s, and rerolling hits with Lambent light. Other example includes Foxes and their movement shenanigans, Total Eclipse doubling your CP spending which you can guarantee going off with Teclis, and even stuff like Cathallar passing battleshock on to your units can be unfun.

 

Personally my opinion on the matter, I think NPE is largely based on Player perception, and with my feeling that the player base seems to lean toward a more casual play, the abilities that deny you to play the game or things like shooting that don't have much or limited counterplay are more disdained by the community. like me, I personally have not like playing against abilities that shut off CA usage (Nurgle Flylord with that helm or NH with shutting off IP, granted I play armies that tend to have low bravery and overtly rely on IP more so than other armies) but as someone playing the game for some time now I am more use to these experiences than say a newer player. something that may not be meta strong like Boltboyz shooting, Slaanesh if you use their summoning to the fullest potential, or BoC with -4 rend, can cause NPE if there is not a knowledge or communication of abilities beforehand.

Edited June 23, 2022 by novakai

[yukishiro1]

It basically always comes down to a lack of interactivity. Nobody likes stuff happening to them with no feeling of agency. Everything people identify as NPE basically boils down to "he gets to do his stuff and I don't get to do mine." Total Eclipse is like the best example ever. Covers the whole board, likely casts from Teclis and therefore autocasts at a very high value (even undispellable if you really want) and makes you pay twice as much to do a core part of the game. It's the most noninteractive thing ever. But pretty much all NPE can be rephrased as a lack of interactivity. Shooting is much less interactive than melee, especially long range shooting. Stormdrake guard hero phase move just happened, they just belch MWs at you and it could be 0MW or it could be 20MW and you (the player on the receiving end) have no ability to determine which it is. Old Hermdar Fyreslayers fighting first and fighting twice made their fight phase essentially like everyone's shoot phase, i.e. non-interactive. Etc etc.

It all comes down to interactivity. We play this game with an opponent, and both players need to feel they have agency or the game isn't fun. 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 23, 2022 by yukishiro1

[KydbrookP]

Thank you for setting up this thread.

I’m interested in thinking about this the other way around: how do I make a list that is a positive experience to play against? A list that presents a challenge but isn’t too frustrating?

I expect I want to avoid:

too much shooting

alpha strikes

unkillable units

a long hero phase

But it would be OK to lean into:

Manoeuvrability

Some Tankiness

 

I’m collecting CoS, and I’ve got a core of a Griffon, Demigryphs and Phoenix Guard, which all seem OK (they don’t kill too much, or die too easily). Any other thoughts? Are highly swingy things fun to play against?

[Popisdead]

The guy I play closest to my place says "I wont' do this because it won't be fun for your to face"

 

If being a **** whilst you win is the most important factor of gaming it differs from what I am after and won't play those kinds of people twice.  

 

Do what you want.  

[Sonnenspeer]

What I hate are all this resurrection abilities. I want this unit of dire Wolfes to stay dead, after I kill them.

No, they come back. And my Unit of humble warriors was turned into more dire Wolfes too. Oh and some more where just summoned on the board 🙈😅

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

4 minutes ago, Sonnenspeer said:

What I hate are all this resurrection abilities. I want this unit of dire Wolfes to stay dead, after I kill them.

No, they come back. And my Unit of humble warriors was turned into more dire Wolfes too. Oh and some more where just summoned on the board 🙈😅

But then you compare that to old Legions of Nagash resurrecting 40 Skeletons for a command point and suddenly it doesn't seem so bad.

[Wordy9th]

I think hard NPEs are mostly based on player interactions, or player interactions can turn soft NPEs into hard ones. Nothing leaves a more bitter taste in your mouth than a player running roughshod over your army or playing with rules that prevent interactions, but that can become far better if your opponent is an understanding and empathetic person. Or, conversely, far worse if they're a smuglord about it. 

From my perspective the NPE's I've experienced because of my armies are:

Soulblight resurrections and Slaanesh summoning. What I've learned is absolutely no one enjoys seeing a unit of 30 skeletons come back, or resurrecting 6 at a time before that. With Slaanesh if the game is going even then out of nowhere a Keeper turns up gets a lucky charge does 15 mortals and makes sigvald fight twice then you're likely to get frowns too. 

Lack of explanation or understanding of game winning rules. If Mannfred's ability to teleport is not properly understood, or an artifact which reduces all rend by shooting was skipped over until the shooting round you can expect understandable discontent.  

Witnessing an uneven power balance. Especially outside of a tournament setting if your opponent is playing a BEER AND PRETZELS list and you've brought out the 2x Gladiatrix 60 Witch elf Morathi list then the human instinct to feel unfairly done by immediately comes to the fore. I once played another person's DoK army and the opponent player absolutely did not enjoy just watching an army list that was simply far better than his in every way demolish him. 

The NPE's I've experianced from other people's armies are:

1) Long turn times. This is a player factor but also an army one. Last night I witnessed a good friend of mine drive their opponent up the wall trying to measure every millimeter for a Sloppity bilepiper's song, asking far too many questions and generally just running down the clock. This of course has to do primarily with knowing your own rules, but armies such as Lumineth or any highly 'Johnny' focused player army which requires perfect execution to win absolutely affects this. Interactivity or lack thereof is an issue when you're stuck with someone for potentially a minimum of three hours, waiting an hour to use your redeploy or unleash hell doesn't quite cut it.

2) Debuffs. Even -1 to hit can feel bad, but -1 to damage because of a cruciator or DoK Invocation that I cannot dispell? My Corpse Cart giving out a -1 to wound aura has given conniptions plenty. 

I think what's worth really emphasizing is that the social contract part of the game is extremely important for all participants to follow, and make the experiance as best as possible for all parties. Not to sound cheesy but with great power comes great responsibility, and the better you are at the game, the more you know and the more powerful your army is I think, the bigger the onus is for you to make whatever tricks and abilities up your sleeve as palatable for the opponent as possible. Be aware of what is in your army that can cause NPE, explain it properly, and use it in accordance with the context you are given.

That said, your opponent needs to be aware of these abilities, and if they aren't, think positively and take it as a learning exercise. One tournament I went to I had no idea the Engine of the Gods could summon Saurus warriors for free, that was on me for not knowing it and now I know! If you're playing a casual game and you know what your opponent is taking, be aware of what their army can do as much as you can, because if you're signing up to play against your friends Lumineth fox list, well, you have no one to blame but yourself x).

 

[JackStreicher]

32 minutes ago, Wordy9th said:

I think hard NPEs are mostly based on player interactions, or player interactions can turn soft NPEs into hard ones. Nothing leaves a more bitter taste in your mouth than a player running roughshod over your army or playing with rules that prevent interactions, but that can become far better if your opponent is an understanding and empathetic person. Or, conversely, far worse if they're a smuglord about it. 

Agreed.
To me armies that cause the most NPE  are Ossiarch Bonereapers, Ironjawz, Lumineth, Tzeentch and Sons of Behemath.
The Models that cause the most NPE: Teclis, Khorne Deamon Prince, Archaon, Sentinels, Foxes, Katakros, Goat God man of Destruction (forgotten the name)

Most of them hinder interactivity or simply stack too many buffs/debuffs or are simply too much in a way in which I don't even want to play against my opponent anymore since the game will be unfun, no matter who wins. (once the game feels like a uphill struggle from the start it's not fun to me anymore)

Edited June 24, 2022 by JackStreicher

[Maddpainting]

17 hours ago, novakai said:

for some context and summary of the discussion:

Negative Play Experience (NPE) is when playing a game frustrates or bores one or both players. NPEs are thought to prevent new players from fully entering the game or leading to existing players abandoning the game.

Warhammer weekly show is probably where the term started gaining traction in the AoS community. the term NPE has existed in other gaming communities beforehand but this is the top video if you youtube search the term Negative Play experience.

people and players all have different views of what's NPE and what made them feel NPE in games. Some common ones cover in the show during AoS 2.0 where the Activation Wars (largely (sort of) been toned down in AoS 3.0), Multiple fighting abilities, Shooting, and Turn one alpha strike.

this episode was launched probably during the height of a Magic Domination, Shooting, or as a counter Tanky Deathstar meta. So at the time, the armies in the survey with the Highest NPE ranking were Seraphon, Tzeentch, KO, Fyreslayers, and LRL. Slaanesh and FEC  were probably up there at one point in time before some targeted nerfs but had left some bad taste in people's minds. As we are in 3.0 our perception of who is on top of this list has probably shifted a lot.

LRL has been used as the example of most NPE by the community (sometimes by Warhammer Weekly, often time even in other online communities like here and Reddit). an infamous example is probably Sentinel with their range attack at 30 inches, no line of sight, sometimes MW on 5s and 6s, and rerolling hits with Lambent light. Other example includes Foxes and their movement shenanigans, Total Eclipse doubling your CP spending which you can guarantee going off with Teclis, and even stuff like Cathallar passing battleshock on to your units can be unfun.

 

Personally my opinion on the matter, I think NPE is largely based on Player perception, and with my feeling that the player base seems to lean toward a more casual play, the abilities that deny you to play the game or things like shooting that don't have much or limited counterplay are more disdained by the community. like me, I personally have not like playing against abilities that shut off CA usage (Nurgle Flylord with that helm or NH with shutting off IP, granted I play armies that tend to have low bravery and overtly rely on IP more so than other armies) but as someone playing the game for some time now I am more use to these experiences than say a newer player. something that may not be meta strong like Boltboyz shooting, Slaanesh if you use their summoning to the fullest potential, or BoC with -4 rend, can cause NPE if there is not a knowledge or communication of abilities beforehand.

NPE has been around since 4th fantasy, it is not a new term and it is widely use.  It is not hard concept, it makes the playing experience of the player not happy, aka negative regardless of how well they are doing. 

There are a lot of NPE in the game right now, 1 example is LrL making you double your CP, then they get double the amount of CP on top of also not needing to spend CP. This puts a bad taste in the opponents mouth. Another example is SoB, some missions are literally unwinnable for some armies against them. These are not perceptions, but an active way to ruin the fun for 1 player without the means to make it more fun for them. 

Edited June 24, 2022 by Maddpainting

[Koala]

Well, i guess you could define anything that is "not fun" as NPE. Therefore loosing would be NPE.

IMHO a NPE that should concern us is something we were not expecting and accepting as part of the Game Experience. 

E.g. AoS is a dice game. So we have to accept the randomness ( to a degree). 

Same with loosing the Game - you want to win, you could loose. Deal with it.

 

A lot of the complaints ( except ofcourse "imbalance" and "always 1s") are either

 

Lack of agency ("there was nothing i could do") - we expect a game to be played by both parties roughly equally. This is why saving throws are done last - it is up to you to save your plastic soldiers... even if it is only on 6+...

And this is why ranged combat and outdrop/T1 alpha strike are often called NPEs. Because AoS offers little to no ways to prepare for/against them.

 

Gotcha Moments ( "i had no idea about that rule/possibility.") This is where WYSIWYG came from and why i often speak out against artifacts, warlord/subfaction abilities and stratagems. Nice players spend quite some time explaining their list to the opponent to prevent exactly this feeling. 

 

Breaking Immersion/Expectation (" this is not how that should Work") Also WYSIWYG. Tabletops are related to simulations. Sometimes we expect the game to play in a certain "fluffy" way or certain units to have a certain relative strength. (This is not about Balance!). e.g. AoS3 has rather complicated formation rules just because many players found conga-lining rather appaling to look at. 

 

 

 

It should be noted that the solutions to these can be quite different (if any). 

For example a lot of "hated" lists include strong ranged units. This is because AoS has rather few ways to protect yourself from ranged attacks ( just compare it to WH40k or BoltAction). Add in a double Turn and everyone gets what i mean.  The solution could be more rules OR less ranged unit options OR less powerfull ranged units OR No double Turn. Any of these could cause other NPEs.

 

[Lich King]

I suggest the people in this thread try out Age of Fantasy by OPR. Free rules - with full PDF a meager 5$. I play it with Command Point advanced rules and have never looked back to AOS.

[zilberfrid]

NPE is also felt different for different people. I played a pre-CoS Free Peoples army (a regiment with Great Companies), and the player that curbstomped me with a double or triple Keeper list was really complaining about the defensive shots from my skirmish guards and handgunners.

For me, it's mostly not playing the same game. Things like Psionics in early D&D editions that had a whole different combat system not everyone could participate in, would fit, but for AoS there are a few things that come to mind:

• Being able to almost guarantee your own magic while shutting down that of the opponent,
• Shooting mortal wounds that need no line of sight with ridiculous range, 
• Starting out controlling an objective and greatly hindering the chances of opponents getting it
• Offloading your battleshock to another player's
• Straight up take the ability to take actions from units
• Unkillable heroes or units
• Taking command points and/or increasing the cost of command point usage
• Ridiculous balance problems
• Excessive summoning or raising

It doesn't mean an army that does one of these things is automatically bad, but if your list has most of these things, I won't even care if I win if I'm not having a good time doing it. In the first example, I wouldn't be bothered by losing (it was my first game after all) but the whining and the lack of any chance I had made it annoying, with him taking ages and piling a lot of units on the battlefield while complaining that I was cheating by shooting things that came near to me (I had the GHB open and bookmarked, there was nothing fishy about it).

[Malakree]

I stopped playing the original bloodtoofs waaagh bomb because it was so uninteractive. Equally modern IJ feels the same because its all or nothing on that one turn.

For me NPE is anything which removes player interactivity and/or prevents a player from having meaningful choices. Lumineth are easily the worst offenders but seraphon (flat -1 damage??) and dragons are also pretty bad.

I always describe a game as a two hour conversation. Nobody likes a conversation where one person refuses to let the other talk.

Edited June 24, 2022 by Malakree

[Mattrulesok]

I think a lot of NPE is overstated or at least I don't find issues with it.

Every army (or almost every) has their own tricks and abilities that are unique to them and that's what I like. Every army is a different puzzle to solve, you can't just do the same thing every time and expect the same result.

 

Of course that can fall by the wayside a bit when you have unbalanced army strengths but for the most part there is really nothing I find to be NPE.

 

The closest I've gotten to feelings of NPE is verse Gargants when they were the top army for no reason other than they didn't feel as much like a puzzle. I knew how to beat them wether I could not not.

 

For the record I've played a lot of game verse nurgle, lumineth etc. and never not enjoyed it

[Beliman]

@zilberfrid

100% with that. Another point to add, is the so called "counter" armies (not based on Lumineth Realmlords, it's just an example):

• Player A: My army is build around that 3 dudes with 5 wounds each. I set-up them behind this walls and I can start buff/aura/spells my other units, really thematic.
• Player B:
  • Answer 1) Sorry dude, my archers already killed all 3 because I can ignore LoS, or have reliable mortal wounds or any combination of both.
  • Answer 2) Oops, they can't cast anything, I have +3 unbinds  with infinite range (and/or free autodispell). Btw, I can auto-cast my own spells and you need double 6 to unbind them...

Doesn't matter wich answer Player B is going to take, player A will not have a nice or fun game.

Note: I know that in 90% of other games, you need versality and adaptation and not just one gameplan and stick to it like a madman, but remember that we play a game that some armies have just 3 troops and a bunch of heroes. 

Edited June 27, 2022 by Beliman

[Rachmani]

I have two basic complaints that are NPE for me.

1. Auto success or failure. If you don't throw any dice it's usually bad. I'm not talking about command abilities, but auto dispels or auto casts, or other things that flat out deny game plans. 

2. Disruptive rules. Rerolls are a prominent example. They're ok for charge rolls, but in anything combat related they just slow down the game so much... it's tedious. Other stuff, too. Whenever you have to keep track of multiple things and mark a whole bunch of stuff it easily disrupts the flow of a game. Now, getting rid of every nuance doesn't make the game better ofc. But limits keep the game flowing and a nice flow is probably the most important basis for interesting games.

[Bosskelot]

Discussions around NPE in AOS are interesting because I feel like in an effort to fix the issues, GW could go too far in a different direction and lead to a very homogenized and flavourless game.

NPE mechanics can be un-fun, but a lot of the time this is down to execution rather than a bad core idea. A good example of what I mean here is the development of League of Legends which for a long time was focused on removing "Anti-Fun" mechanics (their word for NPE) from the Dota genre and specifically calling out Dota1/2 for propagating these mechanics. The issue is, for the longest time (and I don't pay attention to LoL nowadays so forgive me if it's drastically changed), LoL was incredibly bland and boring, with every new hero basically being a copy of the last new hero because Riot had designed themselves into a corner by declaring so many mechanics "Anti-Fun" that they were left with nothing really to work with. The metagame was equally as flavourless and static.

One of their focuses was removing the concept of Manaburn from the game, because I guess people disliked their mana being removed by enemy heroes/skills leaving them with no resources left to use their own abilities. But like I said, this now removes that entire concept from the game entirely, never to be seen. Contrast this to Dota 2 where manaburn still exists and is a presence on heroes and items; one such hero, Antimage, even has his defining mechanic be manaburn. And yet it works there, perfectly fine. Nobody in Dota wants manaburn to be removed. And the reason for that is pretty simple; you have counterplay to it; quite a lot of it actually. Other heroes and items can restore peoples mana and the manaburn abilities themselves often have drawbacks associated with them (Antimage needs to physically hit people in CC to drain their mana, Lion needs to stand still and cannot do anything else while he sucks peoples mana up etc).

So when discussing NPE, I really hope it doesn't lead to people or GW themselves from just dismissing entire concepts out of hand. The idea of manipulating peoples command point usage is a fun and interesting idea and it works in 40k with stratagems like Agents of Vect; the issue is Lambent Light has no drawbacks or real effort required or real decision making to be made, not that LRL having a way to mess with command point usage/generation is a bad idea on its own.

[Beliman]

@Bosskelot

I tried Dota2 (played DoTa when it was a mod for a few months) and I moved ASAP to LOL. Manaburn, Dodge, moving your team-mates, etc... was unfun for me, even if I mained Jax (note: a character that had 45% to IGNORE all physical damage for 6 seconds). 

Imho, the main problem was Riot's engine at that time. After the new engine was released, we started with champions that had crazy abilities (I'm still following the game).

Warhammer doesn't have a tech problem, we play with dice, models and tapes. And we already know that there are A LOT of diferent, fun and flavour mechanics that are being used by other wargames, so it's up to GW to make their own rules to be as fan, flavour and thematic as possible.

[NinthMusketeer]

There are a lot of potential sources for NPE in AoS resulting from design elements. Many are just a case of extremely bad luck or a niche matchup and I don't think these are critical, while others may rely on bad luck/matchup but are likely enough to happen with some regularity and should be looked at. However the most important in my eyes are mechanics/abilities that create NPEs of their own accord, reliably and without a specific context needed. Several systematic ones I can think of;

-6s to hit dealing MWs (particularly on shooting). It is generally agreed that MWs are a decent if not good mechanic but there are way too many of them, and the biggest source for MWs isn't spells. Making it on the hit roll allows the attack to skip two subsequent rolls (wound and save) while also resulting in extremely swingy offense based entirely on the luck of how many 6s were rolled. Shooting is particularly bad as it bypasses hit penalties designed specifically to prevent shooting from being exploited in sniping characters or unleash hell. When the majority of damage output comes from 6s to hit, penalizing the roll means little.

-Magic dominators. These would be setups where the casting player cannot be reasonably stopped and bar the occasional unlucky roll will reliably get off all their spells without the other player having any meaningful counterplay. Nagash, Teclis, and Kroak are the big offenders here but there are others. Added NPE since they often work to shut down opposition magic just as easily.

-First turn combat. This is one that is more subtle, but I feel the closer starting distance has resulted in a situation where mass combat is happening near immediately and it creates a massive front-load of game time that I do not feel is healthy. I have generally seen that games where action is spread more evenly between round are consistently enjoyed more, while games where literally the majority of play time is spent on rounds 1&2 simply do not tend to be as much fun.

 

But all of those things, plus all the other bespoke issues with certain factions/units, combined are still less than the double turn. Without question double turns are the biggest source of NPE. After time/money constraints it is even the single most common reason I hear for why people are not playing AoS. I'd bet that someone's ego at GW is stubbornly keeping this mechanic around and it is definitely holding AoS back.

Edited June 24, 2022 by NinthMusketeer

[JackOfBlades]

4 hours ago, Bosskelot said:

Discussions around NPE in AOS are interesting because I feel like in an effort to fix the issues, GW could go too far in a different direction and lead to a very homogenized and flavourless game.

NPE mechanics can be un-fun, but a lot of the time this is down to execution rather than a bad core idea. A good example of what I mean here is the development of League of Legends which for a long time was focused on removing "Anti-Fun" mechanics (their word for NPE) from the Dota genre and specifically calling out Dota1/2 for propagating these mechanics. The issue is, for the longest time (and I don't pay attention to LoL nowadays so forgive me if it's drastically changed), LoL was incredibly bland and boring, with every new hero basically being a copy of the last new hero because Riot had designed themselves into a corner by declaring so many mechanics "Anti-Fun" that they were left with nothing really to work with. The metagame was equally as flavourless and static.

One of their focuses was removing the concept of Manaburn from the game, because I guess people disliked their mana being removed by enemy heroes/skills leaving them with no resources left to use their own abilities. But like I said, this now removes that entire concept from the game entirely, never to be seen. Contrast this to Dota 2 where manaburn still exists and is a presence on heroes and items; one such hero, Antimage, even has his defining mechanic be manaburn. And yet it works there, perfectly fine. Nobody in Dota wants manaburn to be removed. And the reason for that is pretty simple; you have counterplay to it; quite a lot of it actually. Other heroes and items can restore peoples mana and the manaburn abilities themselves often have drawbacks associated with them (Antimage needs to physically hit people in CC to drain their mana, Lion needs to stand still and cannot do anything else while he sucks peoples mana up etc).

So when discussing NPE, I really hope it doesn't lead to people or GW themselves from just dismissing entire concepts out of hand. The idea of manipulating peoples command point usage is a fun and interesting idea and it works in 40k with stratagems like Agents of Vect; the issue is Lambent Light has no drawbacks or real effort required or real decision making to be made, not that LRL having a way to mess with command point usage/generation is a bad idea on its own.

I agree with this and it would be interesting to know how many of us who feel this way are also moba players. In dota 2 again, Techies and Tinker before their reworks were broadly seen as NPEs and when i saw someone (last-)pick Tinker in particular, i typically just groaned and regretted that id qued for a match, wishing for it to end as soon as possible. It felt like the game became a tedious "job" rather than an engaging process of creativity, for different reasons between Techies and Tinker. Everyone knew what those heroes were going to do. Everyone knew what their counters were in principle, and their winrates were not even positive on a meta scale. And yet, just about everyone experienced matches involving these heroes as something to endure rather than enjoy, except the odd time when you could laugh at what they were doing - Techies for blowing someone up, Tinker for his sheer absurdity.

I find it difficult however to abstractly distill exactly what such NPE consists of. But as in a moba, NPE can be part of both list building before the game and the gameplay itself.

Edited June 24, 2022 by JackOfBlades

[MotherGoose]

Gotta be mortal wound spam for me.

Shooting mortals at that. At least against melee I can screen and move around. The terrain in AoS has barely any impact.

Shooting mortals on 5+ or better and its just downright boring and not fun. You may as well just say 'I pick this hero or lord and they're dead', feels like there's literally no point in rolling dice, which is the point of the game.

Imo shooting mortals on 6s is already strong, shouldn't be able to ignore line of sight, should be short range and there should be no way *at all* to make it better than 6s. It literally just removes fun.

In general I feel like NPE is usually around changing the core rules of the game. No rolls to hit, wound or save vs mortals. No line of sight archers, spending 2x commands to do a single ability, casting spells automatically with the worse being a 10 - at least a lord of change or even nagash still has to roll, which means they can misscast, not cast, cast on a lower value and be dispelled - it leads to the hope of interaction with the opponents abilities or even actual interaction and dispelling. Hoping they change teclis in the next book to have to roll.

Sounds like I'm talking about LRL - it just so happens they have access to a lot of NPE, but boltboyz, dragons etc all can too.

Edited June 25, 2022 by MotherGoose

[yukishiro1]

Mortals are another prime example of a lack of interactivity. You pay all these points for your nice big armor save...and then you don't get to roll it. Anecdotally there's a huge difference between how people to react to taking damage with even an armor save of a 6+ and how they react when they don't get to roll any dice at all. 

That doesn't mean mortals shouldn't exist at all. But I question the wisdom of their current approach of putting more and more sources of MW into the game as a rock-paper-scissors game between wounds, armor saves and mortals. I don't think people generally actually find rock-paper-scissors mechanics to be fun, especially not when they are determined by choices you make before the game starts, because again that means you lack agency in the game itself. 

 

 

[Enoby]

28 minutes ago, yukishiro1 said:

That doesn't mean mortals shouldn't exist at all. But I question the wisdom of their current approach of putting more and more sources of MW into the game as a rock-paper-scissors game between wounds, armor saves and mortals

I may write a longer post about the topic itself a bit later, but I can attest to mortal wounds feeling like an uninteractive mechanic even when it comes from a poor model. 

I was playing against Bonesplittaz and their shaman did 15(+) mortals wounds on one of my units - they rolled well, but a 4+ MW save meant they weren't in any real danger. The entire "encounter" was basically, "you take one mortal wound... you take two mortal wounds... I take three mortal wounds and save two of them... you take 2 mortal wounds..." until the unit was dead. The mechanics sound fun on paper, like playing Russian Roulette, but in this version your opponent shoots you two thirds of the time and has a bullet proof head. Definitely a rule that's cooler in concept over execution. 

I still won handily and the shaman died next turn, but it was a very boring experience to basically just take my models off the board. It was just against a random unit in range, but if it had been a big model like Skarbrand then it would have really sucked. 

The point being here that I don't so much care of the 'meta' power of the mechanic, but rather how interactive it is when it sees play. 

I think it's less on strength (bonesplittaz aren't exactly tearing up the meta and I won that game no problem) and more how much interaction you have around the mechanic. I think a mechanic is often deemed unfun when it can remove a unit without that unit having the chance to do anything (including saves).

I don't think mortal wounds are a terrible idea, but I'd prefer for them to be way toned down (and for saves/rend to be rethought to compensate). A mechanic whose sole purpose is to stop your opponent negating an offensive it is going to be, at least in some way, not interactive. 

It's dissapointing from both a narrative and a gameplay standpoint when your Lord gets deleted off the board without getting a say in anything. I'd like if they utilised more spells in being attacks (as in "if you cast arcane bolt, you get this attack profile you can use once at the beginning of any phase") rather than it always being the same "take d3 models off the table". 

[BadDice0809]

On 6/23/2022 at 4:01 PM, KydbrookP said:

Thank you for setting up this thread.

I’m interested in thinking about this the other way around: how do I make a list that is a positive experience to play against? A list that presents a challenge but isn’t too frustrating?

It comes down to managing the expectations of the person you play against. For hilariously unbalanced games, like every single GW mainstream game (honestly just about every GW game), if you want to avoid NPE have a conversation with your opponent before the game.

If they want a no holds bar tournament game, then bring the most WAAC, net list thing you can make. If they (or you! You have a say too!) want a more casual game, tone the list down accordingly. 

There isn't a set formula.